I admit that I need to eat healthier, and most of the time I do try. But this past weekend I found myself buying a big box of Cap'n Crunch on sale, and I have been like a huge pig eating it like crazy ever since. I can't let myself buy that shit too often because it's like I go on a binge or something. It's so weird; a total lack of self control happens when I see the Cap'n. I love sugary cereal! But anyway, this morning I was folding up the bag inside after what was probably my 32nd bowl of cereal for the morning, and was surprised when some Cap'n Crunch dust flew up and into my eye!

Please be alert and aware that this could happen to you, too. They should warn people of the eye risks, and maybe consider including safety goggles. It felt like sawdust or some other type of rough, corn-based granule was in my eye. I immediately got all spazzy and rubbed my eye like a little kid, moaning, "Owwwww..." as I did. I only managed to feel better a few minutes ago, when I finally abstracted the sugary dust from my eyelid once and for all. That meant I walked around all day today with cereal in my eye. And no one was the wiser. Heck, I even had lunch with Trish and the bitch never said anything about my eye looking puffy and slightly delicious. If I can get past her, I can deceive anyone.

Last night I was in my bathroom, putting some things away in the cabinet, and I was bent down depositing some hair products on the lower shelf, and I went to shut the door of the cabinet and couldn't because my head was still in the way. I totally slammed my head in the door. Another "Oweeee..." ensued. Now I know that history shows I was born a preemie. A month early, thanks to my Mom deciding to mow the lawn in June heat when she was 8 months pregnant. So I believe I will blame my Mom for all my clumsy behavior and bad luck with cereal dust. Maybe if I had another month to stew in there, I would have managed OK. Just think about that, Momma. Don't you feel remorseful for wanting that perfectly manicured lawn now?? And if you don't, please tell me what it will take to make you feel bad. I'm tenacious; I'll do whatever it takes.
PS: Oh yeah, I love ya, Mom. Kisses!

My mind was spinning all by itself just now and I thought something. Here's the weird part: most people would be terrified to wake up in the middle of the night and realize they were sleeping next to Bea Arthur. Right? Well, I was thinking about it, and I wouldn't. Why? It's so simple: she was a Golden Girl, and them Golden Girls can do anything the hell they want to and I would be cool with it. There were a lot of episodes where they showed Dorothy Zbornak (I get ten points in the COOLNESS game for knowing how to spell that, whizbang!) in bed in a high-collared nightgown along with her mother or one of the other GG's. It's not so terrible. It's comforting and nice to sleep with a Golden Girl. Even if... yeah... even if you are a chick.

It was about to be another Blogless day, but I was reading the news this morning and I read this little opinion piece in USA Today and wanted to share it in the only way I know how-- by Blog! Ah HA!
 
So yes, Kerry-- when are you going to address the Social Security issue, hmmmmm? I'd like to vote for you, my dear funny-faced goon, but first you got to take care of a little somethin' somethin' called "the young voters." Especially now that we have Bush parading around his darling little tart daughters all the sudden. Weren't they in some photo spread in a magazine recently, wearing debutante dresses and trying to appear classy? Not fooling anyone-- we know that 6 hours before the photo shoot you were puking up all that Mad Dog from that frat party with Ron and Jake (who was sooo sweet because he held your hair back while you puked, ohmigod). If Bush is using these two to gain the favor of the younger people, I think Kerry needs to also step up to bat with something that would appeal to the voters under 30.
 
Now I know he won't answer anything definitive on any of the issues ("Gay marriage? Oh, yes, gay marriage. I think that it's an issue worth discussing. I would say it is-- oh crap, what the hell is THAT thing?!" and he scurries away and talks to some old dude who is settling out bagels on the catering table), so in leui of real commitment or conviction, let's give him some mascot to accompany him on the campaign trail. Bush Twins, meet-- Action Man!
 
Action Man would be a skinny little dude in a bright blue leotard who wears a mask made out of old pantyhose and creatively-applied lipstick. His job is to stand at the end of the stage when Kerry is talking and pump the crowd up. He is allowed to find and bring in celebrity guests, such as the lead singer of The Darkness, or maybe Vin Diesel, and he walks around the person screaming, "Wooo! Wooo!!!" and doing cartwheels on the stage. He throws butter sometimes. He might set free a bobcat. He would use a Taser on himself to punctuate Kerry's speeches as he wraps them up. He would jump on a trampoline while he plays Johnny Cash music real loud. Action Man would jump off a building and land in a big Hostess Cupcake baked special for the occassion. The kids would love him. Action Man would get to appear on TRL and let some ditzy chick in the audience touch his hard nipples before a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video. Kerry would appear with Action Man at the opening of a new Scores club. Kerry would get a little tipsy and and together he and Action Man would mug for the cameras and run around goosing the hot ladies who are giving them lap dances. (His wife would start hanging out with Courtney Love to show she has compassion for troubled rock stars, which is a good ticket to ride, I have been told.) All this while the Bush Twins are playing canasta with rich old ladies with stale coffee breath his Dad is friends with. It won't take a genius to figure out who's got the cooler mascot! Kerry, that's who! WOOOOO! Yes, his campaign slogan should simply become:
 
"JOHN KERRY IN 2004. WOOOOOOO!!!"
 
I am doing my part to help you, John Kerry. So answer me this: why, why won't you return my phone calls?

I am not sure what to write about, but I want to do something, damn it, so here I go with some random stuff:

Yesterday a wall of dust blew into the city, which I must say is pretty damn cool. I didn’t really see it because I was in the house relaxing on the couch after a long day at work, but I did see the dark, heavy clouds over the mountains and heard the bugs start doing their weird buzzing-sound before a storm. It got very windy and dark, so it was beautiful outside. Me and the dogs went out in the backyard and we sat on the driveway and willed it to actually, finally rain. I thought if the dogs helped me—and this is how I know I am losing my mind, because I sort of felt like they were trying to help me—we could collectively bring enough psychic energy into the sky to make it rain. It didn’t work. After all that build up? No rain! This is getting way out of hand.

I’ve been living here six years now. I have gotten used to this heat and the dry air and the dust and lizards. But I realized recently that I can no longer really remember the sensation of being stuck in east coast rain. Rain there is not very fun. Probably because we got so damn much of it. In NJ, I wanted to take off of work on nice days. Here, I want to take off on rainy days. I can’t wait to go back to NJ and feel all sticky and gross and rained-on. I never thought I would say that, but what the hell.

I chose not to watch “I Love the 90s” on VH1 yet. I just don’t feel I am ready.

I did watch some of the “Surreal Life” reruns they are showing right now. I missed it when it was on ‘regular TV’, so it’s been cool to check out some of it. Well, “cool” is stretching the truth a hair. The celebs, as they were, were at a nudist camp on the episode I was watching last night and it was surprisingly boring. It was all about Ron Jeremy nuzzling the black chick. I enjoyed all the strategic blurring, though. If there is one thing I like, it’s a lot of strategic blurring. Especially during volleyball spike-and-sets. Yes, keep blurring the hell out of that. When the boys are untethered, I don’t need to see them jangling around like sugar plums. Nope, not really.

It's so hot here. Well, that's what I get for moving to freaking Phoenix. My sweet God. I tried to take my bike out this morning for a ride and by the time I walked to the garage, I had broken a serious sweat under the 9:40am sun. No dice, I went back in and read a magazine instead. That's the kind of athlete I have become: a read-a-magazine-instead kind. But summer in Phoenix makes you do that.

Enough bellyachin'. I just bought myself a new computer, at last! I am overjoyed. I bought a nice new Dell computer with a free flat panel display upgrade... sweet! With any luck I will be able to figure out a way to get it online so I can blog more often. No one is hurting more about not being able to blog than this lady right here. It hurts a lot, and it hurts often. I wish my boss--who I found out used to be a middle school teacher for over 10 years, which explains a lot-- would stop treating us like we are bad kids in detention or something.

I saw "Dodgeball" last night and laughed my behind off. Isn't it funny to say "behind"? It sounds so quaint and retro. "Behind" is the new "far out". Or something. I wouldn't know.

So yesterday we attempted a yard sale to raise money for the play I am directing right now. We have no cash for anything, and our past yard sales were stellar. Um, not so much on this one yesterday. No one was coming to look at our old crap. The heat was killing us all. I think about three of us died somewhere out in our driveway. The stench of rotting bodies was overwhelming. Luckily that donated backhoe took care of things for us and we continued to soldier on in the 189 degree heat. Weather forecast said rain. Fuck that, there was no rain. Not even a splatter. I never wanted our stuff to get drenched so badly in my life. Someone left the old E.T. The Extra Terrestrial christmas candle out in the sun and he melted. Same thing happened to the festive Halloween witch candle, that actually fell over and curled into a fetal position as she melted into a gooey purple, black and orange mass. Trish picked it up and brought it over to me... she could do this because it happened to melt on top of a happy little purple and green wooden flower. Saddest thing I saw all day.

Anyway, our sale lasted just under 3 hours before we started packing it back up and saying to one another that we'd "try this again in October." We loaded up the cars for donations to Goodwill and hauled the sell-able crap back into the garage for another couple of months.

Overall, we made just about $21.

That won't even buy a few decent bags of Twizzlers for the retards. Any ideas for raising cash for a lousy little community theater show are appreciated. I wished there was an international dodgeball championship we could go into. Guess we'll take that other suggestion in the movie and start selling blood and semen, together. It's all for the art. Yeah.

I hope my next post will be more intelligent, and that it will happen sooner than 10 working days. Cripes.

My previous post was all worried about something bad that might or might-not happen. So far, nothing has happened that’s been bad. Either my timing is off, like I am getting weird psychicy feelings for some bad shit that’s gonna go down in 2009, or I was wrong and just being “moody”, as they say. The worst that happened was I spent some money at Target last night when I know I shouldn’t have. Well, anyway, just wanted to report that I still have all my limbs and my job.

I realized just now I haven’t really watched TV in a couple of days. I watch approximately 7 minutes of TV a day, and that is right before I fall asleep. I always fall asleep to the TV these days. Last night I wanted to stay awake because it was a new episode of Reno 911, but I was really just tuckered out, like a tiny little puppy that’s had a full day of bounding around the yard and yelping at clouds; only, less cute.

You know what show gets me every time? It’s The Planet’s Funniest Animals. I hate the host guy because he looks like he’d be a dick in real life—that’s real animosity brewing behind those forced smiles, but I don’t seem to get sick of watching dogs’ tails banging into babies and cats chasing laser pointer dots all over the walls on someone’s cheap home movies. I thought I would get tired of this stuff, but it’s been years now that I chose to sit and zone out to animals being ‘funny.’ I would like to be all smart and intellectual, but when it comes to this show, I drop down to guffawing American Doofus Level just like *snap*.

I was working out last night and trying to practice deep breathing at the same time. I really am not sure if this is a good thing to do or not, because it made me all lightheaded and tingly in my face. Deep breathing, I swear, will fuck you up.

I wish there were trains here in Phoenix to get places. It would make so much sense, too. We have way too much traffic and it takes too long to get anywhere around this joint. They totally should have put subways in here when they were building it. No one wants to be out in the sun driving around, except for masochists. The rest of us would all prefer the dark of the deep. I know we would. Listen to me, because I know best for us all, OK? Also, if we had subways, there’s always going to be a chance I might be able to catch a ghost. As in, Patrick Swayze learning to kick a soda can from the scary frizz-haired guy. I would like to capture a ghost and ask it all kinds of questions about life, the universe and everything. Then, when I was finished with the questions, I would make it drink some stuff so I could see drinks just falling onto the floor below. I might attempt to kick and/or French kiss the ghost to see what happens. Just like in the movies.

I saw a ghost once, for real. I was down by the Spy House in NJ, and standing on this deck-thing they built out over the ocean (I am spacing on the correct word for it right now, because it wasn’t quite a pier, but it was sort of like that) one night, having a serious political debate with my boyfriend at the time. We had just seen “Dead Man Walking” and were having a heated discussion about the rights of the condemned and the death penalty. So we are talking, and I was literally in the middle of a very good point—after all, I had researched the work of Sister Prejean (misspelled? Note to self: check this later) for a public speaking class in college—and I noticed a THING over my boyfriend’s shoulder. I glanced at this THING, I saw a grayish blurb sort of wavering down near the waterline behind him, about 100 yards from where we were sitting. Honestly, it was the weirdest feeling ever. My throat immediately constricted, and the hairs all stood up on my arms. Now it didn’t look like a ghost as you’d think it would, it was like a haze of glued-together smoke hanging down by the water, if that makes sense. (Smoke dissipates, and this stuck together.) I stared at it and sort of knew that it was probably a younger woman or girl. That’s all I could pick up on. My boyfriend asked me what was wrong, and I glanced back at his face and said, “Down there, behind you…” and when I glanced back over to the spot where I saw that THING, it was gone. That fast.

So what does this mean? I have no idea. Life, death, etc… I have no answers. But I can tell you this: ghosts are real. It’s just that simple. The Ghosts Are Out There, and They Might Be Laughing At Us Behind Our Backs!