I thought today was payday, but I am shocked and appalled that there is no money in my account! I guess we get paid tomorrow, or someone is playing a little trick on me, making me think I will have no money to go on my excursion to NJ with in a few days. This makes me deeply upset. In fact, I cried today at the gas pump as I filled my tank up and saw the total was $23.07. That's $23.07 I am not sure I can cover, unless the payroll fairies decide to drop by my checking account sometime soon.

I am definitely one of those lazy employees. What I mean is, I never ask questions. You'd think I would have asked at least one co-worker the question, "Hey, do we get paid today?" Nope. Too lazy. Also, I am listening to my cool little Dell DJ player and it's currently Jeff Buckley's "Halleluiah", which is good listening and you can't exactly hit pause during the song because that would be bad form. I firmly believe reverance is in order when one is listening to Jeff Buckley. Wish he wasn't one of those dudes who thought that swimming in a river while drunk was a good idea. I totally would have had sex with him if he was a) still alive and b) drunk.

This Sunday is my best friend Kristen's wedding to Eric (Ezzy). I love these guys. They are one of those couples that just give you a nice feeling when you hang out with them; a feeling like "they sure are happy, and they are funny too so that will negate any jealous feelings I might have about not having a relationship like that at the moment." I remember when I met Ezzy for the first time when they came to visit Arizona. He was just like a male version of Kristen, and he had her sense of humor and everything. He's awesome, and I am so damn glad that Kristen is marrying him. I am going to have such a great time watching them get old and stupid together, and seeing how weird their little kids will end up being! The wedding is going to be a good time, too. I just hope it doesn't rain, because that would be a lousy day. I also hope that Finn Razell, the sorceress from "Willow", will show up in possum-body for the occassion, as it would really make Kristen's day.

We leave for NJ on Wednesday and it will be a flurry of activity and happenings. We are going to have a dinner with my Uncle Ed at Brother's Pizza in Red Bank, which will be good because I haven't seen my uncle in a spell and I enjoy the dark atmosphere of Brother's.

If you go back and read the last seven words of the previous paragraph, it has obvious racial undertones and I should probably clarify that: yes, I do enjoy the dark atmosphere of the Brothers. Nice guys.

So I am a little bit behind the rest of the world. Last weekend while watching “Chappelle’s Show” on DVD, I finally found out what R. Kelly was in trouble for last year or whenever it was he was in the news for being a pervert. See, I had heard he had sex with an underage girl and I thought that was the extent of it. But after seeing Dave Chappelle’s video called “Piss on You,” the Legos of my brain began clicking together and it all made disgusting sense.

Anyway, I think I know what the deal is. R. Kelly is a lobster. According to National Geographic, lobsters signal they want to mate by squirting pee on each others’ faces! Yippee, I love nature!
Here, read this article, and if you are not interested in clicking on a National Geographic article because you think if it ain’t got those floppy third-world country titties in it, it ain’t worth it, here is a teaser for you. This article offers crucial information about lobsters. Think about this the next time you’re getting ready to eat one, Mr. Red Lobster Patron. You won't want to eat the face, I can tell you that much:

How does a female seduce the male?
Essentially by drugging him into submission. When lobsters fight and when they flirt—in both cases they communicate with each other basically by pissing in each other's faces. They have these little urine-release nozzles right under their eyes, and they squirt urine at each other.
The urine is laced with various kinds of information. In a fight it could be a communication of how aggressive or belligerent or dominant a lobster is.

“Here at my clinic I would never attach an artificial testicle.” This is the wining quote from a recent article on dogs having plastic surgery. I’m not sure what, exactly, this quote “wins”, but it is A LOT of… something.

Most people are probably blissfully unaware of how close the danger of artificial canine testicles is, everyday, as we go about our business. Every day, millions upon millions of people go in for surgical enhancements and never think that there could be a chance that prosthetic balls are just waiting somewhere in a cabinet, ready to be applied to an unwilling body in a paperwork mix-up. I would like to think that most clinics would not attach artificial testicles. There could be a lot of unscrupulous placement going on. Imagine if Joan Rivers, for instance, went in for a routine face-stretching and woke up with a fake dog ball attached to her forehead? This could signal global chaos. Fake dog balls are not something to be toyed with!

Why is George W. wasting all his time and energy trying to ban stem-cell research, when it is clear that the true medical scandal and morally-ambiguous story lies in the tale of Chewy, the surgically-altered, undescended-testicle-having Doberman? I for one would feel a hell of a lot more secure about our future if I knew dogs with perfect Ally McBeal noses and Angelina Jolie lips weren’t running around smelling asses and crapping in public. It’s too disturbing to think about.

Here’s an idea, Fox: Instead of the “Swan”, let’s see “The Stud” and show men getting surgically enhanced with fake dog parts. That’ll get folks talking. The market for fake dog balls has yet to be tapped for the American Public; and I dare say that the American Public would have a damn near insatiable taste for fake dog testicles!

For many years, Trish and I have been agonizing over the fact that neither of us could seem to find a few audio cassettes that we had recorded stuff onto between 1985 and about 1989. We did little skits, we sang songs, we did fake news broadcasts, and we read books aloud using different voices and sound effects. Since we’ve moved so much, we kept packing them up and losing track of where they were. Yesterday, while packing up to move into the other apartment, Trish located one of the elusive tapes!
It’s a narration of a book called “Pippa Mouse.” I did most of the reading, and Trish rang a bell to signal it was “time to turn the page”. Anyway, Trish brought it into the car and we were listening to it on my tape deck as a thunderstorm came rolling into the valley last night. It was fantastic. We sound so little! Trish had this awesome little laugh, and I sounded dorky but in what I would like to say is an endearing way. We kept cracking up at stuff while we were trying to read and do all these strange character voices. Last night, we laughed again really hard at the tape, and realized our sense of humor hasn’t changed very much over the years. We still do things like this, only now we call it “directing” and make “actors” say the different voices and stuff. It was truly glorious to hear this bit of our past again. And then…
I hit rewind. That’s all I did. Trish and I were joking about it: “imagine if the tape deck ate the tape up, and all we got to hear of the tape was only one listen?” Yeah, imagine that. When I ejected the tape, we were horrified to see the tape had snapped off the reel and was somewhere inside the casing, unspooled and silent. I think I just sat there in disbelief. The rain started coming down, and we were all horrified at what had just happened.
I am sure there has to be a way to save the tape. I want to make CD copies of it and save it for all time. It was just so ironic that time giveth, and time taketh away.

Well, I am also thinking about trying something new this weekend. I love to go canoeing, but since moving to Arizona I haven’t done it once. I miss being in a little boat like that and powering the movement with my own raw female strength. I have never kayaked before, and I found out I could rent a kayak for $10 an hour down at Tempe Town Lake. So I think on Saturday morning, I might take myself down to the lake and kayak for awhile. I hope I haven’t jinxed myself just by talking about it (will it get too hot? Will I get too lazy?), but that is what I would like to do this weekend, anyway. Just me by my damn self, out on the water of a man-made lake, tooling through the water and going under the bridge and laughing to no one. That will be me. I certainly hope so. I hope I don’t capsize because I seriously hate fish and I don’t want any to touch me.

I have had this one black skirt for about two years, and I hadn’t been wearing it for some reason. It’s a long skirt, drawstring waist with a slit in the front. Anyway, I pulled it out on Saturday and wore it to the show that night. I am supposed to wear all black because I am working behind the scenes and all that… and I am not one to besmirch tradition. So that’s what I did. And the reason I am writing about this skirt now is I am wearing it again today, this time to work and without the funky chain belt and lace-trimmed tank top. This skirt is versatile and it is a cool, hip skirt. Why have I forgotten her for so long? Interesting, no?
No, probably not. But there is so much on my mind that’s heavy-thinking stuff that I had to write about a silly little skirt to divert my attention from the bigger issues. It worked for a little while. Longer than the heroin buzz, anyway.
In other news, the play opened this weekend and it was excellent. I am super critical and somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to my projects, and so I was prepared to really tear this one up and see where the problems lie. I couldn’t find any! The actors were really awesome, and came to life with the audience staring at them. Trish was very good at the multiple characters she played. We learned microwave popcorn is easier to eat on stage than air-popped (air-popped is way too dry). The lights all looked fine. I screwed up the sound though. I hit a cue wrong because I almost forgot a scene, and got the lights and sound cued up for another scene altogether and had to fix it in seconds, and then on Friday night a phantom sound effect happened. We have this doorbell that’s battery operated, and the sound board operator keeps the button to ring the doorbell at the right times. The doorbell itself is placed right behind a curtain backstage, facing the audience so they hear it best. Anyway, we were in the middle of a very emotional, quiet and touching scene. In it, Kane is a schizophrenic who’s been hospitalized and is now nearly catatonic. Matt is paying him a visit and saying a very heartfelt monologue about life and stuff. I am getting ready for the next lighting change, both hands on the lightboard. All of the sudden, towards the end of this scene, the doorbell inexplicably went off. My hands were nowhere near the button. I was so upset! I felt so out of control. I realized I take technical errors very poorly. I can’t handle them. I was really pissed off back there, hidden behind my black curtain mouthing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!!” quietly as the play rolled on. I am not this hard on other people… just me.
I spent a good part of yesterday organizing photos I have taken since about 2000 into order so I could put them into photo albums that chronologically tell the story of the past four years or so. This became another near obsession, as I laid photos out according to date and subject, and trying to sort out the crappy extra photos so I could throw them away. I noticed it is hard to throw pictures, even stupid ones, in the garbage. It feels funny. Maybe the Indians have it right, and photos do capture the souls of people. When I throw out those pictures, those are really pieces of people’s souls going in amongst the used paper towels and rotten strawberries (the ones I bought and TOTALLY MEANT TO CUT UP AND EAT but never got around to it, again). That’s probably why it bothers me.
Maybe I am OCD a little bit or something. Maybe it’s just lately I am. So much going on! I spent Saturday organizing my shoes and sorting them into ones for the yard sale, ones that might work for the theatre, and ones I am keeping. By the way, it wasn’t just for fun, so maybe I am not OCD. Maybe I am simply packing for the move into the apartment with Trish. Oh yeah, that’s probably it.

I have a twitch going on in my left eyelid at the moment. Maybe I am weird or something, but I like it. I don't think about things like nervous twitches very often, and having one that's involuntary kind of shoves it in my face. Literally. I have a twitch in my face right now! It feels kind of funny.

I feel kind of incoherent these days. Maybe because I am literally exhausted down to the bone from trying to do too many things at once and think about too many big decisions at once. We are opening "The Boys Next Door" this Friday, and I am so happy to see this show open I could bust a breast! Hey, that's a new one... bust a breast. But anyway, my point is I can't wait for rehearsals to be over and to finally have an audience and a finished product. Trish and I worked our asses off on this show because we didn't have a crew. Luckily Tom and Matt stepped in and built us a set because otherwise I am not sure we would have had one at all. Trish and I did the props (with the exception of Franc, who brought in some stuff too), the costumes, and now I am doing the sound and lights. Trish had to step in when one of our actresses totally got fucked up and flaked out on us; didn't even show up one night last week and never called or nothing! So now Trish is playing FIVE roles in this show. Dude, I am totally giving her props for this one, stepping in and learning five parts just days before we open. Luckily we have been directing this thing for weeks now she knew what to do for the most part. But it blows because now we can't sit in the audience during the show and watch and feel the audience's reactions to the show. And by feel, I mean grope. And by grope, I mean get arrested.

But at least I have conquered my fear of running the light board. I feel awesome about that. I have not touched a light board since 10th grade, when I fucked up the lights for "The Boyfriend". I was the spotlight operator and I was so bad at hitting my cues and I sucked at focusing the light. I got carried away watching the magical spectacle that was high school theater that I forgot to turn the spotlight off as the curtain closed on the show, leaving lights all over. I forgot to turn my light on, and a whole part of a dance number called "Sur La Plaje" got left in the dark. I was really bad. So I never did lights again. The theatre world did not need anyone from the likes of me.
Here I am now, not only coming up with the whole scheme as to what type of lighting happens in each scene (Blackout? Slow fade? I've done a few shows with Corky already, so I know the terms) but also fucking running it live, along with the sound. Not easy, but it's also a bit adrenaline-y, so it's cool. I don't think I have worn as many hats in a show before. Man, did I just say that horrible cliche? Yup, I just checked and sure enough, I did. Wearing a lot of hats. Shut up. Christ.

Next up for me is a sitcom situation in real life. Trish and I are moving in together! Ah, sweet frolicing in the shared living room! Tweedle dee dee. We are going into a 2 bedroom in her apartment complex to save money for a big move that will happen in 2005. It's going to be funny and strange and stuff, living with my sister again. Will all our furniture fit? How will her cats and my dear little Malcolm get along? Will there be arguments about who ate all the Mueslix? Do they even make Mueslix anymore? Why don't more people actively talk about Mueslix these days? Why must all the talk center around dead Rick James and charismatic Obama? Have we become so jaded. Oui.

You know what I hope? That somehow or other, I manage to stop this eye twitch. It isn't so cute anymore. I feel like slicing out my eye, and that's can't be a good sign. Good morrow to you all.

Based on the rash of wife-murders that we as a nation are facing, here is an open letter to my perhaps Future Husband:

"Dear Perhaps Future Husband,
If it turns out you get sick of me, or want to have an affair, or maybe you decide to lie about some kind of accomplishment and I find out about your lies, please consider sitting down and discussing the matter with me before you decide to kill me in my sleep or behead me. I am a reasonable person, and I can actually keep a relatively cool head in the face of a horrible revelation. I am simply asking you to give talking a chance before you resort to killing. I think it's better that way. Also, you won't have to resort to running naked around a hotel to set up your insanity defense. No one would want to see that much of your penis, anyway. As your Perhaps Future Wife, I can attest to that. I just know these things.
Sincerely,
Lisa"

I've been thinking of this letter for awhile so it feels good to get it out there now, while I still have time to take kung fu and learn how to kill a guy with two fingers and an icy stare.

In the past 24 hours, so much has happened in my personal life my head is going, "Whoa!! Slow down there, Skippy!" Well, I don't know who this Skippy is, but all I can say is it looks like me and NYC are about to get a hell of a lot more intimate. I really don't want to jinx anything, or say much before anything is set in stone, but I am beginning to scout out dumpsters for cardboard boxes. For packing, not for living in. Maybe heading east, maybe not... but moving, yes. More as things get finalized. By the way, this moving thing is not my insanity defense. And for the record, they are never going to find Pat Sajak, no matter how many dumps they comb through. Ummm... on second thought, maybe they will. And it's not that he's dead or anything. He's just living there. Come on now... would you be surprised, really?

Headline writing is hard work. I have been trying to come up with something witty yet professional and informative for a short article I am writing on a company with the world "Global" in their name. All I can come up with so far is "Global Domination" or "Going Global". So boring.

I decided to break up things by reading the news. I do love reading the news. I realized the other day I read all my news; I never watch network or any type of televised news. I read this story on blue whales the other day and it cheered me up. Blue whales have been spotted in Alaska! Yes, that's right. In Alaska. They were last seen lumbering on their stomachs through the streets of Juneau, knocking over cars and scaring babies.

And also, I have not seen "The Village" yet so don't start talking about it to me. I don't want to know how fucking crappy it was, or whatever. This is one of those instances where I am a vehement about forming my own damn opinion on a movie, and I don't need your pissy opinions or attitudes, so shut it!

I'm sorry, I am not a yelling-kind of person, and I apologize for the outburst. It's this thing I have with sugar. They should give sugar a new name. They should call it Lucifer Sugar. Because sugar is the devil. I have been possessed by the devil. Right now as I type this, I am thinking about where I can get my next fix. I rue the day you entered my mouth, Lucifer Sugar! Ye Gods!