Webster, Kelly, Amy and Benny were excited to have this photo taken backstage at a high-caliber performance of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." Or, if you are in theater and you know the lingo, it's just "Forum." Whatever. I hate actors. Anyway, I did this with some very advanced cut-and-tape skills at some point in college, and was so proud of it I placed in the front of a photo album. This is a highly-revered spot to get in a photo album, for any photo. Little photos dream of growing up one day into a fully-developed print and being placed on the coveted first page. What's also amusing about this photo is the fact that Webster's neck somehow "came with" a turtleneck, and we can clearly see more neck at the bottom. I think it's some sort of dickey.

Crap! I am tired! I've been "Conferencing" the last two days and I am exhausted. Today I ran something akin to a teleprompter to get the diva Executives in my company to say stuff while they were on the conference stage. Twice a cable came loose and they couldn't read what I was furiously typing ("WRAP IT UP! 20 MINUTES OVER! PLEASE GET OFF THE STAGE! YOUR STOCKBROKER CALLED AND SAID TWO WORDS--BAD NEWS! SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPP!!) and another time, a speaker just decided to skip a whole planned segment for no good reason, making everyone backstage scramble and drop headphones and cue up things early and all kinds of chaos. Still, it was better than yesterday, when I had to stand in place for exactly 2 1/2 hours, just so I could tell anyone who happened to walk by that "the Registration desk for Conference is down to your left." That's all. For two hours. And an extra half of another hour. Standing. Still. Pointing. Fake-smiling. Yeouch. It really hurt like the dickins.

Did I misspell dickins? I guess it depends on your preference. Maybe you like "dickens" better. Maybe you are from a foreign land; you know, one of those lands that smells it "colour" instead of "color" like it is here in the good ol' US of A. Whatever. Anyway...

So I am tired, but wanted to write about crap for a minute before I eat me some dinner and wash me some laundry. I have one more day of conference, tomorrow. More teleprompting from my laptop, more handing of notecards to diva Executives, more blue Oxford shirt with company logo emblazoned on the pocket with corporate-approved khaki pants. Yes, sign me up for the good times! I am so on it. Like a hooker on the amoxillan, I love the corporate life.

Holy hell. Now even my metaphors aren't making sense. Time to eat and sleep. Good bye now!

Every year in July my company does a conference. It’s right here in town, so I don’t need to travel, which is a huge blessing. But it has made me supremely busy for the last couple of days. I like it. I really love being busy. I wish my whole job was this sort of busy work.

I have been sorting content for a huge three-ring binder, and then putting them into the binders, and now I am printing out “Achievement certificates,” woo hoo! Let the fun begin! The thing is, it IS fun. I don’t know why it is fun, but it is. Not roller derby fun, by any means. But it’s better than the norm, that’s all I mean. Having things to do when you are accustomed to sitting at your desk waiting for approval from three different managers is way different than being able to actually use your printer and create a pile of actual binders that you stuffed with content-crap.

So here’s how I am mentally retarded: I was sitting there stuffing binders with this crap, and singing songs in my head. I liked the fact that the pile was growing faster than the piles made by the other people who were also helping. I like being the fastest, the best, the smartest. I am a bit of a show-off. I think the other helpers were annoyed by me. Still, I happily built those binders. Just building binders, tweedle-dee-dee. I am a geek, a nerd and a dork all rolled into one. Building binders is my bidness. Yay, me.

However, there comes a limit. And that limit is called “having to stay until about 6:30 to finish this up.” Nope. I draw the line at working an hour and a half later than usual. Luckily I had legitimate dinner plans last night and could not stay late. The managers’ promises of free pizza could not keep me a’stuffing. I left.

And now, today, I do some more of the same. Stuffing and printing, writing and folding. I am still happy about it. But now I know—be even faster on the output, so they don’t say we need to work late again. I will even have pizza for lunch just to be on the safe side. “Sorry, I had pizza for lunch. Can’t stay.”

Wish me luck! These certificates ain’t gonna print themselves, and these people need to know they have, in fact, earned “Achievement.” An Achievement Award is a fantastic motivator. In most cases it is used for the slow kids. “Good job, honey… at least you were in the race! Good for you. Now here’s a Twinkie for ya. OK. Go away now.”

Conference! It is the most wonderful time of the year. And the most Special Ed, too. And it sucks. That's the most important thing to remember: busy work aside, the actual Conference itself is a bullshit affair and I hate it like I hate bladder infections.

In Which I Discover Roller Derby:

I had a fantastic weekend. Originally, I had planned to take part in a “48-hour film challenge” through the PHX Film Festival (you’d have to write, shoot and edit a short three-minute film in 48 hours), but the team never really came together so we sort of shelved participating in that. I have to say I am so glad, because if we had done that silly film challenge, I wouldn’t have thrown an awesome dart game or seen women kick ass in roller derby.

It doesn’t take much to totally impress me. Seriously, if people are fun to be around and we’re all just having a good time forgetting all the usual bullshit of the week, a weekend can be amazing. It all began on Friday night. Allison threw a Game Night at her house. I brought something called Rugalah or something (it had apples in it). I admit I bought it because I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded more sophisticated than my usual snacks. I couldn’t completely resist going back to the usual plain me, though, and also brought mini cupcakes along with a two-liter of coke.

Alllison’s friends were a lot of fun. It’s hard to meet new people and relax sometimes, but they were cool and we all started laughing at shit within a few minutes. It was a good group. We played Catchphrase and Cranium. I didn’t like Cranium because it was too complicated. This is my general problem with board games—I hate learning how to play. I hate rules and stuff. I like to just do the basic fun stuff. If I am playing Trivial Pursuit or something, for instance, I just want to sit with the box of cards and just read and guess them with someone else. No moving pieces around a board or anything. Let’s just see how freakin’ smart we are. Who cares who wins, really; these questions are tricky, so let’s have another daiquiri.

Remember “Run Yourself Ragged”? It was the obstacle course board game from the 80s. I loved that game because I could play it alone, and just do the parts of the obstacle course I really liked doing and forget the rest of it. I like repetition. That reminds me of a strange desire I have to go back to a simpler, data-entry type job. Sometimes I really want to process information and that’s it. Not do anything with it, just go through one motion and that’s it.

OK! So the next day was the absolute shit. I ended up having a very productive, happy afternoon. I love when instead of doing nothing all day on a Saturday, I actually get some things accomplished. For me, this meant laundry, cleaning up my closet and the bathrooms, washing the dog and doing Pilates. I got so busy that I was almost late in getting ready for the evening’s Surprise Festivities.

Greg likes to surprise me, and his friends. I love that about him. Anyway, he told me all week that he had something fun planned for Saturday night, but didn’t tell me what it was. I really like this game. (He once also made me go on a hunt for little clues that he’d hidden around my house to lead me to a new DVD copy of “The Jerk” under my mattress, so he knows the value of keeping details hidden and thinking of fun stuff to do)
He showed up, and we drove over to his friend Laura and David’s house. It was Laura’s birthday, and she also didn’t know what we were all going to do that night. David knew, though, so he and Greg were kind of giddy. I spent some time givin’ some dog lovin’s to their two huge dogs, Calli and Xena, and then we left to go to a bar I had been dying to go to for awhile, ever since Greg had first told me tales of its coolness.

It was once a ranch house, but now it’s a little cool dive bar called the TT Roadhouse. If you live in Phoenix you’ve probably heard about it. But it was dark, small, with a couple pool tables in the back, an electronic dart board and what was perhaps the coolest jukebox ever in a dive bar. Greg got me a 24oz Corona and I sucked it down as punk and old music played. I think Greg played some Mike Ness; I put in my dollar to hear some Clash, followed by Louis Prima and my favorite of the evening— Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Crap, I so love Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It made me win the second dart game.

Yeah, it turns out I am good at darts. I am so surprised by this. I never played before I met Greg. At least, I had thrown darts at a board, but never kept score or knew what the point was or anything (reference how I am with board games for my general philosophy with games in general). However, he taught me in his kitchen and I picked it up pretty quick. So there I was, throwing with pretty damn impressive aim, buzzed up on Corona as the TV’s in the bar were playing episodes of The Office and Screamin’ Jay is screamin’ away. I was completely giddy and silly by the time we left. (Plus, a monsoon storm was rolling in so the sky was brownish-gray and windy as we got into the car to head to the Surprise Festivity. The Roadhouse was just a warm-up. We were not finished yet.

So David drives us over to the other side of town. I have no clue at all where we are going. I just hoped it wouldn’t be that lame-looking amusement park in the parking lot of the mall at Metro Center. I imagined it to be full of asshole teenagers and I didn’t want that to kill my happy buzz. Luckily, we kept going and we ended up pulling up to this large brick and stone building called, I think, Castle Fitness Club. I worried for a minute that we were going to go work out or something and I had no sneakers. But the sign said “AZ ROLLER DERBY.” Sweet ASS!

I don’t get why it’s so fucking awesome to go to the Roller Derby, but I will say it now—it WAS. The place was crawling with punks and rockabilly Betty Page chicks and guys with tattoo sleeves, and then there were older people, typical suburbanite people, rednecks and white trash, little kids in “Punisher” T-shirts. A nice, healthy mix of folks. A rockabilly band was stationed directly on the rink itself, in the corner, with a huge upright bass and everything. The emcee was a guy with long, frizzy black hair and a goatee, wearing a thrift-store jacket and a huge tie.

The girls who skated wore short skirts, ripped-up tights and had punky hair and some had tattoos. It was Phoenix versus Tucson—the Phoenix team wore costumes that were reminiscent on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s department prisoner uniforms—black and white stripes with pink underwear. They were called the Tent City Terrors.

Tucson’s team was the better team, to be honest. They were smaller and scrappier, and wore simple brown button-down shirts and black skirts, and they were The Saddle Tramps. As the game/match/ whatever you call it went on, Tucson was way faster and scored points lightning fast. Phoenix had a lot of “bigger” women and we spent a lot of time falling down and getting shoved out of the lanes.

It was a little rough, but not as bloody as I once thought a roller derby could be. I know that it is common to have people break bones or bleed profusely during these games, but we just saw some limping and stuff. People were screaming and cheering them on and getting loud and crazy as the night went on. I started yelling. We kept yelling something like “Go, chubby, go!” or some similar phrase, depending on what type of girl was in the lead.

But yes, there was a beer garden on the rink, too. We stood right on the rink, off to the side sort of, and a table was set up for $2 beers. Greg got me one and I drank it fast, ensuring my drunkenness. I had no food since lunchtime, so I was really feeling it. I was giggling and talking about having babies, at one point, and then screaming at the “jammer” (look, you have to go to a derby to know what it is, but trust me, I SCREAMED at that jammer) the next. It was just icing on the cake when I went to the snack bar to get some burned, snack-bar popcorn to tide me over, and “Legend” was playing on the TV behind the counter. Totally fantastic. Even better? It was the part that heavily features Deep Roy, who we now know more popularly as an Oompa Loompa.

Yeah, it was a great night. Greg and I finished the night off at a Denny’s, where I was craving food to quell my nausea, and I had “the best scrambled eggs EVER” and won a stuffed animal in the crane machine that I named Nicodemus. Luckily, Greg is the more experienced drinker, and he worked me through a near-vomit point with finesse and lots of water.

Simply a perfect way to spend a Saturday. I can’t wait to do this stuff again. And, at 30, I am finally appreciating the art of drinking. Soon I will be filling my pants with oatmeal and handing out spoons to old men. The times, they are about to get “ooky,” I think, largely in part to my new buddy and love interest, Greg. Yay! I am so excited I could pee. Could, and will. It’s just a matter of time and liquid intake. Good times.

As of late, I have begun to think I have a brain disorder. It’s because I just feel like my comprehension is totally out the window when it comes to listening to things. I forget what people tell me on a frequent basis. The good news is, my visual memory is just fine. But it’s becoming abundantly clear that I don’t retain information very well at the moment if it is only given to me audibly. Why is that?
I’m a little worried, to be honest. I have no clue why this happens.

I have always been a visual-memory person. I can always remember a face but never a name (unless that name was written down. I will remember a name if I saw it in writing). I don’t get lost when I drive, because I orient myself visually and while I might not recall street names, I will always know landmarks and stuff. When I used to memorize lines for plays, I would memorize it by page and when things got tough, I would “flip” the pages in my mind to remember where I was. I’ve also been known to memorize lines by actually writing them all out, line for line, in a notebook. I know other people that memorize by making tapes and listening to them over and over, and that really doesn’t work at all for me.

So anyway, the way I recall things has not changed. I just think that I am losing more and more of the audible-memory all the time. Aren’t I a little young to be this forgetful?

The reason I am worried the most is in reference to my boyfriend. Yes, I have one at the moment--and he happens to be the type of guy that is so awesome that you really feel like "is this happening to me-- is this really THIS healthy and good?" He's awesome. I won the "Boyfriend Lottery." I have kept a strict policy in place of not sharing the minute details here, for fear of jinxing it or something; but more so that I don't become one of the people who uses a blog to publicly discuss relationship stuff, because I don’t think that is a good idea for a myriad of reasons. But I am bringing it up now because my memory problems are really amplified in regards to him for some reason.

I find myself forgetting things he has told me about himself and his childhood, even though I know I was actively listening at the time he told me. He will mention a TV show in multiple conversations, and later on when he brings over a DVD of said show I will be like, “Now, what’s this?” And he says he told me about it, and I have this vague, underwater-like memory of something similar, and the problem is I can’t pull the file out of my memory. It’s lost in there, in the muck. This is making me feel terrible. I feel like I am in a type of dream-state most of the day, everyday, because people will say things and I take it in, and then I just drift away without wanting to.

Even worse… this has adversely affected my ability to play the “Name That Movie” quote game. For years now, I have been sucking big time at that game. Back in the day, me and my sister could quote movies for hours and say them verbatim, with voice inflections from the actors and everything. Now I can’t play that game very well because I honestly can not pull up movie quotes in my mind anymore, on demand. It’s so hard. I end quoting just two or three movies, all the time, and with very little originality or obscurity. This, obviously, is NOT cool. I need to be able to play this game; it’s totally important to my social life.

But again, if I see it in writing, if I can write it down myself, I will remember it. In the case of movie quotes, IMDB has become my unofficial cheat sheet. But yes, at least I have a visual memory still, and I can still read well. So at least that’s something.

I really don’t want to seem like a terrible friend, or girlfriend, movie-quoter or even co-worker. I want you all to publicly know that I do care about what you say to me, and I don’t want you to think I am purposely forgetting things you tell me in any way. And, finally: If anyone has any advice on how to pump up your listening-powers and then your listening comprehension, I would totally love you if you can share it and help a sistah out.

Or, if you just want to write and make fun of me for my dumbness, you can do that too. Sometimes public mockery can do wonders for a bitch like me.

There are many ways that a woman is like the sea.
"Like what?" you ask.

"Well," says I, "We are often changing according to winds, currents--be they oceanic or political-- and we often are affected by the moon."

"Nope, not enough to convince me," you say. "I need more."

I take my place at the podium (because in this scenario, a podium would appear seamlessly and without either of us noticing at first) and continue:

"We sometimes have crabs in us,

"We sometimes have whales hanging around, taking up valuable space,

"We both have salt,

"And an occasional fishy odor.

"Both women and the sea lure men to their deaths due to an overly developed sense of romanticism or derring-do,

And the best one is...

"Sometimes we both have natural sea sponges inside us." (Not the famed contraceptive sponge, or spongy discharge-- no! Real, vegan-type sponges! Check it out.)

Just think about it: the long-unexplored, mysterious vagina of the sea has been the keeper of the best tampon known to humankind. Thank goodness the natural products people figured this out and started shoving sponges into their hootchies.

Trish and I were nosin' around a hippie store in Bisbee when we stumbled upon the Sea Sponge Tampon. We spent a good minute or so making faces and shivering at the idea. The biggest problem is not just the fact that you are supposed to take it out, wring it out and wash it every 3 hours-- which must be a lot of fun in the ladies' room at work-- but that it does not appear to be sanitary at all. What sort of creepy crawlies from the ocean's depths could be lurking in that thing? You really want something oceanic sliming around in your vag-- just so that you can do your part and keep your share of tampons and pads out of the landfills?

Come on, now. I admire our spunk and your determination, you swarms of smelly hippies... but this is just dumb. Get with the program, and use regular sanitary products. This is not the year 1345. We have, to reference my other blog today, evolved. And personal sanitation is ONE area you should never revert to the Dark Ages for. Trust me. I don't know much about other things, but this I just intrinsically know, OK?

So I close with this thought:

Sea Sponge Tampons= bad
Evolution= a really good idea for extreme hippies.

Blah, blah. Nothing exciting is happening at the moment. Nope! Only the fact that Asian elephants are beginning to evolve! And what I mean by that is, a gene that enables an elephant to be born without tusks is beginning to show in more live births, that’s all!

I love evolution. I should have one of them Darwin fishies on my car or something, right? Well, I hate those, so I won’t do that. But I do think that it’s just amazing that elephants are evolving so that they will no longer have the one physical characteristic that could bring about their untimely deaths—tusks. Of course, they still need to evolve an elephant that can resist deforestation, but I can be happy just for this one development for the time being.

Kind of sad that James Doohan died. I didn’t get into Star Trek, but I did get into the Ben Stiller Show. I love the episode where Ben goes to talk with lil’ Jimmy Doohan, and while Doohan is talking, Ben has a daydream about the two of them being best friends. In the daydream, they are cooking lobster and laughing; and at one point the good old Scottish engineer beams into the room and starts hittin’ on Ben’s daydream girlfriend. Rest in Peace, dear man. I always kind of liked you, mostly because you were old and you were chubby.

I usually get to work from home two days a week, but until August I have to be here everyday. I am sort of bummed out, but I suppose it will all work out OK because it’s so hot these days. I save on my electric bill the higher I keep the thermostat at home. And even though it’s so cold in the office I have to wear a sweater most of the day, it’s still better than paying for my own A/C to blast when it’s 110 degrees in the shade.

In case you haven’t heard our big news, it is hot in Arizona right now. Imagine that. But it’s apparently worse that usual. About 767 people have died of heat exposure in Phoenix in the past 2 hours. I’m serious man; they are just dropping dead right out on the streets and shit. You have to drive over all the dead, dehydrated bodies to get anywhere these days. I had to shove two out of the way just to open my front gate this morning. The city is trying to help, apparently. Government officials are asking the common people to make donations of water that they can pass out to poor people and people who are apparently too dumb to remember to drink water. Out of respect to the wishes of the Government Officials, I thought about making a sign to hang in front of my house that consists of a big red arrow pointing to my hose, and the words “FREE HOSE WATER FOR BUMS.” I want to do my part to help. I can offer a hose.

Because if there is one thing I want more than anything, it’s transients suckling from my hose! I want to be known in the homeless community as the Caring Lady with the Hose. They can have all the hot, smelly hose water they desire, as long as they stare into my windows at me, talk shit at my dogs and occasionally leave poop on the sidewalk in front of my car. I’d really get that warm, fuzzy, altruistic feeling from that.

While I am giving away hose water, I might as well leave out my coffee table too. The other night I bought a new one at ikea for $30. And it’s bigger and way nicer than my old one, which was a Target special, all chipped up, old and dark-walnutty in color. No matter what I did, or how often I hit that bitch up with Pledge, the damn thing always looked dusty, and it sucked to sit on the floor and eat dinner off of it because it was too tall, too narrow and had a stupid edge on it that made resting your elbows difficult. It had to go. My new one is a glass top one with a stupid metal frame, but the thing is it makes my living room look all “grown up” all the sudden. Even though it was only $30, it brings with it an air of sophistication; a joie de vivre, if you will. At least I have some joie as a result of this new table! Last night, I lit candles and poured wine into actual wine glasses (not Solo cups or tumblers) when my Mom and Greg came over for dinner. In just a matter of hours, I matured about 25 years or something. I think it’s weird that a coffee table could change me this much. Maybe it is a cursed coffee table. Those Euro-stink ikea people have designs on making me act my age. I am suspicious yet oddly fixated by the Enchanted Table.

I have left other goodies outside for transients to have in the past. I’ve noticed that if I leave anything halfway interesting out next to the dumpster, someone will show up and spirit that stuff away within a matter of hours. When my desk broke into pieces a few months ago, I hauled it out next to the dumpster. It was gone by nightfall. I left a mildewed seat cover for a butterfly chair out there, and some poor soul decided it had to go into the shopping cart. I’ve even left tiny windchimes (which were verboten by the HOA) on the ground, delicately hiding them from the road, and they were discovered and removed from the dumpster premises.

What’s kind of odd is the people who drive up to the dumpsters at night in their Mercedes or Lexus, and start going through the trash. I’ve seen it twice so far since I have lived in the condo. A couple of well-dressed white people in a black Mercedes pulled up while I was out walking the dogs one night, and they waited until I was presumably out of sight before they got out of the car and started poking through the trash. From my spying point behind a building, I could see them hauling what looked like a broken lawn chair and some window screens from the dumpster, and putting the found items in the back of their car.

I might take a couple of old dog poops, and place them inside a very nice looking box. Perhaps a hat box? One that is handsomely decoupaged and decorated; and seems to have been mistakenly thrown away? I can plant that out near the dumpster and camp out, waiting to see the person who pulls up to claim that prize. I know that the dog shit route is not all that unique, or even that funny, but I want to do something to fuck with these people, and that’s the best I can come up with at the moment. Trash pickers need some fucking over, just because. That’s why. Because.

Good thing my next door neighbor was already gone this morning when I was out walking Katie. Otherwise, he would have heard me outside his window, saying, "Here, pussycat, pussy pussy pussy!" over and over as we tried to say hello to a cute black cat hiding in the bushes.

I hate paranoia, particularly when I fall victim to it myself.

I am glad that I don’t do drugs much these days, basically because my experiences with it ranged from plain old sleepy-giggles to all-out paranoid “hiding” (I would try to avoid driving even DAYS after I had last taken anything, since my fear of cops was so high; or I would stay down in my bedroom and avoid my mom; or just slink into classes and stay quiet and as inconspicuous as possible because I was convinced “everyone will know what I did”; the list goes on…). But I definitely do NOT need drugs to induce the paranoia. When it hits, it hits hard and without much warning. And usually, the thing I happen to fear is so outlandish and unlikely that it’s comical afterwards. (Most of the time, it’s comical while it’s happening, too, because I do have two separate brains inside my head, and one loves to laugh at the other one. The brain prone to paranoia is a little simpler, a little stupider.)

In recent years, my paranoia had gotten so much better. I only tend to get paranoid after I watch a scary movie (I was paranoid that aliens were on the roof when I got home from seeing “Signs”—I heard a noise on the porch roof, and was sweating like a motherfuck as I went out to check it out, and only saw the cat up on the roof; I was also paranoid that someone was going to kill me in a parking garage once, for no reason other than I started thinking of those stupid e-mail forwards that talk about the people hiding under the cars and slashing your ankles as you go to get into your car—I don’t usually buy into those e-mails, because I don’t walk around thinking like a victim, but for some reason on that day I really thought an escaped felon was hiding under my car waiting to stab my feet and “get me”) or read something freaky that wigs me out. Most of the time, I just confidently go about my business and do my thing, with a type of “go ahead, I dare you to fuck with me” attitude in my head. I don’t worry like I used to. It’s very rare, these days, very rare.

On Saturday though, I suddenly had the feeling that the animal kingdom was out to get me.

Greg and I decided last week that we wanted to take the dogs on a hike up in Oak Creek canyon, near Sedona. The last time we were there, we found a really cool little trail that crossed over water a few times and was mostly in the shade. So on Saturday, we packed up Katie and Hailie, a bunch of water, and set out for our hike.

The problem was, when we got up to the trailhead, it was blocked off and a park ranger was stationed there to keep people from going in. We found out that a lightning strike had started some fires down in the canyon, so we couldn’t go on that hike. We were disappointed, but we did find another trail that was not yet on fire, and we set off under an overcast, darkening sky for a fun, relaxing hike through the red dirt and scrubby trees. I think that, by this point, I had already begun my worry for the day. I knew a storm was coming, and a helicopter was already flying through the area on fire patrol, so I was starting to worry about being out in the open during a lightning storm at high elevations. I think I was a bit jumpy from the get go.

But still, everything was going fine. The dogs were happily leading the way, and Greg and I were babbling like we tend to do about movie quotes and other junk. Then I heard a noise. We were walking through an area that was along a mountain ridge, and rock outcroppings were jutting out above us with all sorts of pine trees and other plants blocking the view straight up from us. But I heard a growl and some scuffling in the plants above us. I froze.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered to Greg. I think I had “Serious Face” on. When Serious Face is on my face, I don’t move a lot and I think my mouth just sort of freezes like a stroke victim.

He stopped and listened. After a minute he said, “No. There’s nothing, just some wind.”

The dogs were panting and waiting to move on down the trail. I listened harder and I only heard some birds and, like Greg mentioned, wind. But I had this feeling that something was stalking us. I knew it: a mountain lion. It was up there on the ridge, quietly moving through the trees and bushes, watching and waiting for a chance to pounce on us. I was thinking, “it will probably go for one of the dogs, oh my god, no way, maybe if we make a bunch of noise we can spook it away, we have to protect the dogs, oh no, oh no…” Seriously. I was convinced we were about to be attacked.

Greg told me if something was there, the dogs would probably sense it, but I was thinking that our dogs were not that smart. After all, they were just panting and stepping’ around with dumb looks on their faces, while I was freaking out and looking up through the trees, scanning for big scary cat-faces. Finally, we were able to move on, but I stayed in that paranoid, wigged-out stage for about 15 minutes longer. Some of my hair blew into my face and I leapt off the trail, thinking a bird (yes, a bird) had fluttered at me. Whenever I thought Greg wasn’t looking, I would look behind us to make sure a mountain lion—or a mountain psycho killer—or a velociraptor—wasn’t following us. I even made a couple of really loud throat-clears and coughs just to make some noise and scare away the attackers.

I don’t know why I do this. But it reminds me of the time when I managed to scare the hell out of a group of kids sleigh riding on the hill over by Kristen’s house. I was in 6th grade, and we were all sleighing down this little hill at the edge of some woods. There was a small abandoned shack of some sort in the woods—it had boarded-up windows and of course, me being who I am, I started to imagine that a killer was in that shack. While the other kids were sleighing happily down the hill and sitting under the trees to re-tie their boot laces, I was thinking about the possible scenario. So this killer is in there, and he has a long shotgun. He wants to kill some kids. He hates kids. Especially sleighriding kids. So he slowly creaks open one of the boards over the window facing the hill where we all are. He is banking on none of us noticing… he slowly and quietly pushes the barrel of the shotgun out through the window, and aims…

At this point, I was convinced I was seeing a shotgun barrel coming out of a newly-opened window. I panicked! I screamed, “Everyone GET DOWN!” Kids all stopped what they were doing. I yelled, “There’s a guy in the shed back there, and he has a GUN pointed at US!”

All around me, kids dropped into the snow. It worked. I totally terrified some innocent, happy little kids. And I felt dumber than I had possibly ever felt until that moment when one of the boys got up and moved closer to the shed. “There’s nothing there!” he hollered back. “It’s boarded up, you asshole!” Sure enough. It was boarded up. And what I thought was an open window was a dark tree trunk, with sunlight hitting it just right to make me think it was an open window. A stick coming out of another tree trunk was the “shotgun”. Kids were really mad at me. Kristen was mad, because she had really gotten scared there for a minute. My overactive imagination and unceasing paranoia that “someone is out to get me” had cost me some credibility and respect on the sleigh riding hill that day. I became The Girl Who Cried Killer-With-a-Shotgun.

That’s all I have for today. I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but your boss is standing right behind you right now! Don't panic... just quickly drop down and curl into a ball.

That's a sketch of a lil' character we like to call Oscar the Crotch. This page contains two views of his delightful smile-- as you can see.
This is a sketch that is always with me, as it is drawn in the small notebook I carry with me in case I get inspiration for a story or something. In this case, I thought of the name Oscar the Crotch, and Trish was kind enough to do some quick sketches of my new character. I have Lengli to thank for inspiring me to post some naughty artwork. Maybe later I will post the other one I have called Tenderizing the Chicken; but I might not, because I just remembered that I made that one up and have never actually drawn it.
(Maybe now I will, though, if the inspiration strikes.)
Meats make the funniest euphemisms. I never get tired of referring to it as Sausage Smuggling.

"The Man with the Screaming Brain". That's the name of the movie a group of us are going to see tonight. And guess who will be there? Bruce Campbell.

This should be fun. I am also considering purchasing his book, "Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way," because he will be signing the books tonight if you have one. (The book costs $25 though, and I am on a tight budget this month due to car registration being due and the San Francisco trip) Either way, I am excited about tonight.

I am also reminded that I haven't seen Evil Dead 2 yet, even though I borrowed it from Greg about two months ago. Sorry, Greg. I guess I am just not as groovy as you are.

And let's face it: neither of us is as cool as Bruce Campbell.
Why do we even bother getting up in the morning, you know? Oh well.
I know the answer: We probably get up because breakfast foods taste yummy!

I just read that they are not going to launch the shuttle today, and to be honest I wish they would decide to scrap the whole thing. I’m not a huge fan of space travel. (And it has nothing to do with the fear of aliens.) I just think it’s so expensive and there are things we need to be investing money into now, here on our own planet, to save the Earth itself for future generations. The cost of sending one shuttle up to orbit around and do silly little experiments while on-board doesn’t really justify itself, in my mind. I know some of those experiments done on board in the past have lead to developments in medicine and other areas of science, but the problem is the damn cost!

I think that a lot of the time, we come off as a society that loves to glorify itself for its technological accomplishments. And that comes at the expense of the people; the flesh-and-blood that’s here, all around us, right now. This morning as I was driving down my street on the way to work, I passed a man on a bicycle, who had pulled over and was standing next to a large garbage can on the side of the road. This guy was fairly well-kept, but as I got closer I could see the telltale sun-dry skin and dirty hair under a threadbare baseball cap. He was waiting patiently while the cars when by, not wanting to go through the trash can while people could see him. I felt incredibly moved by his dignity, and desire to look like he was not about to open up a trash bin and look for anything he could use.

So I am thinking about the people like him when I say perhaps we should re-think the space program, and figure out ways to make better use of the money our country has been so blessed to have at our expense. I'm not anti-exploration or anti-discovery; I am just anti-wasteful spending.

Or perhaps we could look into ways to cut back on the damage we do to the earth itself. I’m sure if money and serious thought was invested into it, we could find a more environmentally-friendly way to raise animals for meat and dairy; something to replace the archaic methods we still use in commercial factory farming. Hell, we could probably get people moving on those projects to find new forms of energy and cut back on harmful toxins used in manufacturing. But of course, that would mean we would have to keep the people in the orange jumpsuits on the ground, and what would THAT say to the ‘forward-thinkers’; the people who think we need space exploration so we can one day find a new place to colonize (and subsequently destroy)? Wouldn’t the rest of the world say, “The United States are pussies, backing down and not launching shuttles anymore… they no longer command our respect, for they obviously have very small penises”? Oh, no! We can’t have that! U-S-A! U-S-A!!
And I hate to say it, for fear of people coming after me in the night: but what about taking care of the actual population of the planet? How about distributing birth control in impoverished areas of the country, and the world? Or taking just a fraction of what we spend to build a fuel tank for a shuttle and re-allocate it into the health care system? How about basic education? Raising minimum wage? We’ve got this dude at the helm of the country right now who seems to love spouting off about family values, yet the system as it is right now does nothing to support the growth and proliferation of the American family. Think about it: people can’t afford to spend time with the kids they have, largely because they need to work long hours at a low salary to afford the basics like housing and healthcare. So kids are growing up without parents that have the time, energy or even the motivation to raise them right. How motivated would you be if it seemed like every step ahead you took, something always seemed to come along to pull you back two financial steps. Stress kills motivation. Stress kills love. However, I think we know stress can lead to people drinking, partaking in mind-numbing entertainment and meaningless sex as a way of coping… and suddenly there are more unwanted kids in the world, with parents who don’t really want them anyway. The list goes on and on.

Nothing I am saying here is new (people have been hollerin' about the same argument since the 1960s, so I have a very outdated case here), and nothing I am going off on is something that hasn’t already been said by liberals and other public figures who are more well-spoken than I am here. But I keep thinking of the way that man by the garbage can acted this morning, and I really wish there was some way we could better spend our money so we are more like the civilized, valiant and responsible country we claim to be to the rest of the world. I only have two cents, and here they are. Now I will clam up and stay silent like the rest of us-- after all, it's not always a good idea to question the system anymore.

So how about this real estate business? Talk about a booming market, this one's about to explode! Yeee-ow! Or should I say Hot Damn! Or Jumpin' Jehosahfat, or However You Spell It? Well, whatever you prefer when it comes to exclamations, I can provide it, so let me know.

I just found out my condo is worth a lot more than I paid for it only 5 months ago. And when I looked at real estate back in NJ, I noticed that condominiums that, for instance, were purchased by my maternal unit for $117K in 1995 are now going for $350K. That's nothing to be alarmed about or anything, oh NO. After all, I am sure we are all making very healthy salaries and can afford to own a home of our own. Sure! You bet.

Anyway, blogging has gotten hard over the past few days, only because I am very preoccupied with other projects. I am working on conceptualizing a new magazine-- I am even going to write up real articles and have Trish lay it out like it was a real magazine--so that we have a strong mock-up that could perhaps be shopped around to publishers. For the meantime, it at least will show I can write for the consumer audience and not just corporate schmucks. And it gives Trish some of that ol' fashioned print layout experience, too.

I'm also about to start painting again. It has been years since I have done a painting, and last night I finally got thumped on the noggin by a lump of inspiration (which was, admittedly, the size of a rather plump raisin). So I have done some sketches to get ready to mess the hell out of some empty canvases that have been hanging around here for months now. This project involves not one but 4 paintings to complete the look I am going for. I'll group them on my wall, and try as hard as I can to appear pretentiously coy about "my work" when you come over and see them sometime. You'll love my coyness; I perfected it in my years of all-girl's boarding school. (I cannot lie-- no boarding school for me; my experience has come from hobbling around campus at Monmouth U with a cane because my sciatica was killing me freshman year; and telling people I was not a gimp, I just had sciatica.)

One time I fell over a baby gate. This happened when I was babysitting, and I had the baby in my arms at the time. It was kind of terrible, actually. I was being dumb, and thought I could step over the baby gate instead of reaching down and opening said gate and walking through the doorway like a normal person would. Instead I had to cut corners. And you know who paid the ultimate price? Well, I wish I could say the baby, but the truth was, my coccyx paid the price. I fell backwards and landed right on my tailbone on a marble floor. I at least held the baby in to my chest as tightly as possible, so I would take the majority of the fall. It worked. Baby was unharmed, but Lisa ended up with a ruptured lumbar disk, which was what caused me to have near-paralyzing sciatica problems for about a year in college.

And that is why kids should never babysit.

The More You Know. (shooting star over the rainbow...)

OK, so I want to blog, and I can't think of much to say. But I did remember there were two more Bisbee shots I really wanted to post here. The first, above is the Old Whore I mentioned last week. This was a waitress in Big Nose Kate's Saloon that zeroed in on me and my sister as we sat down to enjoy some chicken fingers (which were kind of crappy). She walked over and told me that I WAS going to get up on that piano and wear a feather boa before I left. She promised me that.
I have to say, I was honored to have such a purple old-timey whore make such a promise to me. Although I was kind of transfixed by her really inappropriate boobage. Look at it. No, really, stop pretending you aren't looking at it, and just LOOK at it. Man...! She had to be about 70. And with boobs like that, all slammed up n' out for the tourists to ogle. Simply an unnatural, scary thing to witness; yet, hard to look away from. Kind of like the older Duff sister, but without as much manishness.
So, anyway, after the piano-photo was indeed finished (she swooped over to our table in a purple haze of senior citizenness and forced us up and across the restaurant the second after we had paid the bill), Trish wisely snapped a quick candid of me and the Old Whore sharing a tender, "girls-only" moment. I was smiling so much because I know this much: I will get old, yes. I may get a little nutsy and bleach my hair someday, perhaps. Heck, I might even wear a corset, if the mood strikes and the band wants their old-lady front woman to do it for the crowd. But I know this much for sure: I will never be an Old Timey Whore working in a tourist restaurant in Tombstone, Arizona, pushing my old titties up and harassing younger, fresher ladies to sit on top of a piano for a cheap photo op. That will not be my life's projectory-- this I can pretty much guarantee.
Ahhh, sweet relief, thou art mine.

It's blurry in there; I think the air was thick with old-whore stank... this was also in Big Nose Kate's Saloon. The singer was actually good, even though I don't like "the country" much. We had to take this picture because Trish and I appreciate any sign that spells out "Vigilante Justice" in backlit stained glass.
Reminds me of the church.
They ran us outta there.
Most of the feathers came off, but the tar burns still remain to this day.

There's a small, family-owned pizzeria in Phoenix, right around the corner from where my Mom lives, and whenever we go there I feel like I am back on the East Coast. This is due to the fact that the woman who owns the place, Donna, always remembers us when we go in there, and remembers what we want to drink and order. I love that when we go in the door, she yells a hello to us from behind the counter. She always comes over and yacks with us for awhile as we eat. Tonight, it was me and Trish and our Mom, and we told Donna that we are all going to be moving back to NJ soon (because yes, we all are) and she told us about her plans to move up to Overgaard or some other mountain town in the northern part of the state, and open a smaller pizza place there. She can't stand the heat (she's from Philly) and the rising cost of living in the Phoenix area, and the rising crime rate. I'm glad we are not the only ones who are noticing it and want to get the hell out.

The best part of the conversation was when I asked her how old her granddaughter was, and she said she was 4. I remember when that baby was born-- there was a baby picture up by the register. Time goes so fast! As Donna talked about her granddaughter, she got a very palpable energy about her. Her eyes crinkled up as she smiled; she told us about the little girl's recent ballet and tap dance recital. "She was a dancing duck," she said. We ended up having a great conversation about kids' dance recitals; how they look around and stomp their feet and watch the other kids, and put their hands in their mouths and wave to their parents and mess up and then start up again when they remember what to do. "That's the thing about kids that age... they screw up, they look around and catch up and keep going," she said. "Adults? Forget it! We mess up, we go, 'Oh forget THIS!' Kids don't stop, they love putting on the show." I realized as we were leaving that I would really love to go see some 4 year olds stomping around to music on a stage sometime. Maybe what we all need is to go sit in an auditorium and watch some little kids dancing/ stomping around in colorful costumes. I'd love to have this quiet life someday, where my daughter has a dance recital and I give her some flowers tied up with a purple ribbon, and we take her out for ice cream afterwards, and she'd stand in the ice cream store, eating her cone and she'd still have some makeup on her face and maybe some glitter, too. I'd hug the hell out of her and tell her she was a fucking fantastic dancer, and when we get home we can watch the fireflies out back and stay up a little later than usual. (Yes, I will probably be one of those moms who slips on the "fucks" once in awhile; I can kinda tell.)

On a similar note, I found out last night that water balloon fights are the shit. I was over at Greg's house, where we were booking our flights to San Francisco next month (we're gonna bike over the Golden Gate, and that alone has me giddy), and we let the dogs outside in his yard. As we let them in the house, he yelled to me: "Here, catch!" and threw something at me from his place under the porch light. I couldn't see, and reached out to catch, and got covered in warm water. He pulled open a huge plastic bag that was filled with water balloons. After I got the requisite "are these filled with pee?" comments out of the way (the water was damn warm!), we had the best water balloon fight ever. We were totally soaked and giggly. When we went in the house for a drink, we continued making a mess by letting water fall out of our mouths in comedic fashion (he doing the Janeane Garafaolo-at-the-reunion beer-mouth scene from "Romy and Michelle"; me doing an old "You Can't Do That on Television" bit featuring a smiling orphan named Andreas who let black liquid spill out of a sweet, innocent smile on a sketch) and rolling around on the floor with the dogs, where they routining pummeled us as they wrestled. This water balloon fight was especially welcome because I had such a c-r-a-p day at the office and almost quit on the spot earlier in the day.

See, the point of this all is: being giddy, appreciating the kid stuff; that's what goes missing sometimes. And I don't want to miss it anymore. Especially now, since I found someone who loves that stuff, too. Life's not too shitty! And whenever you can say that, hey, I figure go for it.

What's that? You want STANK? STANK, you say? You want me to put some STANK on it? Why, I suppose I can oblige. After all, I am quite wise in the ways of STANKIN'.

Everything's better with a little STANK thrown in!

Yeah, that's a whore, all right. And she sure looks like me.

If you have noticed the following issues on this blog recently, do not be alarmed:

* Terrible spelling errors
* Lazy sentence structure
* Lack of proper paragraph format
* Poor use of adjectives
* Substituting photos for actual text
* Overuse of silly, "made-up" words
* Failure of blog owner to go back in and correct aforementioned mistakes

The reason behind this is currently under investigation by several professionals trained in this type of language misuse. Obviously, a person who has a public blog should be aware of the damage that could be done in the minds of her readers when they view such errors on a regular basis. In the case of this person, we have noted a lack of concern and slight dizziness; these symptoms present in cases of writers who have lost their "edge" as well as in users of the drug Lexapro. We are currently working to determine the pathological origin, if any, of this recent lapse in judgement and talent.

We thank you for your patience and understanding, and appreciate your concern. Our hope is that this blog will soon return to a more presentable form.

Sincerely,
The Voices of Literary Reason, Ph.D.

Trish and I went to Bisbee on Friday. It was a mellow, cool little town southeast of Tucson. The drive was pretty long, but it ended up being worth it because we had a fun time meeting some of the locals, taking pictures, eating pizza in a very run-down Greek Pizzeria, and meeting bead artists. Here's a picture of Trish, on a hill overlooking the town. Immediately after this picture was taken, we took a series of pictures we are referring to the "Puttin' Some Stank On It" pictures. Out of respect to my own ass and my sister's ass, I am refraining from posting them here. Some things are just better shared in private, accompanied by hushed tones. (We also took a lot of very good pictures of an Old Whore in Tombstone, but those deserve their own blog entry really... so stayed tuned for more on that soon.) Here are some more photos from our little road trip:

Once in awhile, you see something that is so cool you want to piss yourself. This wasn't one of those things, but still... it was very "AWWWW!" and "THAT IS SO CUTE!" anyway. Pictured avbove is a Rottweiler, with a cat on its back, with a mouse on the cat's back. A man was walking them around town, asking for donations. When we asked how he did it--trained these animals to just sit on top of one another and ride around-- he answered, "Well, can't we all just get along?" I think the cat was attached to the dog via a leash of some sort, but the mouse was free. To prove it, the man picked the mouse up and showed him to some passing tourists. Honestly, it was a quiet, amazing moment. I dreamed about this scene that night. Even though I didn't piss myself out of the coolness of it, I was still utterly impressed.

This was our hotel room. There was a huge alligator on the bed (stuffed and soft, not really alligatory in the skin, more plushy), and a fireplace and some pictures of old-timey victorian dames on the walls. It was like staying in someone's aunt's house. With a saloon downstairs. It was very cool, although the bed was kind of hard to sleep on. All that brass! Cripes! There is only so much brass we bitches can take.

This is the view of the town. And some random telephone wires. I thought that I would be more impressed with those phone wires, but today they don't look as awesome as they did the day I made Trish take this picture, and "zoom in on the fucking, wires, OK?"

We took a hike and saw this Gold Man, who appears to be some sort of representative of the copper miners in the area, back in the days of Yore. Anyway, he is also pointing to his package, too.

It could be because I am extra tired from a long day of driving in 95+ degree heat, compounded by the fact that it is currently almost 2 in the morning, but I am scared! Scared of aliens! Yeah, it's true, I said it! I just saw War of the Worlds. Say what you will about the script, the presence of stupid Cruise, whatever... but for me, aliens are the scariest thing EVER. I mean it. I know they are gonna come and get us. I get more scared of alien movies than slasher movies or movies with ghosts or weirdness or even possessed little girls. So now that I am home alone at the end of the night, I am sort of not-wanting to lay down and go to bed and listen for the sounds of the tripods walking around out there... I am an idiot. There was a real reason I HAD to do the sound effects for War of the Worlds when the theater did it back in 2001; I just had to see how well I could re-create the horror I always imagined in my head, since I read a segmet of the story in a Reader's Digest at the dentist office in elementary school, and then saw the movie and read the book and had nightmares and all that-- I know this horror well. Am I weird? I'm thinking, yes; but then again, "weird" might equal "tastes bad in the flesh" to the aliens! Here's hoping, anyway. ALIENS! (Shudder!)