Everything I Like Causes Cancer

This weekend was a ball. Thank you for thinking positively with me and helping me get there - it was bitter cold and the wind was straight out of a mess-with-your-head thriller movie but none of that matters when you're holed up in a beautiful lake house with your best friends.

I have pictures to share and stories to tell but didn't get home until 1 am last night. On top of having only gotten an hour or two of sleep all weekend and battling arctic conditions to get home, I found that my little cat, Skylar, had been locked in my bedroom for the entire weekend and there was a bit of a mess to clean up before I could go to bed. Poor little fluff was still REALLY upset this morning, pacing and crying and not letting me out of his sight.

So yeah, exhausted. If I hadn't had a deadline to meet at work today I probably would have taken the day off. If I nod off, will you throw a cover on me? Thanks.

WOUNDED DEER ATTACKS HUNTER WHO SHOT HIM

ASSOCIATED PRESS
12/01/2008

SEDALIA, Mo. --- A Sedalia hunter bagged a big buck on the second day of firearms season, but the kill caused him a lot of pain. Forty-nine-year-old Randy Goodman said he thought two well-placed shots with his .270-caliber rifle had killed the buck on Nov. 19. Goodman said the deer looked dead to him, but seconds later the nine-point, 240-pound animal came to life.

The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called "15 seconds of hell." The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots. Soon Goodman started feeling dizzy and noticed his vest was soaked in blood. So he reached his truck and drove to a hospital, where he received seven staples in his scalp and was treated for a slight concussion and bruises.

Just a couple thought bubbles from yesterday:

1. HOLY CRAP!!!!! WE GOT IT RIGHT! WE DID IT! (Maybe now Katrocket and Poobomber will stop threatening us.)

2. On top of getting to choose the next leader of the free world yesterday, I got to choose between a paper and electronic ballot. I went old school. You should have seen me bent over my paper studiously coloring those circles. I was so careful; I think I even had the tip of my tongue sticking out while I was coloring!

3. In Missouri we were asked to vote on whether or not English should be the official language of Missouri. I voted no; it seems like a prelude to the Final Solution to me. It passed by almost 90%. Stupid haters.

4. Every year after I vote I say I’m going to volunteer for the next election. Remind me of this in 2011.

5. When I was done voting I wasn’t offered an “I VOTED!” sticker so I went back and pestered the polling alley staff. I told them that it was the best part of voting. They laughed at me.

6. I inadvertently created a new phrase this week - “polling alley” - and I’m sticking with it because I think it’s funny. Feel free to help me get this one off the ground by peppering it into your watercooler conversations today.

7. When I voted in the primary this spring I went after work. I arrived at the polling alley with only 10 minutes to spare. I really had to pee when I got there but I was afraid to go before I got in line because I just knew they'd close and I'd miss my chance to vote and I'd be stuck in the bathroom all night. It was rough and I danced the "I gotta pee shuffle" through the whole process. This story is known throughout my office. Yesterday a coworker sent me an email from her husband - one of his coworkers shit his pants in line at the polling alley because he didn't want to lose his place. He wins.

8. And since I can’t bitch about this enough to suit Suze of Suzel’s Sass, I swear to God and all that is supposedly holy that Daylight Saving Time has turned me into a 94 year old woman. Despite my best efforts I fall asleep at 8 pm and am wide awake at 5 am, every day. I was able to keep my eyes open until 10:30 last night because it was a delight to hear all the talking heads eviscerating the Republican campaign, but it was a struggle and I still woke up at 5 am today. I don’t care what the rest of you I-love-winter freakazoids say, Daylight Saving Time is harmful to my street cred and is stooopid.

. . . I forgot how tasty 100 Grand bars are!

The Stink In Farts Controls Blood Pressure.

This blog is suffering from pinworms, fibromyalgia, a lack of enthusiasm, and heartburn and needs to take a break.  Outside not doing any of her chores this weekend, the author of this blog is perfectly healthy so please don't worry.  This blog will be back when the pinworms have passed and its enthusiasm meter again reads, "Keen."

I spent all day today redoing this blog. I was supposed to be doing laundry and cutting grass and cleaning house, but this was more fun. Well, at times it wasn't fun at all, like when I lost all my settings and had to start from scratch. That sucked.

I wanted, first and foremost, to get away from the boring standard blogger templates. I was actually looking for something less busy and more zen, but had little luck getting the ones I liked to work. Something about parsing and XML. It was Greek to me so I used the one I liked best that worked.

Do you like it?

I had no internets at home this morning and when I got to the office my beta fish, Michael K. Brown, was dead. Yup, it's a Monday.



Coming soon . . . results from Friday afternoon's bowling outing, Leaping Lemurs!, and diving back into the shallow end of the dating pool.

Can a couple of you come over and clean my house? I'm too hungover to do it but it's kind of bugging me.

KTHXBAI.

I worked for an hour last night on a piece that just simply went to shit when I put it on paper and I was left with nothing to give you this morning. I hate to leave you empty-handed so here's a funny story about a turd that I just read in the news:

GENEVA (AFP) - A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

I also went out and found these other turd related items that I hope will entertain you:

• Shape your turds into amazing designs!
• The Poop Report: All the poop that's fit to print
• A recipe for Atomic Buffalo Turds: be the first on your block to serve them!
• And finally, this adorable little Sonic the Hedgehog video:
  

This video is so funny that beer actually comes out someone's nose. And I don't mean that metaphorical tripe you see all day, it's real beer out of a real nose.

Special thanks to Heathybear for sending this to me. It made my Monday.

I have things to tell you without the inclination to tie them all together in a coherent way so you get more bullets today. Deal with it.

• Girls, girls, girls. I had a nice, quiet weekend centered around food and spending time with the girls. Friday night some gals and I were slated to attend the Maplewood art fair but a thunderstorm and laziness led us up the street for dinner instead. It was a good time that included wigs, hats, drinks, bad mussels and bread pudding. Saturday was quite similar in that we all met at a friend's house for Dinner Club. Dinner Club is a once-a-month event to which I don't actually belong but was invited this month as the regulars were all busy. Our lovely host served Mar-a-Lago turkey burgers and we all brought a dish. I tried a recipe for potato salad called Salt and Vinegar Potato Salad. I was skeptical while I was making it but it was delish.
  
  
• Much of the rest of time this weekend was spent cleaning house. My God, did this house need cleaned. I'm still reeling a little that long-time reader and new friend Amy was in the neighborhood and popped in late Saturday morning. First, I was still in my pajamas. Second, all I had accomplished so far was making piles and preliminary demolition for a weekend of cleaning. I quickly put on clothes, brushed my teeth and made my bed after she called, but this place was in no condition for visitors. Add to that Skyler was behaving terribly, acting like he was going to pee on the guest bed. This household, I'm sure, made quite an impression. (Hi, Amy! You are welcome to re-pop-in anytime now, the house is clean! Altho, I do still need to cut the grass and weed the garden beds, so maybe after Weds. would be best.)
  
  
• I watched 10,000 B.C. last night. I enjoyed it but only because I wasn't interested in any sort of accuracy or realism, I just wanted to see animated prehistoric creatures. Anyone looking for realism would be sadly disappointed: woolly mammoths were being used as pack animals to build pyramids, there were paper maps, men rode horses, the list goes on and on. If you can watch without being bothered by the anachronisms, it was a nice prehistoric love story. I agree with the critic who called it "sporadically entertaining."
  
  
• On Saturday I spent an hour or more cleaning my office and shredding old documents. I felt like an Enron executive, happily jamming to The Cure and shredding, shredding, shredding. Next weekend I think I'll complete my conversion to Republican and shoot one of my good friends in the face.
  
  
• On Big Brother last night they gave away a green 1969 Camaro which made me think of this one that my mom had:

• I have thus far failed to announce that Blog Share III is happening this week, on Wednesday. I think it's too late to sign up, but be sure to come by and troll around the list of participants. For those of you who don't know what Blog Share is and are too lazy to click on the above link, it's a day where each of us writes a post about a topic that we wouldn't normally discuss on our own site but it's ok because it gets posted on someone else's site. For example, the post that will be published here on Wednesday will not be written by me and my entry will be up on someone else's site, thereby lending anonymity to this very public forum. Cool, no? I've participated in all of them and it's always fun.

• Dudes, I'm so glad it's Friday. There's no way I can fake my way through any more of this week. I've had a sinus infection and been on antibiotics since Monday. I've spent my entire week wondering why or when I put my head into a vice, wishing I could use a screwdriver to scratch that infernal itch on my eardrum, and never knowing just when the antibiotic is going to send me running to the can with the green skitters again. I have an appointment with my ear-nose-throat specialist today to find out why my tonsils are still swollen and my head still hurts. I'm hoping it isn't meningitis. Pray for me.
  
  
• I went back over to Heathybear's new apartment last night to do some more painting. When I was there on Sunday she and I were able to finish the dining and living rooms. We put taupe on the walls. It came out purple. Not kidding. There was no getting around it, the color turned purple on the walls. So last night she took the paint back to Home Depot. They wouldn't remix a new gallon but the gal added some black tint. Didn't help at all. So we decided to fix it ourselves and started adding other colors to the "taupe." We started with a quarter of a can of yellow/cream, mixed it in, put it on the wall, and waited to see what would happen. Initially you could tell a difference. We liked it and were hopeful. In under 5 minutes the new color disappeared into the purple. So we added a quarter can of green. Still purple. We added a quarter can of white. Hopeful, hopeful, hopeful . . . still freaking purple! So then we added a shit ton of chocolate brown and just started painting. At this point we didn't care if it was different, we were putting it on the walls. And sadly, we couldn't even tell where we'd been. Well, except for the trail of spills I was obnoxiously leaving as I went around the room. It was still purple. I got the bright idea of putting some on a wall in a different room. I marched into the bathroom, slapped some on the wall and about fell over. Taupe, a rich, beautiful taupe. Can you believe it? All that work and it's the lighting in the room that makes that TAUPE paint look purple. The gal at the paint store suggested Heathybear use yellow lights in the room. We made fun of her right up until the moment we painted the bathroom taupe. The lighting is so funky in that apartment that all of the colors look different at different times and from different angles. It's a bit spooky. We decided that a little old gay man lived there all of his adult life, cheerless in his metaphorical closet, always pining for flamboyant wall color but choosing taupe so as not to give away his secret, and now he's messing with Heathybear from the beyond in his quest for a colorful apartment.
  
  
• The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch is FINALLY back from her 3 week hiatus. Hi, Lady! We missed you! She commented on yesterday's post and said she was sorry to have missed the 20 Questions series. Since she was one of the inquisitors I went back and made a "20 Questions" category in the "Concierge" section of the sidebar. So, Lady? Go! Go now and read them! I answered your question first.
  
  
• Don't forget Big Brother 10 starts Sunday night. I am more than ready for some entertaining TV. I'm thinking about reinstating Big Brother Bullets. Anyone have an opinion?

Ugh. I got home at 5 this morning, a good friend of my friends is "home" from LA and there was much backyard guitar playing and singing along to be done last night before he goes back. Plus, despite my nocturnal timeshift, I've gotten myself up and moving in order to meet my friend Heathybear in about any hour to help clean and paint her new apartment.

What does this mean for you? It means I'll be back later to finish the questions. Sometime before midnight, I promise.

It's hard to believe that I've been occupying this corner of The Internets for almost a year. I never thought I'd have enough to say, but here I am.

Over the past 11.5 months I've told some funny stories and made fun of myself. I've gotten up to 39 on my list of 100 Things About Me. I've talked about, and showed you pictures of, my house, my cats, my garden, my family, my friends. I've shared. A lot.

And so have you. You came by and read and commented. I felt the love. We've really gotten to know each other, haven't we?

But it dawned on me last night that maybe you need to know more. Maybe you want to know how a person can be so damn happy all the time. (Lots of liquor.) Maybe you want to know what kind of underwear I like. (None, unless I'm wearing a skirt.) Maybe you want to know why I'm jamming a sharp object up my nose in this picture. (Again with the liquor.)

There are things I haven't talked about here but it's not for any particular reason, and if I can tell you about shitting my pants I can tell you just about anything.

So what do you want to know?

Today is International Disturbed People's Day.

I don't care if you lick windows, take the special bus, or occasionally pee on yourself - you hang in there sunshine, you're special.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Damn.

I had big plans to put something innocuous up here and get you guys with an awesome Rickroll. (Thanks for the idea, Othurme.)

Unfortunately, I put my phone on "silent" during the play last night, forgot to fix it and overslept, by a lot.

Plus, when I woke up I was having an extraordinarily sad dream and I'm still feeling the emotion. I'm all icky with the sad. I hope this does not portend a bad day.

Sorry guys. I'll get you when you least expect it.

Tonight on My Name Is Earl Billie said, "There's nothing like a crap in the shower to make you feel better."

Huh? Don't you think that's really weird since just this afternoon we were talking about peeing and pooping in the shower? I do.



I know! We should talk about organ-grinder monkeys fighting intergalactic wars with nun chucks and see if it shows up in a sitcom tomorrow night! I'll go first: I think the clatter created by an army of organ-grinder monkeys fighting intergalactic wars with nun chucks would be overwhelming and I bet they'd win.

Your turn. I bet creativity increases our odds! Make it good!

If you've been around here anytime in the last week you might have noticed, but not necessarily taken, the poll where I asked y'all if you peed in the shower. Look left. Yeah, that one.

Well, a total of thirteen people participated. One of those was me. I know for a fact there a lot more of you who come here everyday. I have a sitemeter and I check it daily. Yesterday I had 44 visitors. So, really? Only 12 of you could be bothered to click and vote? Really? Tsk. Tsk. Color me disappointed.

Anyway, of the 12 of you who participated (Thanks!), 11 admitted they pee in the shower. Good for you! I was one of the yes votes, too. I admit it. When the hot water hits my legs, it's all over. I simply cannot hold it and I don't want to get back out in the cold air. More than that, though, I really don't want to get the floor and toilet seat all wet. I do think it's kind of gross but I do it anyway because I'm lazier than I am fastidious. I hope knowing this about me doesn't change the delicate-flower image you had of me.

I googled the topic "peeing in the shower" and was pleasantly suprised by how little p$rn came up at the top of the results. I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of women who stand proud every morning, united in the freedom to pee standing up, without wiping, and with no concern for where it's going.

These women had a lot to say about the subject. One said it was probably the most environmentally conscious thing she did. Another boldly asserted that peeing in the shower is completely establishment and that she does it more often than she flosses. (Me, too!) Another described it as a Pavlovian repsonse to warm water, which I imagine makes for a really messy and awkward pedicure.

My hands-down favorite repsonse, however, was from the woman who felt the need to explain that when she has to take a dump, she gets out. Sister, I think that's an appropriate place to draw the line.

I am writing this post from Room 524 of The Mosser Hotel (lobby pictured left) in San Francisco. I'll be here just under 24 hours and working, so don't be jealous.

I've never stayed in this hotel before. My old stand-bys were booked so I had to branch out and find another cute little boutique hotel with an interesting past. I did a good job. This one was built in 1913 and renovated in 2003 by Charles Mosser, a philanthropist who supports reforestation and literacy, among other things. Accordingly, I feel pretty good about being here.

Speaking of being here, can you believe I'm in San Francisco and NOT getting to meet Othurme and Jestertunes? Seems they'd rather go see KT Tunstall than me. Whatever. They probably wouldn't have liked me anyway - my feet stink. I've been sitting here for about 20 minutes checking email, etc. and wondering all the while why such a nice hotel room smells like vinegar. A quick sniff of my pigs confirmed it isn't the room. Hey! Don't judge! I've been walking on them all day! In airports!

Sheesh. This is a really bad post. I'm going to go wash my feet and watch TV. And by that I mean sit here marinating in my own stench and watch TV.