200-word movie summary: A History of Violence

Two guys kill a bunch of people who work at a nasty motel. One of the guys kills a whimpering little girl because we're all to understand that yes, these two gentlemen are actually quite, quite bad. Then we see Viggo Mortensen (unfortunately not Aragorn in this movie) playing Tom Stall in about 30 minutes of exposition all of which are to make us see that he's a regular guy with a cute family who runs a diner! What a fabulous life full of unicorns and moonbeams, la la la! There is one scene where his wife (Maria Bello) puts on a naughty cheerleader outfit and he totally chows down on her poodle. Hee! Then the two Bad Guys from the beginning come and try to rob the diner and Viggo calmly smites them even though one of them stabs him in the foot. Gah! Viggo becomes a hometown hero and I stopped watching it there because it was so damn boring, and anyway we all have figured out by now that he's really some sort of retired Bad Guy and some other Bad Guys are out to get him and I'm sure at the end Viggo kills 'em all.

Wordsmiths Challenge for January: Crystal Ball

Wordsmiths Unlimited is at it again, and this month we had this challenge: We are going to write in a comedic style: goofy, stupid, and completely un-serious. Think Saturday morning cartoons. Your protagonist is a superhero of your making... The twist is that his or her superpowers are as useless as a sack of wet leaves. They are completely ineffectual, but he or she doesn't know it.

I'll be the first to admit that I had a hard time with this one, and I probably skirted the rules a bit because it's really difficult to be funny on purpose, especially when you're writing. But here it is:


Crystal Ball

Honey sat under a sign that declared "Madame Zannza SEES all!!!!! and KNOWS all!!!!" in flaking gold sparkles and waited for her shift to end.

The turban that she had fashioned out of the sleeve of a bathrobe and a handful of her grandmother's clip-on pearl earrings was itchy, and the harem pants she secretly thought looked cute actually made her look like the illegitimate child of MC Hammer and Barbara Eden. She scratched at her head and wondered for the fourteenth time that day why whoever painted her sign had such a hard-on for exclamation points and poor grammar when a couple approached her booth.

The man stepped up and slid a ten-dollar bill next to her crystal ball, which up until a week ago had been a snow globe with its guts removed. "So, tell me, do you really see and know all?" he said, turning to wink at the woman he was with.

Honey made eye contact with the man, then focused on a point between his bushy eyebrows and let her mind float away:

His name was Harold, he was 39, a security guard at the local piñata factory, and subscribed to National Geographic every year because the pictures of the naked natives got him off like no amount of hard-core girl-on-girl porn ever could.

The woman Harold was with was named Geraldine. She was married and poor Harold didn't know it. While shoplifting fruit-flavored Chiclets and a bag of Funyuns at the local gas station two weeks ago, she had heard him talk to the cashier about his job, and she mistakenly thought that a 'security guard' was one of those guys who sat in armored trucks full of money. Suddenly Geraldine saw in Harold the bright, shining pathway to her life's biggest ambitions: to dump her one-eyed husband, get the biggest, fakest breast implants her spine could support and to live in a grass hut on a beach in Paraguay. Convincing Harold to be her boyfriend had been easy; she figured making him participate in a heist and run off to South America with her couldn't be much harder.

"Well, Madame Zannza?" Harold asked Honey, unaware that his future held for him a short stint in jail after robbing vending machines and a girlfriend who would use the change he stole to go to Tijuana, get a lop-sided boob job, convert to Zoroastrianism after seeing the face of God in the infected incision under her left breast, and write a best-selling book about her experience.

"One eighty-seven."

"Nope, the scale says 221 pounds. I win!" said Harold, and laughed but Honey had already turned to get the stuffed purple tiger that she knew Geraldine wanted.

Getting to know your Sea Hag

In one word...answer

1. Where is your cell phone? pocket
2. Your spouse? non-existent
3. Your hair? static-y
4. Your mother? away
5. Your father? travelin'
6. Your favorite thing? creating
7. Your dream last night? forgettable
8. Your favorite drink? caffeine
9. Your dream car? Pt Cruiser
10. The room you are in? office
11. Your ex? smote
12. Your fear? loneliness
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? orbiting

14. Who did you hang out with last night? Michael
15. What you're not? greasy
16. Muffins? carrot-zucchini
17. One of your wish list items? house
18. Your dinner tonight? spaghetti
19. The last thing you ate? spaghetti
20. What are you wearing? uniform

21. Your tv? off
22. Your pet? imaginary
23. Your computer? sleeping
24. Your life? fluffy

25. Your mood? tired
26. Your holidays? drugged
27. What are you thinking about right now? beer
28. Your car? parked
29. Your work? sucks!!!!!
30. Summer? please
31. Your relationship status? juicy
32. Your dream vacation? Moon

33. When is the last time you laughed? Yesterday
34. Last time you cried? October

35. School? barf

This blog's for you

I'd like to dedicate this blog entry to rabid Sea Hag fan Jonathan.

First, let me tell all you ladies (and a few gentlemen) that he is a total, total stud. Seriously. He once dumped a glass of water in my lap and I didn't try to gut him simply because he was just so incredibly rad.

He accompanied me to Dragon*Con and kept me safe from the great unwashed masses of nerds, geeks, dweebs, dorks and psychos. Also, he knew the dude who did Space Ghost's voice and that was pretty impressive. And best of all, he introduced me to the tasty wonder that is Ruby Red vodka. Truly my life (and my liver) is enriched by knowing him.

And so, I present him this haiku:

A haiku for you

Because 'See you next Tuesday'

Is now in my act.

(snap snap snap)

200-word movie summary: Purple Rain

Beautiful-in-a-trashy-80's-way Apollonia runs away from New Orleans to um...Minneapolis. She has a head full of dreams and a suitcase full of leather and shoulder pads. And lo, a porn star was born. But this is a movie, so instead she is a 'singer' and runs into Prince and Morris Day and one of them lets her sing in lingerie. I don't remember which one. It isn't important. Prince and The Revolution sing at a club and we are all reminded that he did some awesome stuff in the 80s. Wow, is that what it sounds like when doves cry? Prince still lives at home with his abusive Lawrence Fishburne-esqe father and mother. I guess those purple crushed velvet jackets are too expensive for him to afford rent in Minneapolis. All this apparently makes Prince angry and moody and there are close-ups of him being pensive and brooding, twofold. This isn't important either. Prince is a terrible actor. Apollonia and Prince fall in love and swap earrings with each other. Awww. A few members of The Revolution and the dude who owns the club get pissy about some crap no one cares about. The movie ends with his magical jizzing guitar.

I Hate Everyone: The Return of Man Boobs

There are ex-boyfriends, and there are ex-boyfriends.

There are those relationships that, for whatever reason, just didn't work out, but all those involved were wearing their I'm An Adult hats and the break-up held a minimum amount of tears and gnashing of teeth. Sure, it robbed you of a good, gory story to tell your friends over some microbrew in Decatur, but it saved you hundreds of dollars in therapy bills and the hassle of having to change all the locks at your house. So because of this, you can still have an occasional non-awkward phone conversation with this ex-boyfriend, hang out sometimes or booty-call him and it's all good. Hell, there's some guys I've dated who I've wound up have a better relationship with after we'd broken up.

And then, there are those relationships that, when they ended, the resulting break-up caused a huge, terrible fireball that demolished everyone and everything in a three-mile radius. These are the ex-boyfriends of such epic douchebag proportions that they become legendary and your friends tell you that should go on Jerry Springer with your tale of woe.

So when you unexpectedly get a phone call from one of your exes who falls in the latter category, you know that nothing good can come from it.

A few days ago my ex, who is commonly referred to as 'Man Boobs' (seriously, he had some great big titties), called me up, and when his name appeared on my caller ID I think it scared about four years off my life. See, we didn't have any children, friends, pets, property, anything in common together anymore, and also the last time I spoke to him I told him what an oxygen thief and general waste of skin he was, so I was totally expecting something along the lines of either I tested positive for TB so you might want to go to the doctor or I am still in love with you and I made a terrible mistake.

Like I said, nothing good could come of this, but I didn't want to be a pussy so I answered the call, and he asked if I had any of his tax stuff from last year because he was working on his financial aid paperwork for school.

"I'll look for it when I get home," I told him, and we hung up.

It took me a good 20 minutes for my pulse to come back down from the triple digits, but when it did I realized what had just happened: He'd asked me for a favor.

After being broken up for almost a year and not even speaking for five months, he wanted a favor. After mooching off of me for months after he got fired from his job a week after my stepmother died he wanted a favor. After moving out of our apartment his family came over and helped him trash the place, destroy my family pictures and stole lightbulbs he wanted a favor. After calling me up a day before my birthday when he knew I was having emotional problems to brag about banging his new girlfriend he wanted a favor.

Now, I admit I wasn't a perfect girlfriend or anything but... he stole lightbulbs!!! Lightbulbs I bought! And not even the nice ones, just the cheap-o 60-watt ones!

Anyway, I thought I was going to give myself a stroke after realizing what had just occurred, but then it came to me: by asking for a favor, he's put me in a position of power.

Dumbass.

So, Man Boobs, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourself. Or your skag of a girlfriend, unless you accidentally smothered her to death in your cleveage. I am pretty sure I don't have your tax stuff anyway, but if I do come across it rest assured that it will be meeting with an industrial paper shredder soon. I don't recall there being a section of law stating that I have to give a damn about douchebag ex-boyfriends or their financial aid for school. To be honest, I wish all of my exes well on their future endeavors and harbor no ill will, but if I found out you were living in a gutter eating peanut shells and wet cigarette butts I'd be pretty damn delighted.

December Wordsmiths Challenge 2: The Gift

The sexy beasts over at Wordsmiths Unlimited have unleashed a second writing challenge this year because we've all been good (or is that naughty?) little boys and girls. This time, we have the picture below and a default beginning, and we are tasked to write an additional 500 words. I put the default in red italics.




The Gift

A loud rapping at the door awoke me from a deep dreamy sleep.

It was early, too early to be awake, and certainly too early to be out in the streets pounding on doors. I thought that there must be some emergency in town and ran to the door to find out whatever news there was from whoever was there. Much to my surprise, there was no-one at the door ready to identify themselves and their message, and yet a package with my name on it had been left at the door.

It was a most curious circumstance, and yet I saw no real harm in it, because secret gift giving was the hallmark of the holiday season. I myself had delivered many a gift in that manner over the years. The package was heavier than it should have been from its size, and once I had it indoors I eagerly opened it to find out what it was and who had sent it.

Alas, there was no identification of the giver, and more's the pity because what was inside was a most remarkable carved wood box, worked with figures of animals and dragons all over, in a magnificent shade of red. Whoever sent it to me must have been a prankster, though, because I could see no way into the box, no clasp or lock announced itself, no hinge or platen presented itself as a means to the inside. I was locked out, and most frustrated by this unfortunate turn of events.

"So, what do you think so far?"

I had read my husband's story while I waited for the curling iron to heat up. He was in the doorway of the bathroom, perched on the edge of his wheelchair, awaiting my judgment.

I shrugged. "It reminds me of 'The Raven' a little."

"Poe? Yeah, I can kinda see that. That's good, right?"

"I guess," I dropped my copy of the story in the sink, and the corner of it started to absorb the tepid water pooled at the bottom. I wrapped strands of my hair around the barrel of the curling iron, heard the faint hiss of it being gently scorched.

"Do you want some lunch before you go?"

"No."

"I can make you a sandwich, Rachel brought some roast beef over- "

"I'm eating at the Christmas party."

"Oh. Oh yeah. Do you think you'll be home early tonight?"

Ten months ago a drunk driver neatly divided our lives into two categories: before the accident and since the accident. We bought this house before the accident, but since the accident it's become a maze of ramps and gauze and bedpans and metal railings bolted to every vertical surface; our tables and kitchen counters had been lowered. I stumbled through the house, banging against modified furniture and my husband showing me his latest project: model airplanes, crossword puzzles, watercolors of me camped out in the guest bathroom, the one place that we hadn't changed. Before the accident I might have used a smear of lip gloss and called it a day, now I have an hour-long beauty ritual.

The red box that he based his story on sat in his lap and every so often he'd rub the pad of his thumb against its carved enameled surface. He'd seen it on the clearance table at Pier One a few weeks ago and bought it, saying that it reminded him of me, and I had cringed inwardly at the pitiful, awkward metaphor: beautiful to hold and fused closed for good.

"I don't blame you if you don't want to come back."

I looked down at him, saw that his hairline was receding, his jawline was softer now, and for the first time since the accident I didn't feel pity.

Somewhere in the city there was a young couple wrapping presents for their newborn child, there were cups of thick egg nog enjoyed by handsome men who were able to place the angel on the top of the Christmas tree, there was a man in a dark car waiting down the block for me. In this house, since the accident, there was a small Frasier Fur that was decorated only along the bottom half and a man who couldn't fit his wheelchair through the bathroom door so he could touch his wife. I put my lipstick down and sat in his lap, though he couldn't feel it.

"So this story you're writing..."

"Yes?"

"Who left the mystery box? And what's in it?"

Christmas for the Nooch

This story is my Christmas present to Noochie, who not only introduced me to 'September' by Ryan Adams but also the idea for making it into a story. I've included the lyrics below in purple italics. Everyone have a kick-ass religious observance of your choosing!

Laura lays on the foot of the bed
Mimics a noose with the telephone cord
Doctor's on the phone
And she hangs up and says
"I ain't never gonna see the winter again"
Then, I don't know how, but she smiles

September, September
September, September

They carved your name into a stone

and then they put it in the ground,
I run my fingers through the grooves
When no one's around
Drink till I am sick and I talk to myself

in the dog days of the summer
And I feel you coming but I don't know how

September, September
September, September

Daniel waited for the coffee to brew while Laura planned her funeral.

He rinsed out Laura's only coffee mug, which was shaped like a snowman's head and chipped along the rim so he had to be careful where he put his lips. She was out of milk, and for a brief second Daniel considered whether sour cream would be an acceptable substitute. He dumped an inch of sugar in the bottom of the cup, topped off the rest with fresh coffee and gulped it down quickly, scorching his tongue and throat. He washed the mug again, refilled it and brought it into Laura's room.

She had been up all night scratching ideas for her funeral across slick, blank sheets of paper, and when the sun came up she started to frantically make phone calls to funeral homes, cemeteries, crematoriums, her finger blazing a trail through the Yellow Pages in her lap. She tucked the receiver under her chin and took the cup of coffee from Daniel with one hand, then set it on the night side table amidst the avalanche of empty Diet Coke cans.

In his brief absence to the kitchen Laura had sprawled with her notebooks and pens across the blankets. Daniel stood by the side of the bed for a minute, waiting for her to move over so he could lay back down, watching the pale steam from the untouched cup of coffee curl into the air. After a minute he realized that she wasn't going to let him back into bed, so he slipped into his jeans and t-shirt and sat on the floor.

While he waited for her, he rested his head against the IKEA bookshelf they had bought earlier that year. Laura had refused his help putting it together, and it tilted to the left very slightly. The slanted shelves were stuffed with books from aborted projects: knitting, drawing, ballroom dancing. Textbooks from the accounting class Laura took for a few weeks at Gwinnett Tech. Dozens of literary classics she'd meant to read: A Farewell To Arms, Catcher In The Rye. The Grapes of Wrath, which he'd never read, but it made him think of singing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' in third grade chorus.

Laura had been in the hospital the previous week while her doctor tested out theories for her sudden weight loss, her overall brittleness. She had thrived on the attention from her coworkers who came by with flowers and balloons, the doctors and nurses who would pat her knee while they took her temperature and drew blood, and Daniel, who camped out by her bed in a stiff armchair and gamely watched 'The Price Is Right' with her every day.

"Bet a dollar! A dollar, stupid!" she'd yell at the mounted TV, and then slip into a coughing spasm when a nurse would poke her head in the room.

She'd talked them into letting her stay an extra two days, and then they released her from the hospital yesterday. Daniel had relished signing her out; he liked the official sense of responsibility it gave him over her care and comfort. The nurse had told him to put fiancé as his relationship to patient on the formal paperwork. "We can't discharge her to anyone but family," she'd said with a wink.

As he drove her home, she fiddled with the radio and started rummaging through his glove compartment. "What if I had died in the hospital?" she asked, Jiffy Lube receipts in her fist.

Daniel's eyes darted over to the passenger's seat, saw Laura pull out a map of Georgia like an accordion. The thought of her death had sent him on impromptu runs to the gift shop or the bathroom while she was in the hospital; he hadn't wanted her to see him crying, making frantic, breathless, incoherent prayers to whichever deity would answer him.

"I'd be sad and depressed. I'd cry. I'd miss you every day. Are you looking for something in there?"

"No, I'm just being nosy. You need to clean this out. Is that all you would have done?" she asked, and they shared a sudden, simultaneous vision of Daniel sleeping on the dirt of her fresh grave, drunk on Wild Turkey, tracing her name on the cold granite marker with blind fingertips, and they both felt comforted.

The September morning was unseasonably chilly and the bare floorboards had made Daniel's ass numb. The early fall light shone golden through the grubby blinds, making the dust motes sparkle around Laura while she talked on the phone, picked at the chipped dark polish on her toenails, sketched a crane in flight in the lower corner of the phone book. She fidgeted and looked everywhere around the room except at Daniel.

"So, is there a discount if I'm not embalmed? Oh. Yes, yes I guess so."

Daniel had met Laura three years ago when he had been married to a sweet girl; a pharmacist who kept the fridge full of milk for his coffee and the cabinets full of coffee cups. Laura had been in front of him at the checkout line in Kroger, frantically searching through a weathered knapsack for the eight dollars she owed for her groceries. "I know it's here somewhere," she repeated, taking out her wallet again and painstakingly pawing through the tiny pockets which held pictures, ATM receipts, expired coupons, two library cards- everything but money. After five minutes Daniel stepped up and offered to pay for the stack of Ramen noodles, squeeze bottle of ketchup and box of tampons she was trying to buy.

"Thank you so much," she'd whispered as he helped carry her bags to her car. "I was going to shoplift all that but a security guard followed me and I had to pretend like I was going to buy it."

"Ah...Oh. I see." His palms began to sweat.

"Well, I would have bought it but this month has been hard, I lost my job and then a few months ago..." she reached up and ran her fingers along the curve of her jaw, and Daniel saw a blue-green vein pulsing elixir under her pale skin, her earlobe with its trio of silver hoops, her bitten, bloody cuticles.

"Well, you don't want to hear about it. It's just...hard sometimes, you know?" she'd sighed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. It was the first of a hundred thousand times she'd hint at some dark monster that always haunted her. Daniel developed his own theories over time, but kept them to himself because he feared that he might be right.

"Can you hold on a second? I have a call on the other line. Wait...Hello? Oh, hello Dr. Thomas." Laura looked at Daniel, including him for the first time this morning.

"It isn't? Oh, I see. That's good. Yes, yes it is. Thursday at noon. OK. Thank you...Hello? Damn, he hung up."

"Well? What did he say?"

Laura curled the phone cord around her neck, her tongue hanging out. "I'm done for. Never going to see another winter." She smiled and waited.

December Ear-gasms

What would Christmas be without music, and what would this blog be without Sea Hag acting like she has authority over all creation? With that in mind, here are a few songs that Sea Hag suggests your download to your iPod pronto:

'A Long December'
Counting Crows
A long December,
and there's reason to believe
maybe this year will be
better than the last
An ideal New Year's song, Adam Duritz gently hints at a year full of loss and grief, playing his earnest vocals over some beautiful piano. This song is at the same time painfully sad and sweetfully hopeful, as in what I went through this year was so bad there's no where else to go from here but up.

'Pretty Good Year'
Tori Amos
Lucy was pretty,
your best friend agreed
well, still, a pretty good year
Another great New Year's song in the same vein as 'A Long December' where the past year was obviously crappy but the singer is trying to embrace any positive aspect she can. A big part of celebrating New Year's is reflecting on the past year, and I think both of these songs capture that melancholy mood.

"Our Winter"
Jason Anderson
My mom says I need snow tires bad,
but I'd just as soon spend that money on records
and sit with friends in living rooms
and sing the songs we know by heart
Cool little song about some slacker hanging out at home for the holidays.

"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"
Judy Garland
Traditional
It's imperative that you get the Judy Garland version of this song, because of the emotion she puts into it; she sounds so incredibly sad, like she's coming out of a weeklong bender and woke up in some hotel room out of pills and far from home.

"Silent Night"
Manheim Steamroller
Instrumental
This song always reminds me of my dad. I get goosebumps every time I hear the child's piano at the end.

"Winter"
Tori Amos
I get a little warm in my heart
when I think of winter,
I put my hand in my father's glove
Another nugget of joy from Tori, this one about growing up secure in her father's love. A must for all daddy's girls.

'Santa Baby'
Eartha Kitt
Traditional (kind of)
I love this song because it's vaguely naughty. And I would love a Christmas tree decorated with the best from Tiffany's.

"Song For A Winter's Night"
Sarah McLachlan
I read again between the lines upon each page
the words of love you send me
Sad, sweet song about someone curled up on a cold winter's night, contemplating the absence of their lover.

"Christmas Day"
Dido
And the last words I heard him say
were I shall return for you my love
on Christmas Day
Yet another sad, sweet, melancholy song. What's up with that? It seems like the holidays seem to lend themselves to a certain kind of dark moodiness. Maybe it's the crappy, cold weather. Maybe it's because you aren't able to be with the people you love this year because you had to work or you couldn't afford to travel or they passed away. Or maybe it's because as an adult, Christmas just doesn't seem to have the magic it did when you were a child.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas"
Vince Guaraldi
Yes, I do mean the entire album here, and if you can find the edition they just released with 4 more songs on it, that's all the better. By far my favorite holiday album, it's jazzy but not that pretentious, crappy kind of jazz. It has a lot of traditional Christmas songs but also has a few other pieces so you don't get burned out on yuletide joy.

Update!

My recent absence is mostly due to the fact that this happened:



Ha ha, fooled you! That's my brother up there and my new sister-in-law. Sisters don't shake hands, sisters hug!

Wordsmiths Challenge for December: Secret Sharer

Once again I was invited by the rad folks over at Wordsmiths Unlimited to participate in the first of two December writing exercises. This one involves a conversation with a childhood toy, and, of course, must be under 500 words. No picture was provided for this round, so I had to use my imagination here. Oh noes!
~~~~~~~~~

Secret Sharer

"What am I going to do?"

My mouth was worn away long ago, but I can still answer her: I don't know. But you'll be fine, you'll see.

Tears fall warmly on my gray, dingy fur. I feel her wrap her finger around my threadbare tail, an old habit.

"I don't know what to do. I just don't know what I'm going to do." She pulls me to her chest tighter, rocking back and forth, repeating herself. Her chin digs into the top of my squishy head. This feels good.

You will figure it out. You've just got to be strong.

This is all in her head, our conversation.

"I'm so tired of this. I can't start over again. I can't do this without him."

I am just a little stuffed leopard, a hidden treasure of childhood with all the velvet fuzz loved off my nose and half of my whiskers missing. My polyester filling is saturated with red bicycles, the waxy smell of crayons, the ice cream man, Saturday mornings with cartoons and big bowls of sugary cereal. I've been stowed away inside a shoebox in her closet since she got married. She pulls me out when it gets bad.

"I just want him to come back. Do you think he'll come back?"

It's bad now.

I don't know. But you've been unhappy for a long time, maybe this is for the best.

"I don't know what I'm going to do without him. He's everything to me! What am I going to do?"

I am used only in emergency situations.

He is not everything to you.

"He is! What am I going to do?"

I am her flotation device.

If he meant so much to you, why did you cheat on him?

I am flung across the room and land softly on the bed. This hurts.

I'm putting this in perspective for you.

"Shut up."

I can't.

"My life is falling apart and I'm arguing with a stuffed animal."

I'll never leave you.

"You're just a toy."

I love you.

She crawls to the bed, pulls me down on the floor with her.

"You're all I have left."

I love you.

"I don't know what to do."

It's OK. It's OK. I love you, I will never leave you, and this is her lullaby, this is how we fall asleep: I whisper into the pink spiral of her ear her own comforting thoughts over and over, hypnotic and sweet, I am only made real by her desire for comfort, but it is enough.

I love you. I will never leave you.

Yay December!

OK, it's finally December, so everyone can officially start getting ready for Christmas...






Now!

Things I'm Embarrassed to Like: Cosmo

It's mostly advertisements and pretty pictures. It's stupid. It's repetitive. It preys on your every insecurity and probably kills hundred of brain cells if you look at it.

It's Cosmo, and I like it.

I'm not exactly sure how I got into reading Cosmo, but around the middle of each month I start hunting the grocery store racks for the newest issue. When I get home, it always goes in the bathroom to be browsed at my leisure.

Cosmo: For me to poop on.

If you've ever read Cosmo more than once, you've probably noticed that the magazine is kinda short of fresh ideas. Most articles involve the same old crap:

1. Stuff about how to get or keep a man

2. New sex positions (which are really the same ones over and over again with different names)

3. Stupid interviews with a marginal celebrity (what's your favorite body part?)

4. Some sort of story about rape or stalkers or kidnapping or disease that's designed to scare the crap out of you.

5. Picture of a dude without his shirt on

Of course, besides the tiny articles, there's a ton of ads for clothes and makeup. My favorite feature is usually the embarrassing 'confession' stories which generally involve a) getting caught having sex b) expelling your own bodily fluids or gases in public, typically while on a date c) doing something mean to a roommate. Heh heh, stores about getting your period and ruining your new boyfriend's parents' couch are ALWAYS FUNNY, damnit!

The thing is, the entire magazine is designed to make you feel like a totally unsophisticated, unsexy, ugly troll. As in, you dress like a hobo, here's what you should be wearing instead. And your face would make small children cry, so plaster it with all of these cosmetics, for the love of everything good and holy. Plus, you couldn't get a man if you had Super Bowl tickets and a ribeye steak stapled to your forehead, so here are some totally desperate ways to find a dude. And once you get him, here's some nearly impossible sex positions you can try that pretty much guarantee several trips for at least one of you to the chiropractor. But the worst part is, they hide all this under a 'you go, girl!' guise.

But in spite of all this, I still read the damn thing! In fact, I feel so bad about it I got a subscription to BUST magazine (which is kind of a grrrrl 'zine) just to offset the grody feelings I get every time I pick up an issue.

It could be worse, I guess. I mean, I could be reading...um...shit, I can't think of anything worse. Damn it all.

I hate everyone: People on the road today

It's a good thing that I don't have a laser mounted to the hood of my car, or else I'd have been tempted to use it on some fellow travelers today. Here's a select few who should be thankful that they didn't end up suffering my vengeful wrath in the middle of I-85:

• The guy who was reading the paper while driving in the fast lane at 80 mph.
• The 16-year-old kid driving the HUGE truck who decided to go 20 mph on Sugarloaf because he was so obviously scared to be driving such a gigantic vehicle
• The girl who was turned around and trying to slap her kid in the backseat from exit 104 to 96
• The two people who cut off an ambulance with its lights on
• Everyone going to the Falcons game

No idea why I thought of this today

You've seen 'The Sound of Music" right? The one with Julie Andrews. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Right. Anyway, you know who my favorite character is? The Baroness. She's such a great villain, shrewd and back-stabbing and ice-princess beautiful, but when she saw that Captain Von Trapp preferred Maria's vanilla pudding of a personality, she very gracefully took her leave. That's classy! Plus, she was a Baroness so she wasn't a gold-digger or anything, I guess she just really dug her some Christopher Plummer. Also, I know people think that she was horrible to the Von Trapp kids, but damn, there were SEVEN of them! And they were total brats, I can't blame her for wanting to send them to boarding school. I mean, they ran off all those governesses with spiders and snakes and frogs and whatever, and most disturbingly, they never once mentioned their poor dead mother, as in 'gee, I miss Mom.' Not once! Plus good God, they sang all the damn time once Maria got a hold of them.

I still hate my neighbors

Oh look, my neighbors decided to decorate for Thanksgiving, and they went for a poop-sachet theme this year!


So very, very classy. I don't know how I'll ever top that, unless I get a drunk bum to squat outside my front door for the duration of the holiday season.

This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

I've lived in Atlanta for about 14 years, and for the last 10 I've driven almost daily through the middle of downtown, and every time I do I never fail to look at the skyline and think damn, that's so cool.

Coffee-mate pisses me off again

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson last time I decided to try a new flavor of pussy-ass coffee creamer, but oh, how wrong you were. The good people over at Coffee-mate have some 'limited edition' creamer flavors out just in time for the holidays and I just had to have them.

They have four flavors: pumpkin spice, egg nog, gingerbread, and peppermint mocha. I decided to curb my crazy OCD impulses and just get two of them, so I got the gingerbread one and peppermint mocha. I figured pumpkin spice, egg nog and gingerbread would all be pretty similar anyways, tasting like cinnamon and nutmeg and sweet, sweet sugar, so gingerbread won out by a blind grab. Peppermint mocha got to come home with me because Starbucks makes a killer peppermint mocha for the holidays and I was hoping to find a worthy replacement for my $4-a-day peppermint mocha smack habit.

As you can see, the offending creamers have been banished to the No-Man's Land that lies behind the Gigantic Tub O' Margarine.

But lo, I partook of each of these non-dairy products, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, for both of them were not the tasty bursts of yuletide goodness they had proclaimed, but an unholy alliance of sugar and my bitter disappointment.

Really, how can you mess these up? First of all, both of them required almost double the amount of creamer I normally use just to taste it, and then the taste wasn't all that spectacular. Peppermint mocha was almost completely devoid of chocolatey goodness, I'd have gotten the same taste if I'd squeezed some super-sweet toothpaste into my coffee mug. Gingerbread was even weirder because it tasted almost exactly like nothing, I had to use a ton of it to get even a faint hint of any sort of flavor, and even that little tease was totally disappointing. It tasted like cheap birthday cake frosting.

So, once again, Coffee-mate incites my rage with promises of coffee nirvana. Damn youuuuuu!...though, maybe egg nog would be good. I do love me some nogs.

NaBloPoMo, mofos!

According to some people who think they can tell me what to do, it's National Blog Posting Month, and to celebrate you're to update your blog every day. They even came up with a cute logo for it!

They have a list of prizes for people who do this, but oddly enough, none of these includes the bear that is so prominently featured on the NaBloPoMo seal. What gives? I would certainly be more motivated to post on a daily basis if there was a the threat of a bear attack. Or better yet, they could reward you by giving you the use of a bear to maul your enemies and smite them but good for a day.

Gnome mojo

For anyone who has known me for more than five minutes, you're well aware of Franklin. For those of your poor, unfortunate souls who have never had the pleasure of my company, Franklin is my Travelin' Gnome. Yeah, I stole the idea from 'Amelie'. Whatever.

Anyway, Franklin's been with me for a little over 4 years, and we've been everywhere together: Florida, Seattle, New York City, Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Boston, the Caribbean and, of course, all over Georgia. Franklin's recent trip was to the city of Macon, where he met NASCAR driver Tony Stewart.

Incidentally, Tony Stewart tried to sign my gnome at first. Duh.

After meeting Franklin, Tony Stewart has gone on to win the next two NASCAR races. Coincidence? I don't think so.

All hail the power of my gnome!