mikey likes is

Have you ever had somebody recommend something to you, something they knew "you would just LOVE!" And then it turns out that you hate it, that actually you think it's a big steaming pile of orangutan dung. Then you're left thinking, "Wow, this person doesn't know shit about me." And then you start thinking to yourself, "Hmmm, exactly who does so-and-so think I am?" Then you get really fuming mad, that irrational anger that makes your eyes bulge out of their sockets, and you call up said person and start screaming at them about being a grade-A asshole who obviously never paid very close attention to you, who doesn't know their head from their ass, who if they actually knew the difference between their head and ass they would realize how far up their ass their head actually was! Yeah, I don't do that last part either. But I spend a lot of time coming up with these elaborate scenarios that eventually lead to the beginnings of a serial killing spree. Call me crazy...just don't recommend any books you think crazy people might like.

laundromania

Intro:
I have these massive Korean bedspreads called mink blankets. They're huge, weigh a fucking ton and a half, and won't fit in a standard washer and dryer. Therefore, I have to lug my blankets around to laundromats that have the extra-capacity front-loading washers.
Story:
Now once in Kentucky I went to wash my blankets before I put them away for the summer. When I walked into the joint, it was full of people. Ever so slowly, people trickled out and before I knew it, I was alone...well, technically I wasn't alone because the owner and proprietor was in the back room watching Korean serials (the best television shows ever!). So this guy walks in, a cowboy sort with too-tight Wranglers and a down-home polo shirt, and he goes to the bathroom. He comes out and walks by me as I'm taking my blankets out of the washer. Then he starts asking me questions about the washer, why is it more expensive, is it better than the other ones, do more clothes fit? So I patiently answer and then go to sit down and read my book. "Thanks a lot," he says. So I look up, "You're welcome." "No seriously, I really appreciate it," and I can tell by his tone that he needs some attention. So I look up, "Sure." Then I notice his arms moving, so my eyes follow his arms down to his hands. Of course I didn't have my glasses on and he was a good fifteen-twenty feet away so I think, "What is he doing with his belt buckle?" Then it clicks and I realize he's jiggling his dick at me. So I think I squealed and looked away as he ran out, probably pleased with himself that he had pulled it out and pulled one over. I go to ask the lady in the back room if she knew who he was and she says to me, "Oh no, I thought he was with you." I tell her that he most assuredly WAS NOT and her response, "Oh, well then I should have charged him a dollar for using the bathroom."
Follow up:
So since that fateful day, I am petrified of going to laundromats by myself. I get sweaty and go into panic-attack mode. But today I HAD to go all by myself to wash my blankets. First of all, they smelled musty and second I had to put them away for the summer. When I got there it was me and just one other guy, a sort of cowboy looking guy with too-tight Wranglers and a polo shirt. But he turned out okay, he traded me dimes and nickels for quarters so I didn't have to get five more bucks worth. But then these two women walked in and one of them, easily pushing about 290, was walking around in a tank-top with no bra on and really tight jeans with the button undone (actually more like unable to be done) and the waist-band rolled down. So now I have new things to fear...I may never reach a good place with the laundromat.

bummed out

Man, don't you HATE that feeling you get in your stomach when something you thought would happen doesn't? That nauseous, fluttery feeling where you don't know whether to scream or cry? Dammit, I don't know why I let myself get worked up over long shots.

lecherous

My sister warned me about this guy they hang out with, she said that he'll try to screw anything with genitalia remotely resembling a vagina. I saw this first hand the first time we went out and he eventually ended up shagging this girl who would sleep with a goat if it made her feel momentarily attractive. But he hadn't hit on me, so wow...what a blow to the ego right? But I guess I'm vindicated now because he tried to hook it up last night and even tried to follow me into the bathroom, at which point I yelled out, "Dude, I'm taking a big stinky shit and I need some privacy!" Though note that I wasn't making number two, I just thought (and rightly so) that it was the quickest and most sure-fire way to get rid of him. So I guess that makes me a regular old girl now and not the Medusa with the venus-flytrap vagina that I was slowly starting to suspect I was.

honest = best policy ?

How exactly are you supposed to answer when your mother's friend asks you if you smoke the "happy smoke" while miming the requisite thumb and forefinger finger squeeze while sucking her cheeks into hollow pits? Do you tell the truth? Do you lie? And then what do you do when your mom says, "Yeah, whenever her, S____, and S______ get together."? Do you still deny all accusations as nothing more than circumstantial? Or do you just give it up to mom's keen sense of observation? Personally, I say deny, deny, deny...we all have our little roles to play in life and lying to your parents is just one of them.

hello ass, meet thumb

o So when does an "extended vacation" officially become a loser's life? I think I'm just about ready to cross that threshold.
o When Katie and I went to New Orleans, we had the obligatory psychic reading (because I guess the more crawdads you eat, the closer in tune you are with the psychic realm). Her tea-reading lady was AWESOME...everything she said would happen has happened and not just to her, to her family as well. My guy, a total fluke...there was supposed to be money and love and good things. Never believe anybody with overplucked eyebrows...if they can't predict the sheer and complete WRONG of having no arch left in their brow, then they certainly CANNOT predict my future.
o On the plus side, I found a graduate program that I'm interested in. On the minus side, I have to take the GRE and wait until Fall 2006.
o I still have no job prospects, which is crazy! I HAVE A LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE!!! I thought that meant like guaranteed six-figure salary with full benes and company Mercedes, but then again I am out of my Lithium and Risperdol.
o Also, the weather here is ass. Here we are, on the cusp of summer...and it is fucking 63 degrees outside. It almost makes me yearn for the days of 90 degree heat with 90 percent humidity, almost.

chasm

45 miles. That's the approximate distance between Lakewood and Seattle. But after Jen's party last night, I'm starting to think that 45 miles might as well be 450 miles. I don't know how many times people asked me "So what's Tacoma like?" in the same wonderous way they would ask, "So what's Kentucky like?" You would think Tacoma and Seattle are neighboring states rather than neighboring cities. I'm not sure how I'm expected to answer. Do they think we're super-country and I'm going to yeehaw and slap my knee in hee-haw joy? Do they think we're super-ghetto and I'm gonna bust out wid som' ghetto flava? It's funny to me because in my study of urban centers, the books all consider the Seattle-Tacoma area just one major metropolis...but the people obviously don't agree.

double your pleasure

Lessons for the day:Just because one of something is great, doubling up on it doesn't necessarily make it better. And you can sleep for eighteen hours straight to recover from a massive migraine and still wake up tired as hell.

slacker

One of the greatest things about being unemployed is that I can party all night on a Thursday and not have to worry about getting up in the morning and schlepping off to a job that I would probably hate anyway. That my friends is one of the benefits of having no responbilities whatsoever. Of course, I'll feel quite differently when my money runs dry and I am selling my ass on the street corner to pay for my car insurance. I can see it now, all cracked out on the street trying to pay for my pet insurance and make-up addiction. "Wassup baby, I'll suck yo dick for a MAC eyeliner." But it feels good to feel young again, really really good.

naked dreaming

I have an irrational fear of running into people from high school. The fear has seeped into my subconscious mind because I dreamt about some people from high school the other night and had a dream about another high school boy last night. Oddly enough, the morning after I dreamt about the pharmacists, I checked out my friend Jen's Evite page, and lo and behold one of the guys in the dream is going to be attending. I think my fear of running into people stems from the fact that we'll have the obligatory banal banter about what we've been up to since high school, what we're doing for a living, blah blah blah. I get a migraine just thinking about it, mostly because I loathe that I've lived such an ordinary life. So this morning in the shower I decided to tell people that I've just gotten out of prison. I've developed a whole backstory too and I gave it a feminist edge.

flowers in the attic

I think I've read too many V.C. Andrews novels because I am slowly convincing myself that my mother is putting arsenic in my cookies...my stomach has been hurting all week.I had a recruiter interview yesterday. Since when did interviewing become a two-step process. Whatever happened to sending in your resume, going in for an interview, and then getting a job? Seriously, this isn't nuclear weapon development we're talking about...it's testing pee.

unexpected

Here's something you probably wouldn't have imagined...Tori Amos covering a Kylie Minogue song.

dream a little dream

I remember most of my dreams and they generally seem to indicate that I am one crazy mofo. The other night my dream involved supermodels and the Dog from Dog the Bounty Hunter (a hilarious show that takes place in Hawaii by the way) who were trying to rob and murder me. I can't remember the reason, but I do remember waking up shouting for the police, except I woke up completely half way through the shout so it sounded like "PPPOOOLLLarrgghhhbrrrrssstt."Then last night I had this weird dream that a room full of people were trying to score some drugs from these two guys I went to high school with (initials S.F. and B.F. to anybody interested) and they had this massive set-up that was just like a pharmacy. And one of the guys even dressed in the white pharmacist jacket while dispensing the narcotics. For some reason, there were also a lot of supermodels in this dream, except this time there was a brawl and later a quick Getaway in a Geo Metro that I drove on styrofoam bridges until I got to this twenty-story Sears building where I went to shop for throw rugs and I kept quoting the dudism, "I need something to tie the room together."Anyway, I can figure out the significance of supermodels harassing me, but styrofoam bridges... who knows?

crushed

So the other night when I was massively drunk, apparently I stared too long at a guy and now he thinks I like him. Granted, I do think he's attractive, both physically and otherwise...but I do not "like him that way." I don't know what bothers me more...(A) that you can't just be drunk around somebody and do the things that drunks do like stare or talk too much or smile and laugh for no reason (oh no wait...that's high, not drunk) without them immediately jumping to the conclucion that you like them, (B) I am starting to become transparent in my old age and not very good at fronting anymore, or (C) that I am so repulsive that somebody would be concerned that I am into them, or (D) that I'm in a constant six year cycle where I keep living and reliving my junior high and high school days over and over and over again, ad nauseum. What the fuck? That whole, "you can never go home again" is bullshit...because you can, and it usually fucking sucks just as bad the second time around.

june cleaver

My mom has always had this secret desire to turn me into a "proper woman." I swear, I have received more skirt and sweater sets in the last two weeks than I have bought for myself in the last two years. And I have a purse, a REAL purse, and not the messenger bags or anime covered children's bags I normally carry. But one thing I wouldn't let her talk me into getting, a cute pair of shoes. I heart ugly shoes, and I super duper heart flip-flops/slippahs/sandals/thongs, and even though I tell myself that I'm going to buy just one pair of inappropriate shoes with a high spiked heel and pointy toes, I always end up going with a more sensible shoe. But then again, Dr. Marten Mary Janes with a three-inch sole would look pretty kick ass with my new fifties housewife outfits.

liquid courage

I got so hammered last night, all because my sister's significant other invited this guy to a barbeque that I'm totally crushing on...because I'm junior high like that. Words of widsdom, never have philosophical/semantic arguments when you're drunk and outnumbered 3 to 1, and the other three are guys who get that whole penile comraderie thing going. Especially don't argue when you're drunk when you are already the kind of person who's voice gets fifteen octaves higher and twelve decibels louder each and every time somebody disagrees with you. Being loud and obnoxious... probably not the best way to impress a guy...but then again being a fat-ass isn't either.

bored

I have nothing to post about...mostly because I have nothing going on right now. No job, no school, no B., no K, no ANTM/Qdoba night, no useless errands. Unless you want to hear about the sale they have at Albertson's...I got nothing. So let's play a vocabulary game, and no cheating by running to a thesaurus.Come up with three synonyms pertaining to some aspect of boredom. It can be a verb, noun, adverb, present tense, past tense, etc. The person with the best word wins nothing less than the sheer joy of having a better vocabulary than everybody else.ennuilackadaisical-I had to look up the spelling for this one, but I wasn't too far offuninterested

danger, watch yourself

See, even road signs are giving me reasons not to break my vow of chastity.

price check

I went out with my sister, her...uh....the guy she lives with, and a bunch of their friends. It was pretty cool and honestly, I thought I could party pretty hard but going out with them made me realize that I'm just an amateur...either that or I've mellowed out with age. So there was a pretty large contingent of guys there and each and every one of them clearly considered themselves THE gift from god. But seriously, only one of them was worth anything and it only totaled about the price of an Easter basket.

masticator

I swear to god, I have eaten more rice in the last week than I probably ate all of last year. And apparently Iniki likes kim/nori/dried seaweed. Coincidentally, since he's been eating it, his poop is a lot easier to clean up.

surreal life

Just got back from a barbecue at my brother's house. You know, I thought I had seen a lot and thought I had some strange friends, BUT THIS TAKES THE CAKE! My sister-in-law had a friend and her husband over as well as me and some guy I knew when I was just a wee thing. Apparently they just got a new laptop and enjoy looking at sites like ratemythong.com and ratemycock.com (no lie, these REALLY exist). It also seems that the wife desperately wanted to put her husband's weenie up on desperateforapproval.com. So part of the night they were trying to take a digital picture of a Polaroid they have of him lounging around all Sylvester Stallone circa Playgirl spread. When that didn't work out, he started taking actual pictures of his penis with the digital camera. First, he went to the bathroom, I guess he wanted to be discreet. But when that proved too taxing, he full on whipped it out at the dining room table. Lucky for me, I was across the table from him and there was thankfully a very big bag of tortilla chips blocking my view...but I guess my sister-in-law saw it. I can only presume that he didn't like the lighting from the dining room, so he went outside on the deck and started snapping away. Every three to four minutes you would see a flash go off outside; and this went on for a good twenty minutes. Can you imagine?

frightening and sad

I found out today that a person I used to work with in Hawaii, actually the person that took over my job when I left, died recently. She was only 37 years old.

stop. thief.

Never one to shy away from stealing other people's ideas when I have none of my own...

Top Ten Brands You Cannot Live Without:

1. Coke-it's the real thing AND Diet Coke has that Adrien Brody commercial I love.
2. HBO-without this little slice of television heaven, I wouldn't have anything to watch, especially since America's Next Top Model is finished.
3. Apple-iPods, iTunes...my credit card has never been the same.
4. General Foods International Coffees-two words: Chai, Latte. Nuff said.
5. Fendi-the few sunglasses that fit and flatter my ginormous head.
6. Ambien-every once in a while, you need a good night's sleep.
7. MAC-for my fabulous inner transvestite.
8. Lancome-the reason I still look 24, or at least the reason my friends lie to me about looking 24.
9. Target-cause I love cheap, any store with a dollar spot is all right by me.
10. McDonald's-french fries are the food of the gods.

kentucky v. washington

METRO LOUISVILLE

*Catfish
*The frying of every conceivable vegetable and meat known to man
*Lots of F350s on the road
*Thornton's and Speedway
*People with money buy horses
*Ohio River Bridges
*Tornadoes
*Everybody vacations by taking a cruise
*Azaleas and oak trees (which means a shitload of raking)
*College basketball
*Fourth Street Live
*Trailer girls vying for their Jerry Springer appearance
*Germantown
*Co-workers that annoyingly mother you to death
*Allergies that cause headaches and snotty noses
*Bad hair from excessive humidity
*Starbucks


GREATER SEATTLE AREA

*Salmon
*Teriyaki sauce on every conceivable vegetable, meat, and meat-substitute product known to man
*Lots of Hummers on the road
*ampm and 7-11
*People with money buy boats
*Narrows Bridge (formery known as Galloping Gertie)
*Earthquakes
*Everybody vacations by camping and hiking
*Rhododendrons and evergreens
*Mariners baseball
*Pioneer Square
*Ghetto girls vying for their Jerry Springer appearance
*Koreatown
*Mothers that annoyingly work you to death
*Allergies that cause itchy eyes and coaster sized boogers
*Bad hair from excessive rain
*Starbucks

the thing about parents...

is that they think their children are deaf, either that or profoundly and severely retarded. Do they REALLY think we can't hear them talking about us from fifteen feet away? And worse yet, if your parent speaks another language. You KNOW they're talking about you, but you don't know what they're saying...AND chances are pretty damn good that they're talking shit. I'm pretty sure that in the minds of parents, we are perpetually eleven years old.

say wha?

Remind me not to blog while high on pharmaceuticals. And in other news, I think I made a big mistake...tigers can't change their stripes, leopards can't change their spots, going full circle means you end up nowhere.

s.o.s.

Somebody help me, I've obviously fallen into a vacuum of infantilism...why else would I be forcing myself into the womb I tried so hard to escape? All of the days journeys involved fighting, and you would think that I would know that the right answer is clearly and obviously her answer and equally as clearly I would recognize that my solutions are the rantings of a obviously insane woman who somehow managed to make it ten years without self-imploding, but now that I'm back in the web, I've regressed to a fourteen year old. Wow, I took two Ambien and there is a lot of weirdness going on right now. There seems to be some short of light show behind my monitor, a party I'm not privy to, though I would love to attend. And the crazy lizard fingers are back, tap tap typing away with their leathery beaks, hoping for some later reward...maybe food, maybe lotion, maybe weapons they could learn to use and take over the ambien induced mother may I that they don't even get to play. I don't know where I am right now, I'm lost amongst a shitload of familiarity. And there seems to be a green and ocre color taking over my screen right about now and they're blowing hot air on me. I think this might be the takeover. Please send help...but not until after 8 hours of sleep that the Ambien is going to provide.

collector

I don't know if it's because she grew up right after a war that literally divided her homeland and lacked a lot of material things, but damn my mother is OBSESSED with toilet paper. She literally has HUNDREDS of rolls of toilet paper, every time I open a closet or a cabinet, it is stuffed to the gills with rolls and rolls of tp. We are already a family of pack-rats but I'm worried, this toilet paper thing is a little extreme. And the paper towels, dear god the paper towels. She doesn't ever use them, she gets pissy when somebody else does, but she hoards them like they're some invaluable commodity. I'm a little freaked out...why does any one person need so many paper products?

oscar worthy

While at my dad's place in Salt Lake City, he shared his completely legal collection of burned movies with my sister and myself. We went apeshit because my dad records the kinds of movies that we love...you know the D-list, straight to video, 80s cheddar kind of flicks that nobody else has ever heard of...in fact we literally fought over a couple of them. So here's my list of movies that I have loved that nobody else has heard of, except for my sister of course.

o Gotcha
o Gimme an F
o Fast Forward
o Night of the Comet
o Sleepaway Camp Part II

travel wrap-up

Total Miles Driven: 2,600
Total Coffee Consumed: 4.3 liters
Total Calories of Truck Stop Food Eaten: 18,243
Total Times I Punched My Sister: Only 2
Total Times I Said Mean Things: 93
Hours Before My Mom Reminded Me I Was Fat: 9 (I thought I'd get at least a 24 hour reprieve)
Hours Before Her Friends Started Asking Me How Much I Weighed: 18
Hours I Went Before Calling Cable Company to Set Up Internet Service: 12
Hours of Continuous Rain Since Hitting the Pacific Northwest: 56
Hours I've Been Here: 59
Total Number of Hail Storms: 2
Number of Valium I Saved for Myself Instead of Giving to Iniki: 12

travels with iniki - part II - cont

Finally in washington the weather sucks. Somebody remind me why I came back?

travels with iniki - part II - cont

I have needed my windshield wipers from the very nanosecond I drove into the Pacific Northwest. Fucking rain!

travels with iniki - part II - cont

Don't ever take a roadtrip with your freeloading sister. You end up eating beef jerky and drinking gas station coffee out of sheer stubborness because you don't want to pony up for real food for everybody.

travels with iniki - part II - cont

2000 miles driven and my car officially smells like a rank armpit.

travels with iniki - part II

Getting ready to leave my dad's and Salt Lake, which is one seriously beautiful city. And I swear to god, there are NO FAT PEOPLE here, not even at the Walmart....I'm like a one woman club out here. So it should take us about thirteen hours or so to reach out destination point. I'm pretty sure I will have found an airport to drop my sister off at and a pound for my dog. That much time together in an enclosed space is never a good thing...which is weird, I used to really enjoy road trips. Is it bad that I'm already planning my next move and I haven't even gotten up to the Pacific Northwest yet? I'm trying to be positive so I don't do the whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing but DAYAM, being around my family is best in small increments of time when I live at least 800 miles away.

travels with iniki - cont

Well it is late and my ass is killing me from sitting on it for more hours than I can count, I guess that is one fantasy best left unfufilled. After about 1500 miles of solid driving, we are at my dad's place in Salt Lake City. This is the cleanest town I've ever been in, I have yet to see a homeless person. I am going to sleep the sleep of the dead tonight. After I wash the grime off of my body, I am taking a sleeping pill and I might even snake one of my dog's Valium and polish it off with a couple of shots of vodka just to make sure that even a church full of Mormon missionaries at the doorstep won't rouse me in the slightest.

travels with iniki - cont

Utah is a lot like a crazy aunt's house, full of pretty things but devoid of life and kind of creepy.

travels with iniki - cont

If my dog had as much gas as he is getting blamed for, he would float away like a helium balloon.

travels with iniki - cont

tThere is the most amazing heat lightning storm going on right now.

travels with iniki - cont.

Operation cheese overload was mildly successful. I made it 1300 miles before needing to actually sit on a toilet seat.

travels with iniki - cont.

For the love of god! Kansas is the longest, flattest state ever! Kind of like my ass.

travels with iniki - the beginning

400 plus miles and I'm sitting in some reststop somewhere in either Missouri or Kansas, listening to my dad and sister snore while fre...
(I guess you can only blog one page of cell text at a time, so to finish up this thought...)
freezing my ass off and staring at all the creepy people going in and out of the bathrooms.

matriculator

Yay for me, I graduated today. We had the whole hand-shaking and hugging, tassel flipping, robe wearing ceremony. It took forever! Three long hours of speeches, most of which was from one seriously long-winded woman who went on and on about some old coin and some Latin phrase, though I was busy cleaning underneath my fingernails so I didn't catch most of it. There was cheering and clapping and surprisingly I didn't shed a single tear. So I guess that's one goal out of the way...now on to getting my PhD before I turn forty. I've decided to be a career student because I loathe the idea of having a real job after shamming for the last three years.PS-I'll be sans internet connection for a while, so if I don't get around to being a hyper-nerd and blogging via cell, well the next time you hear from me, I'll be a wanna-be Seattlite again.

apples and oranges

My dad and sister are here for the wildly exciting graduation and moving extravaganza. Last night we were up watching television as we are a family of night owls and we stumbled across a movie that Sofie and I watched every day for a month when we were younger, Calamity Jane. Man, the Doris Day version is way different than Deadwood. You know, I should hate that movie...it's racist and sexist and cheesy as hell...but it's just one of those movies that you inexplicably and unconditionally love, like Grease 2 or Teen Wolf.

seriously meriously

Look, I don't know how many times I have to say this:THERE ARE NO BALLS ON THIS SITE! (okay maybe one picture, but it was in a specific context and you'll never find it. It's buried deep in the archives, and it's hidden...so fuck off with your testicular searches)THERE ARE ALSO NO PICTURES OF NAKED GIRLS, NO NAKED DARK MAGICIAN GIRLS, NO NAKED GIRLS FROM THE DERBY, NO GIRLS!So for the love of <-insert divine creator of choice here->, stop coming here. Sure for a while I found it amusing and honestly I liked the fact that my page visits were way up. BUT NOW, I'm starting to feel a little dirty, like I'm pimping my baby out for some lousy three second hits. Seriously, listen to me here, you're in the wrong place...no balls, no girls.

ha ha

I figured out how to blog from my cell...a big accomplishment for the likes of me. Just when you thought you would get some sort of reprieve while I was moving.

131

I have officially done all there is to do in Louisville. I went to the 131st Kentucky Derby today. If I had to describe the Derby in five words:

o Hot
o Drunkenness
o Boobies
o Crowded
o Expensive

Below are some pictures I took to capture the experience.

Here we were, walking through the tunnels to the infield...home of the poor, drunk, huddled masses yearning to be in box seats.

This was one hell of a crowd. It was apparently the second largest crowd ever.

The fabled spires/turrets/steeples of Churchill Downs. PS-as a bonus you get to see a guy with his shirt open and his glorious salt-n-pepper chest hairs on full display.

This was where I made my bets....my shitty, unlucky bets. Although I did find ten bucks on the ground when I went to buy the $3.00 bottles of water. So since Katie bought my ticket, I only bet $5.00, I paid $10.00 to park and ride at the fairgrounds, and I only bought one bottle of water...my total tab for the day was only $8.00.

Fashions were...ummm. interesting.

I knew that preppy came back in style, but whenever I see stuff this logoed, it totally makes me think of an old Judd Nelson movie Making the Grade.

Oh hey, you might want to see a horse too. You gotta love drunk people...they love to pose for pictures. Too bad it ended up on the internet asshole.

This was our little corner of the infield, marked by the pirate flag. We were also next door to the little makeshift detaining facility so we were surrounded by cops (military and civilian).

How many cops does it take to arrest one half drunk and probably half-baked guy who probably weighed about 135 pounds? All of them. You can see the arrested guy, he's the splash of red in the background. It was quite the hubbub, this picture is after it all calmed down. Katie suggested that we all start screaming "Police Brutality," like in Hairspray.

Okay, so how many cops does it take to switch out taking pictures of half naked girls and share them with one another? Just two. So much for the sanctity of the uniform.

This is what it looks to win and win large. I however didn't win shit, the horse I chose didn't even show.

Here we are leaving through the same tunnel we entered through. However, notice how freaking crowded it is now. We were squeezed in there so fucking tight, I couldn't guarantee that I didn't walk out of there impregnated.

cell phone vampire

HOLY SHIT! I owe my cell phone company over $200.00. I guess I went over my minutes. By A LOT! Dammit, with moving companies and moving supplies, the lack of fundage from going to school, and almost being out of a job, I am bled dry. So go ahead T-Mobile, try to suck a few more drops out of me...all you'll get is dust.

that guy?

I confess, right up front, that I am totally bogarting this idea (with her permission because her wrath is swift and mighty) from Avatar over at Overworked & Underf*cked. She recently did a post about guys that she was inexplicably attracted to, despite the fact that were not Johnny Depp or Viggo Mortonsen. So here's my list of "HUH?!" guys.

Adrian Brody, especially in that Diet Coke commerial
Billy Joe from Greenday
Ewan McGregor-okay, maybe he's not such a stretch
Jason Schwartzman from Rushmore & I Heart Huckabees
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show
Sam Rockwell, even though he kind of reminds me of some creepy guy who would hang out at a Junior High School
Brandon Flowers from The Killers.

Unlike Avatar, who has a thing for average English blokes, I've got a thing for guys who either wear eyeliner or for smart 'n funny Jewish Guys, god help me if they're both.

So what guys/girls do you find strangely compelling?

it's like ray-yay-yain on your wedding day

Something struck me today while I was getting my hair done. There I was, sitting in one of the higher-end salons in Louisville, having a complimentary hand massage by one woman and sipping my bottled water while another woman did my highlights. During all of this primping and pampering, I was reading Diary, who also wrote Fight Club, one of my favorite books and movies. The sheer hypocrisy and irony of doing both at the same time wasn't lost on me. But aren't we all at least just the tinest bit hypocritical? Is it in our nature to believe one way and act another? Are we just constantly fighting some inner battle between our belief systems versus societal systems? Or do we just pretend to have certain beliefs in order to make ourselves feel better about the things we do? Well I don't know the answer to those questions, but I can tell you this...my hair is way cute.

last call

I called in sick for the last time (at this current job at any rate). I felt poopie because my womyn parts are staging some sort of coup, I think my uterus has some grandiose plans to become dictator of my torso region...but my digestive tract doesn't seem to be taking this threat to its usual dominance lightly. Thank god for the massive cocktail of motrin, aleve, and Tylenol PM.

oh the humanity

I sold my dining room set and the buyers just came and picked it up. You know what, I'm a wee-bit sad about it and it's stupid to be having an emotional reaction because it's just stuff for god's sake. I can't believe I actually formed an attachment to a few slabs of wood and glass, that's pretty sad huh? Especially since it really isn't something to get worked up over like an awesome record collection or something passed down five generations that a family snuck in from the old country. Oh well, just more evidence that my former life as LDML is indeed over.

yard sale hell

Begin rant.
I had a yard sale today because I needed to unload some of my shit for the move...I hate yard sales. More specifically I fucking hate people at yard sales. What exactly is this compulsion to barter an already ridiculously cheap price, does that extra fifty cents REALLY make the difference between a shitty deal and a good deal? I just want to scream, "Just pay the three fucking dollars or go buy it for full price," not that they would ever venture beyond the Walmart and dollar stores. If they need that money so badly, don't fucking spend it. Better yet, maybe if they stopped smoking a carton a day, a fairly accurate estimate judging by the reek of stale tobacco, they would be able to afford the fifty cent price tags.
What's more, what's the fucking point of stealing from a yard sale? Do they think it's somehow okay to steal from a person rather than stealing from a store? Do people think they aren't going to burn in the fiery pits of whatever hell they believe in because they stole the fake pearls that cost a few bucks from me instead of some department store? Do they honestly think that they are some big fucking deal, that they really got one over because they took what basically amounts to my garbage? I hope they enjoy their ill-gotten gains because I know that cosmic retribution is a motherfucker. As they fondle their costume jewelry and rub one out to their newly "acquired" copy of Legally Blonde 2, the cancer cells are slowly starting to multiply in that reeking pile of malaria-induced, black-tar diarrhea they call a body. Fucking assholes. This is just another fucking drop in the bucket of the misery known as moving. I'm almost considering arson-for-hire just to simplify things.
End rant.
PS-Yeah, I realize that generalizations are wrong but I needed to vent dammit.

if ever i needed proof...

that I am certifiably a nerd/dork/geek all rolled into one, I have found numerous pieces of evidence while ransacking my house in preparation for the dreaded yard sale. Not only did I find the pins for my annual stint on the Steilacoom High School Math Team, but I also found photographic evidence of my utter and total lack of cool. I found the picture of me and the rest of the JV Badminton squad of the League Champion Redlands High School Badminton Team AND I found the scrapbook I made commerorating our awesome season. I dare anybody to try and out high school-geek me now.

bittersweet symphony

I just finished the very last test of the very last class of my undergraduate college career. I'm not sure how to feel. While part of me is glad that I stuck with it and accomplished my goal of finishing my degree before I hit the big trigenerean years, the other part of me wonders what the hell I'm supposed to do now. You see, I did it all in reverse: left home, had a multitude of jobs, did the family thing, and then went to college. So all the things that newly metriculating students look forward to, leaving home, starting a career and family...been there, done that, have the psychotropic medications to prove it. It feels good to set a goal and follow through though. YAY for me!!! Now I can have time for the important things like watching my 21 Jumpstreet and Family Guy dvds while eating Karamel Sutra ben & jerry's ice cream in my pajamas.

i eat my feelings

A lot of drug addicts turn to food while they're recovering, that's why all the stars get all chunky (which in Hollywood speak means a size 8) after kicking the junk. I however probably need to turn to drugs to help me escape my food addictions. I have eaten at Panera Bread the last five days in a row. I was hoping to make it six in a row, which I think might be just a tad obsessive compulsive, but dammit their half-sandwich/bowl of soup combination has been perfect for the craptastic weather we've been having here lately. I swear, the day after I decide that I am finally going to turn on my air conditioning, the temperature drops to 50 degrees. What the hell is wrong with this place? Pick a season already. Anyhoo, regarding the whole Panera Bread thing, luckily Katie pulled an intervention and we're having Indian tomorrow...garlic naan here I come.

scary

Last night we attempted to go out to dinner and because we're sort of poor and didn't want to go too far from home, we opted to dine at the Olive Garden. So we get there and the weather is turning to crap. We check in and there's a twenty minute wait. While waiting there seems to be some sort of commotion going on outside, people are just going out to the awning in hordes. We look outside and the clouds are SCARY, they're hanging really low in the sky and have that deep dark gray color. Then people start getting paranoid and point out funnel clouds here and there, and honestly I started to get into the whole groupthink paranoia because I started to see funnel clouds and hear sirens going off in my own head. Some crazy woman runs up and screams, "Everybody go inside, there's a tornado, I just heard it on the radio." And we don't because she's a crazy, over-dramatic, control freak and that was readily apparent. But things just keep looking worse and worse and we decide that there is no way we are dying at an Olive Garden, no way we are dying with the people at the Olive Garden. If my ghost has to haunt the place I died until the end of all time as we know it, it sure as shit isn't going to be at the Olive Garden...because looking at breadsticks for the rest of my after-life would make me a very angry ghost. So we went through a drive-thru, came home and watched Spanglish...and there wasn't a tornado the whole night.

googlers

I love seeing the stuff people google and somehow end up here.
Here are some of my faves:
o Wouldn't you know...I am in the top 10, sometimes the top 5, list of sites for "Low Hanging Balls." And I've noticed most of these searches come from the UK. I don't know what's going on with this obsession with dangly sacks, but it has definitely got my attention.
o Today there was "Napoleon tigon totally smell like poo." Pretty specific search.
o "British euphamisms for a man's penis." Interesting...considering the obsession with balls, I would say there are probably a lot.
o "Noassatall syndrome." Honey, you've come to the right place, not only am I the founder but I'm a customer too.
o "Naked dark magician girl and other funny stuff." Are naked dark magician girls funny? Who knew? Are they funnier than clothed dark magician girls?
o "Unrealistic expecations of people." Well you obviously have them if you expected to find the answers in all of this shitty rambling.

bulking up

Now that I'm close to moving I feel like I need to eat the food I have in the house instead of going out to buy new groceries. This is definitely not a good thing. Whatever possessed me to buy that 20 pack of Rice-a-Roni at Sam's Club along with the bulk canned tuna is beyond me now. By the time I leave here I'll be so full of preservatives that I'll never rot after I die. They'll find my mummified corpse hundreds of years from now and probably think that my body is representative of all humans for this time.

stream of consciousness

Isn't it odd how you bounce around from thought to thought and wind up someplace that really had nothing to do with the first thought?I sat down to study for my constitutional law class and started reading a chapter on the 2nd Amendment (which actually I should have read a month ago but hey...procrastination is a skill I've mastered, though frankly it took a long time ba-dum-bum). So I started thinking about gun ownership, which made me start thinking about the DC snipers. That made me think about the media and how for the longest time all you heard about was Malvo and Mohammed and their lives before they went bat-shit crazy. So then I started thinking, "Wow, wouldn't it be weird to have known them before that and have thought they were pretty cool guys who just did some weird shit?" Which made me think about something I saw on television once. It was a show about crime in the military. Some quick background, when I joined the army years and years ago they had just started integrating basic training (females & males together), so for a while there were video cameras following us around. So I'm watching this show and I swear I see people I know from boot camp and then I swear I see myself marching past the camera, which of course makes me continue watching the show. Then they start talking about Ft. Carson, Colorado, where I was stationed for less than a year. They start talking about street gangs in the military and show some surveillance camera footage of a military guy buying guns for the gang he's in. So I'm thinking, "HOLY FUCK, that looks just like ______." Then they say his name and lo-and-behold it is _______. They show his apartment and I had actually been there, but apparently I missed the closet full of weapons, the potato silencer, the backpacks full of weed and crack, and drawers of money the feds confiscated. WHOA! So now I'm looking on the internet for the name of that show so that I can buy a copy of it and see if I really was on the show, which means that I'm very much NOT studying. And that's the story of how I went from reading about the meaning of the preamble in 2nd Amendment to looking to see if I've actually been on A&E before.

unremarkable part deux

A couple of days has passed since my encounter with the guy I work with, the one that left me slightly humiliated as D. didn't recognize me, even though we've worked together for about a year. So on Monday I saw him on my way to break and I screamed in my high-pitched, whiny- girl voice "So do you recognize me now?!?" He laughed, and I guess as an act of contrition he sat with us during breakfast. He complimented me profusely, "You looked so nice...Your makeup was gorgeous, it looked airbrushed...I didn't know your hair looked like that...You just looked so different." And today he told another gal we work with the same thing, "D. said he saw you Saturday, he said you were SO pretty." So, I guess that means I look ten kinds of ugly at work since they went on about how pretty I looked that night. Not being one to NOT point out a backhanded compliment, I said, "So I guess that must mean I'm really ugly at work." Wow, who knew I looked so hideous during daylight hours. I suppose this makes me the antithesis of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I go from nasty during the day to normal when the sun sets.

dropping the kids off

Every day there is some family here to look at the house. And within ten minutes of them showing up for their appointment I feel the urge to...well you know. But I don't want to drop the kids off and then have somebody coming through the house. I can just picture it, a nice young couple holding hands and giggling at the prospect of having their first real home. They look at the fireplace and think of all the romantic evenings they can have, lying in front of the roaring fire naked, sipping only the finest wine that Fetzer offers. They're touring the basement and small bedroom thinking "Golly Susan, wouldn't a family room be nice? We could make this bedroom the guest room and then maybe it can become a nursery later?" Then they open the bathroom door and whammo, eau de fully digested processed cafeteria food. I wouldn't want to associate this money-trap with the number two, I hope my landlady appreciates the sacrifices I'm making for her.

unremarkable

So this weekend I went out with G.H. Dickington, the artist formerly known as Bobby. We get there and decide to go to the drag show and low and behold I see somebody I work with at the table in front of us. So being the gracious queen o' manners that I am, I went over to say hello. It went a little something like this:
Me: HEEEYYYYYY! How are you?
Him: Hi, ummmmm okay.
Me: Did you watch the other show?
Him: Uhh. Do I know you?
Me: Ummm, yeah we work together?!?
Him: Where?Me: Ummm, at __________ in the lab.
Him: We do?
Me: Ummmm yeah (at this point my self-esteem has been torn to teeny shreds that float to the ground with the shards of my dignity as I whip off my glasses and push my bangs away from my face to become my own version of Diane Prince)
Him: OOOHHHHHHHHH!!!! Wow, I didn't recognize you. It's the make-up and hair and glasses. You look so different.
Me: RIIIIGGGHHHTTTTT!
So we do the whole small talk, make nice song and dance and then off I go to my table. Then later that night I see somebody I know through a friend. We're in the bathroom, and since I can never make the same mistake just ONCE:
Me: Hi, how's it going?
Him: Good, how are you?
Me: Good.
Him: Where do I know you from again?
Me: I'm a friend of ______'s. We sort of hung out last weekend.
Him: Oh that's right. I'm sorry, I meet so many people and you look different tonight.
Me: RIIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT!

So I've figured it out, when I turn to my life of crime to pay for my bad habits...I'm going to rob gay-bars because apparently they won't be able to identify me and I won't even need a disguise. It'll be perfect!!!

hush hush

Can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell ANYBODY? Okay...I'm warning you though, it might completely change the way you see me. Ready?









I just bought a Kelly Clarkson song off of iTunes.
Don't hate me, I just couldn't help myself. The song grew on my like a bad case of herpes, one day I was fine and then BAM full-blown bad pop-song mania. I think this might be a cry for help.

setting up shop

While perusing other blogs, I noticed a mild disagreement in the comment section about what constituted a person "living" somewhere. I guess somebody said they had "lived" somewhere for six months and another person said that six months didn't count as "living" somewhere, merely visiting. Well my personal opinion in this matter is that if you have received mail and paid at least three different bills (i.e. rent, phone, electricity) then you have actually lived there. So with that in mind, here are all of the places I've lived:

Pusan, Korea
Seoul, Korea
Amsterdam (Everybody always gets excited when they hear this, but seriously...I was like three, one of the few things I remember about that place is that an ice-cream man would come by and sell the most awesome waffles EVER!)
Ansbach, Germany
San Bernadino, CA
Redlands, CA
Ft. Leonard Wood, MO
San Antonio, TX
Puyallup, WA
Steilacoom/Lakewood/Tacoma, WA
Colorado Springs, CO
Washington DC/Arlington, VA
Newport News, VA
Mililani/Honolulu, HI
Radcliff/Louisville, KY

the answer is always no

Maybe the idea of springtime romance is making all the users of yahoo messenger a little hormonal and crazy because I have been getting more im-ing than usual and more visitors to this site from my yahoo profile. So just in case you are here from yahoo, let me clue you in to a few things:

o Don't pretend like "my English...not so good" and then the VERY next question be able to say, "Are you sexy? Do you have any pictures of you naked?" Seriously, the answer to that...NO!
o Don't ask me to be my friend and then say "I would like American wife, I want come to America for making money." Again, to all marriage proposals, no matter the location of the asker...the answer equals NO!
o Don't ask me to send pictures of me if you don't have pictures of you. Especially when you say something like "I don't want random strangers on the internet knowing what I look like." Ummm, okay shallow asshole hypocrite...gonna go with NO! here.
o Don't assume that because I'm bored enough to chat with you on yahoo that I'm even vaguely interested in meeting you in person. Don't ask me to call you or hang out with you or get drunk with you. Not only is that a NO!, but it's a HELL NO!
o Don't under any circumstances have your first line be "You're hot!" or anything along those lines. Seriously, the reason why I have that weirdish picture and not some cleavage baring glamour shot is because I don't have low self-esteem, ergo I don't give two shits or a fuck about whether you find me attractive.

tick tock tick tock

Wow, barely a month to go before I leave this place. It's starting to make me a little nostalgic for the things that I'll be leaving. Some of the things I'll miss.

o Bobby, aka GaBS Calhoun. The f to my h, the person who keeps me entertained with his gladiator conquests, my sometimes alter-ego who makes me want to be a more outgoing person.
o Katie McW. The person who stuns with me her breadth of knowledge of the weirdest things...like the meanings behind cemetery sculptures, ornamental grasses, and bagworms, my fellow Zhongwen learning friend and road-trip companion, the gal who makes me want to be more easy-going.
o School. What's better than going to school for a few short hours a week and then justifying only working part-time by claiming to be busy with school? Plus associating with young people makes me look younger than I actually am...Score!
o Low cost of living. It'll be a sad sad day when I actually realize how little my housing dollar is going to get me in the Seattle/Tacoma area. Probably a studio with a leaky ceiling, faulty electrical wiring that reeks of cat urine and has a crack-house next door.
o Work. It'll be even sadder when I have to work a job that isn't as accommodating and doesn't pay me too much for the lab-monkey, button pushing work I do now.
o Digital cable and HBO/Showtime. Who knows how long I'll have to do without? But I refuse to go without at least a DSL line. I'll pimp myself on the streets before I ever have to hear that click-click-click then whir of the relic known as dial-up.

Things I won't miss:
o My stupid landlady who doesn't take care of shit and is being overly aggressive about selling her money trap house and not taking into account the fact that I still FUCKING LIVE HERE!!!
o Humidity...and bad hair.
o School. I can't pontificate about feminist scholarship any more.
o The fact that nobody around here uses a turn signal. Seriously, what's so hard about it? You don't even have to take your hand off of the steering wheel.
o Ohio valley crud. It'll be nice to have a sense of smell again.

movie reviewie

I saw Sin City this weekend. After reading Katie's glowing review of the movie I had really high expectations. Maybe they were too high because honestly, I couldn't really get into this flick. Granted, it is the rare movie that can do a comic or book justice on the big screen. But if you want my opinion (which you must because here you are reading a page devoted to my mental vomit) this was an amazingly stylized cliche wrapped in the vision of bad actresses with big boobs. I have to say though that I loved the look of the movie, the black and white with the occasional vivid splash of color, the portrayal of seedy urban decay, Clive Owen...but the rest of it just didn't do it for me. And for the love of god, this movie was LONG, REALLY LONG. It was like Return of the King...every time a vignette ended you thought, "Oh, this has to be it, I really have to pee." BUT IT NEVER WAS. There was always another story, and frankly I think I did irreparable damage to my bladder. If anybody else saw it, what did you think?

that's what friends are for

There is nothing worse than a person who tells you they are going to do something and then flakes without at least the courtesy of calling you and LYING about why they're blowing you off. Well maybe somebody who blows their nose while you're eating is worse...but it's definitely a close call.

birds and the bees

Ahhhh, spring. When the hazy blue skies and warm weather are mere indicators of the balmy sweaty summer months ahead, when hair like mine goes from just slightly frizzy to just slightly less attractive than Roseanne Roseanna Danna When the suburban automatons go out to their lush velvet yards and plant their hopeful spring gardens, hoping that by Memorial Day they'll have the best rhododendrons and roses on the block. When people start walking their dogs again and the amount of poo you have to dodge in the park increases trifold. When condom sales become inversely proportional to the amount of clothes people are wearing. I wish it were autumn.

touchy feely

What is it about drunk people that makes them think that touching is ok? I can barely stand people I know touching me, but then you throw in the drunk, spittle machine, sweaty stranger factor and ugh...geeerrooossss.

zestfully clean

I have a couple of extra minutes to post this morning because I CAN'T take a shower since I have one of those holter monitor heart thingies on. Let me tell you, wiping at your armpits with a towel is nowhere near scubbing at them in a burning hot shower. I feel gross. And sometime during the night one of the LEDs unplugged themselves so I'll have to start all over again. Bummer.

living on a prayer

If I win at least four numbers on my lottery ticket, I will IMMEDIATELY buy tickets for this.

imagine the world's most beautiful flower

Some things I just cannot understand. At work towards the end of the shift, we were standing around shootin' the shit as we were unusually slow. Somehow we ended up talking about autopsies and then the conversation turned to "What's the grossest thing you've ever seen?" I always lose this game because I can't even look at pictures of the Pope laid out, much less actually be near some lifeless body. So we're talking and then somehow we end up talking about doctor's visits and somewhere along the line I say "Yeah, I have a pap smear tomorrow." Judging by the uncomfortable silence and the uneasy shifting of eyes, you would have thought I had just admitted allegiance to al Qaida, the Nazis, and the Huns. So we can talk about the two week dead lady with maggots eating out her eyes or the burnt carcasses of a couple that had been caught cheating by the husband or the big fat loogie hanging out of a trache hole...but GOD FORBID I mention the routine exam on my cooter. For god's sake fifty-one percent of the planet have one, and about fifty-one percent of the planet want to have an intimate relationship with somebody else's. So what's with all the unease?

sports page

Granted I'm not much of a sports fan but I have to give it up to our basketball team. They competed against huge schools with much bigger programs and recruiting potential, were often considered the underdog and STILL managed to make it to the Final Four. U of L has had a really good year for sports and while it would have been sweet to graduate the same year the Cards won it all, you gotta admit this team was awesome.

official papers

Maybe I've seen While You Were Sleeping too many times, but today I went out and applied for a passport. I'm not really sure why, I have no out-of-country travel plans in the near future but I figure if I ever meet a old-monied Dutchman who wants to take me jetsetting throughout Europe on his dime, I might as well be prepared right? Anyway, part of the application process involves submitting your old passport, which I got when I was thirteen. Looking at the thirteen year old version of LisaM. and the twenty-nine year old version, I realized that I look exactly the same, and I do mean EXACTLY THE SAME. Even the postal worker was amazed. It's almost freakish, I am either extremely youthful looking now or I was really old looking when I was thirteen. Personally I'm going with the former as the narcissist in me refuses to believe that I'm aging, in fact in my mind whenever I picture myself I look just like I did when I was twenty. A little denial is good for the old self-esteem.

reality check

Last night I was running late and didn't get to class on time. On Tuesday the professor (the one I constantly complain about) had said something about maybe cancelling class because he had a colonoscopy on Wednesday. Honestly, I had really hoped he would cancel the class...the weather was perfect and it just seemed wrong to be cooped up in a windowless cell with a bunch of overly fake-baked sorority girls. So as I walk up to the building I see a girl that sits in front of me. "Hey, awesome...is class cancelled?" Then she looks at me with tears welling up in her eyes, "Dr. X came in, he's not teaching the class anymore, he just found out he has stage 4 cancer and only has a 1 in 20 chance of living a year, he started to tell us and then his face started getting really red and he started crying and walked out and didn't come back." Then tears started falling out of her eyes which were already captivating my attention because she had glitter eyeshadow on and the sun was really making the glitter twinkle, like a disco ball. Wow, talk about putting shit in perspective. I take back all the mean things I said and even thought about him and all of the things I had planned on writing on the student evaluations. I just can't imagine waking up in the morning thinking that your life was going as it should and then coming home that evening having been told that you are on death's doorstep.

lemon zinger

When a recipe calls for a 10x10 in. square pan, it REALLY isn't a good idea to use a 9 in. round cake pan in its place. This, at least according to the box, is SUPPOSED to be lemon bars. What it actually looks like is yellow lava.

i really have to change my yahoo profile...

Otherwise I will continue to have conversations like this (just a quick fyi, I only respond in this manner because it's funny not because I'm actually interested)

him: hello Maam. i was curious to know if you were looking for a slave to pleasure, please and amuse you? my approach is blunt but sincere. i am a submissive male and i am looking for an open minded woman who wishes to use me as she sees fit. i am not looking for cyber or a quickie either Maam
me: i need somebody to mow my lawn
him: check the yellow pages maam
me: well i guess you weren't being sincere when you said i could use you as i saw fit.
him: was very sincere but not just looking to be a yardboy maam
me: well then what kind of boy are you looking to be? a kitchen boy? a laundry boy?
him: sex toy slut maam
me: like a vibrator?
him: one use for me. yes maam
me: do you have a big penis?
him: no maam. only 7 inches.
me: how big around?
him: dont know maam. a good handful.
me: what do you look like? are you fat?
him: i can show you a picture maam. i can stand to lose a few punds but i am not fat.
and then he kept trying to send me a picture but that didn't work. Too bad, it probably would have gotten a lot funnier after that.

PS-M., see this is why I can't settle for the meatman! I would have to give up ALL OF THIS!!! It's just not fair to ask a person to do that is it?

kindness of strangers

Attention: To whomever keeps googling the phrases low hanging balls, big hanging balls, big hairy balls, and multiple other phrases that produce uncomfortable mental images...yeah I get it, you really seem to like balls. And because I am a thoughtful and caring person who loves nothing more than to give, here is your picture of low hanging balls. You can thank me by mailing me a fruit basket but if you don't mind, leave out the nuts...you've already done enough to associate my blog with testicles. I thank you.

friendly fire

It's true, I'm not a very nice person. I don't smile recklessly, I reserve them for special occassions like the fine china you only use for Christmas dinners. I don't do small talk, I think it is absolutely painful to sit around with people you don't know very well and have conversations about the weather and mulch, frankly if given the choice I might opt to eat my own vomit. Plus I have the unusual, uncanny ability to sabotage most of my existing relationships with my unrealistic expectations of people. And of course my unrelenting standards of others prevents the development of new relationships even though I certainly recognize that I'm no prize. So what does it all mean? I'm really fucking lonely right now. I think I need a hug.

first's the worst, second's the best, third's the fairy princess

Do you remember that book All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten? While I agree that the things we learn as children are the most important things we'll ever learn, this guy just has far too positive a spin on things for me. Here's what I think we all learned in kindergarten:
o Only share when people are looking so they think you're nice. Otherwise keep what's yours...selfishness has its own rewards.
o Choose friends and sides all the time, always make sure somebody feels left out. That feeling you get when you make other kids cry...it's called power, some day having this power will pay off.
o Don't hit people. There are MUCH better ways to hurt somebody...tell them you hate them and then tell everybody else they still pee in the bed. Emotional pain always hurts more than physical pain.
o Wash your hands before you eat...but not necessarily after you sneeze. Communicable diseases help boost your immune system. And hand-washing after booger picking? Don't even worry about that...just wipe it under your chair when nobody is looking.
o Don't take things that aren't yours, let the teachers take it away and then cry until they give it to you. Manipulation...almost as good as power.
o Boys have cooties.
o Even though you know you're a pretty girl...it's always a good idea to wear ribbons and curls because nothing is more satisfying then everybody telling you that you're pretty.
o Pick a new best friend everyday. To make sure all the kids want to be your best friend, always have an extra cupcake.
o Playing house is fun until people stop playing the way you think they should/the right way. Instead of compromising, kick them all out of your house. Compromise is for sissies.
o Never be the last kid chosen for anything. You may never be the best, but always make sure you're at least a little bit better than the worst kids.
*I'm sure this makes no sense, I'm really tired. I need a nappy.

sunuvah...

Shit Shit Shit! First of all, let me say that I loves me some ebay and I will do just about anything to save a buck or two. So I bought printer ink off of ebay recently because I use so much of it and twenty bucks for a teeny-tiny cartridge just seemed like way too much. Low and behold the stupid cartridges don't work...well no, they work but not very well. And now I have to turn in a shitty-looking assignment to a professor who already busts my balls (well proverbial balls anyway) about every little thing. Fuckity fucking fuck. And I don't have enough time to find my stupid memory stick, figure out how to use it, drive to school while having to stop and get gas because I was too lazy to fill up yesterday, run to the library or copy center, and then print the damn thing. And yeah you're probably right, I'm being way too dramatic about all of this.

post script

While talking to Katie about the stick-it game, we decided that no island adventure/catastophic event would be complete without the complete and unabridged set of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Of course all 150+ books would count as only one choice, because it's my sticky and I said so and it would inevitably help you with your survival skills.

eureka

Last night in the midst of my R.E.M. I had an epiphany. I remember waking up thinking..."Oh my god, THAT'S IT!!!" But I can't remember what jumble of hazy, dream induced thoughts brought about the revelation. Maybe it was the meaning of life, the steps to a successful future, the ultimate weapon to smite the people I find annoying like those with an overreaching sense of their own self-importance and superiority (unlike me who has the right amount...just a pinch, not quite half a teaspoon), or maybe it was just a little piece of subconscious-to-conscious girl-talk like, "stop eating raw onions at dinner, your morning-breath is unbearable, thank god you're single." I just don't know. I thought about keeping pad and pen near my bed so I could wake up and scribble down my cerebral noctural emissions, but I'm too lazy for that...I can barely get up the energy to make a grocery list half of the time, yes grocery lists are so suburban housewife but some habits are hard to shake. My life's worth of questions could verily be answered while I'm shrouded in my overly soft mink blanket choking on my own post-nasal drip, but I guess I'll never know.
PS-don't worry, mink is just an adjective...I only commit animal murder for sustenance and shoe-wearing.

five-oh

I haven't had that many run-ins with the police. I've never been arrested, I've never really even gotten in any trouble with the law other than traffic violations. So considering that I give the impression of being a law-abiding, respectable citizen...why do cops always have to act like total dicks when I am in a situation that requires the presence of a police officer? Is it because I don't do the whole damsel-in-distress, where-are-my-smelling-salts thing? Is it because I ask questions rather than just stand there and be appreciative because they've graced me with their time? My mom would say it's because I'm lippy, actually she would say "noh...doh...doh...mah-dee man-oh." But that shouldn't matter should it, because the police are there to do a job and helping me is part of their job...even if they don't particularly like me or what I stand for. How can you have faith in a person to help you when they've actively avoided helping you in the few instances that you've needed it? How can you put your faith in a person who lacks any visible signs of compassion and obviously missed the day they taught tact? Somebody who is more concerned with projecting an image of the tough-guy ball-buster than trying to find out negligible things like oh say truth and facts? Am I just having run-ins with the wrong officers?

sticky fingers

Yay for me...I got a shout-out from a person with a salon.com blog, which means they are well-read and not a cheap-ass like me and willing to pay for a salon.com subscription rather than sit through a daily barage of advertisements. So Andrew sent me a meme and I'm actually a little embarassed to answer it because then people will KNOW that I'm a complete dunce rather than merely suspecting it. Ahhh well, since I've always felt the need to make myself look ridiculous...here goes.

Stick It Game

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451; which book do you want to be?
From the first question I'm forced to bare my soul with one magnificently horrifying admission... I've never read Fahrenheit 451. BUT I HAVE AN EXCUSE, I SWEAR! I think I might have seen parts of the movie though...wow, I'm so ashamed.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I'm not completely sure what "crush" really means here. Did I find myself attracted to a character? Sure...I think it would be almost impossible to connect with a book and not find some measure of attraction to the characters in it.

The last book you bought was:
I like to cruise the clearance rack at Borders which means you don't really get top quality selections (I know...I'm just making excuses now), so the last book I bought but haven't read is The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith.

The last book you read:
The last book I read in its entirety was Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It was hilarious but very similar to Fight Club, so I'm guessing that all of Palhniuk's books touch on the same themes.

What are you currently reading?
Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice. Clearly a textbook, I haven't read a real honest to goodness book in a long long time.

Five books you would take to a desert island:
Wow, this is a tough one. I'm assuming this question means that you're chances of being rescued are pretty small so you better choose books that you wouldn't mind reading over and over again.

For practicality's sake I would have to choose, Living Off the Land: Tracking, Building Traps, Shelters, Toolmaking, Finding Water and Food because otherwise I would spend my days questioning why I was on the last scrap of land that didn't have a Starbucks within walking distance.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King, I can't really say why but I really like this book.
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb because I read this book and I find the similarities between the main character and myself frightening.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
Any of The Far Side collections. No matter how many times I see those cartoons, I always laugh and I suspect that you would need the laughs. Of course when you introduce the collection to your volleyball-shaped friend, it'll be like discovering the humor for the first time and you can sit back and giggle under your breath while Wilson looks at them. Good times...good times.

new orleans sights

From left to right, top to bottom
o Parade through Bourbon street
o Lots of feral cats in New Orleans, but look how civilized they are
o Cops in N.O. get Vespas. How awesome is that?
o Strolling through the French Quarter
o Cathedral in Jackson Square
o The Natchez steamboat
o Inside the cathedral
o Supposedly the oldest pub in the French Quarter
o Lafayette Cemetery #1
o Local flower...the something iris
o Former residence of Anne Rice
o Bourbon Street
o Bourbon Street balcony
o Jackson Square
o The world reknowned Pat something or other bar
o Pigeons cashing in on leftover beignets at Cafe du Monde

singularly random

I would have to say that one was my magic number in N'awlins. Everything pretty much happened just once.
o Some random drunk man at a bar handed me a dollar bill. First he asked me if I wanted the dollar and I was definitely suspect..."You're giving me a dollar just to give me one?" yes. "I don't have to do anything for it?" yes. So I reached for the dollar like a dog reaches for a treat from a stranger. I don't even remember if I said thanks because it was just so WEIRD. Drunk people are awesomely random.
o I suffered a random head injury because one of the thousands of suits in the city (due to a cell-phone industry conference) threw a set of beads off of a balcony and they hit me in the head. At the VERY moment the plastic weapons of mass inebriation were diving towards the pepetual target that is my head, I was telling Katie..."Knowing my luck, I'll get beaned in the head with...OWWWWWWW"
o I met some guy who was from San Bernadino (although that in itself isn't amazing since S.B. is huge) but it's still pretty random considering that Katie and I were drunkenly giving compliments to people who walked past us and he was the first person to stop and chat.
o Got a psychic tea-leaf reading. It was everything I expected, just a bunch of generalizations to make a person feel good about their life...I didn't fall for it, optimism is for suckers. Let's see in a year I will meet the most amazing person, my twin flame and I will have the ability to make lots of money since I'm heading into a new four-year cycle of life. Katie had a cooler experience. We have it all on tape.
o At some random half-empty bar, we started talking to a pretty hot guy with a very large suitcase. Turns out he's a magician and he talks to us for a bit and then does a magic trick for us involving two rubberbands. Mind over matter.
o Tried almost every "famous" N'awlins food tradition once...gumbo, red beans & rice, jambalaya, po-boy, muffaletta, etc. Except for the beignets...we had those twice...they were yummy-yummy fried death covered in powdered sugar.
o Once, just once...the number of times I got so drunk that I vomited up everything from my tongue to my rectum. It was the day we left, lesson learned....no binge drinking the night before you head out on an eleven hour drive.
o Got a discount at this awesome little shop Roadkill, from one sexy biker dude. How did I get the discount? By speaking Chinese...who knew that the Zhong-wen would come in handy?
o And so on and so on. N'awlins is a crazy city.
PS-Yes, I saw boobs. Yes, I have beads. NO, I did not "earn" them.

dear blog. stop.

Just arrived home STOP Have so much to tell STOP But first must unpack and get much needed rest and shower STOP Will talk again soon STOP
LisaM.

do or die

I just woke up, not less than twenty or so minutes ago. I didn't go to work which was probably a very bad thing since we had our big-time inspection today. I also didn't go to school. I'm sure most of you are cursing my slothful ways but dammit I'm sick. At least I think I am, why else would my body be shutting itself down and going into hibernation mode, spring is here after all. Ahhhh, but therein lies the problem...spring means allergies and being as how we live in the armpit of the Ohio valley, where allergens are more plentiful than bad drivers...well my allergies have made me sick. My head feels like somebody snuck in at night and inserted two lead weights right in my sinuses. My ears itch like crazy, an itch no amount of Q-tips shoved dangerously into my ear canal can fix. Post-nasal drip is making my throat hurt, in fact I believe that my throat is plotting my demise... probably a scheme hatched up with my liver, who's still mighty angry with me because of my overindulgence in the drink. See late at night while I'm sleeping, my sinuses (who are also in on the act) start producing gobs of snot that goes down my throat and pools right by my airway. So I wake up coughing and sputtering, choking on my body's reaction to the hopefullness of spring. Down with spring, fall forever.

ready, steady, go

oClean house so housesitter doesn't find pizza boxes under the bed, wads of tissue stuffed in the couch, and...ahem...inappropriate videos laying around? CHECK
o Guilt trip father into giving spending cash? CHECK
o Pack totally age inappropriate outfits with lots of pink and Sanrio? CHECK
o Pack make-up worthy of any of the gals from Priscilla Queen of the Desert to include ridiculously and dangerlously long fake eyelashes? CHECK
o Bathe dog so dogsitter doesn't think I'm a terrible doggie-mommy and not give Iniki gobs of love and attention as punishment? CHECK
o Slough and shave off entire winter's worth of nasty dead skin so feet can look passibly sandal worthy? CHECK
o Buy Chaser tablets to ensure there are no over-the-top public displays of drunkeness? CHECK
o Say aloha to blog, see you in a week, provided I don't end up in the slammer or end up a super-sexy-sidekick/slave to a voodoo priest like in the best Bond flick EVER, Live and Let Die? CHECK
o Toodles people...don't miss me too much...no actually miss me a lot, it bolsters my inflated sense of ego.

clean and close

o For some reason I felt compelled to trim my arm hairs today, well not for JUST some reason but because of the influence of peer pressure. So I charged up my electric shaver thingie and you know what I discovered? You can hurt yourself just as easily with an electric shaver as you can with a razor. God I'm a dumbass.
o I did okay on my midterm yesterday. At least I thought I did okay. Who knows how he'll actually grade it.
o I cut my hair fairly short. I like it except I wake up with some seriously nasty bedhead now. I scared myself this morning.
o I also woke up this morning with the zit from HELL. Any minute I expect it to pop open and spiders come crawling out like in Serpent and the Rainbow.
o Two more days until I'm in New Orleans. Heeheeheee, I'm so excited.

wrap up

o I thought higher education was supposed to be about critical thinking, so why the hell am I doing rote memorization. If professors want somebody to spew their own thoughts right back at them, buy a fucking parrot.
o Just finished watching America's Next Top Model (cause Katie is a bad influence). What kind of message is this show giving girls? Don't be fat (and by fat I mean 138 pounds on a 5'10" body) cause that makes you NOT HOT...but you can act like a total asswipe, give everybody attitude and because you supposedly look FIERCE then the world will forgive your every trespass. That's right, fuck being a good person...just look good for the camera...consider that lifetime supply of ex-lax and ipecac an investment in your future.
o I pay how many thousands of dollars per semester? And my tuition keeps going up and up and up so that the athletic department gets enough money to pay seven figure salaries to coaches who'll sell their souls to every local business that'll pay them a few bucks. So when you mail me my final "How'd we do?" survey like the one's you find next to the syrup station at iHop...would it be too much trouble to include a fucking postage paid envelope?
o I have to stop measuring myself against all of the other hapa people out there. It's demoralizing.

sally's kids

I need to find a charitable organization willing to offset the high cost of inebriation by giving me money for my vacation. Either than or I am going to have to start selling my body and/or its various organs. Generally I don't care very much about money, as long as the basics are covered... you know designer clothes, bottled French water, fancy restaraunts, plastic surgery, status car, houseboy...then I'm fine. But since lately I seem to have less and less of the cashola, it's importance has been growing. My poor sad little checking account...once so voluptuous and Rubenesque, now suffering from anorexia and a really bad case of the shits...I weep for it. Of course I could cut back on my expenditures but honestly I would give up food and quite possibly electricity before I give up HBO, Showtime, or cable internet, especially since Deadwood and The L Word just started, for I love any shows that liberally sprinkle the words cocksucker and twat throughout. Maybe I should start one of those websites where I beg for money because I would rather not reap the consequences of my own stupidity and irresponsbility when I can mooch off the kindness of morons...ooops, I meant strangers, hell it worked for her...maybe I should ask her to spot me a couple of Bens.

and then

o I'm so tired. So tired that I can't sleep because my body is drowning in adrenaline and unhealthy amounts of caffeine. I read once that sleep deprivation gives a better high than any drug. I wonder how long you need to go without sleep for that to happen, before the hallucinations and paranoia start?
o I love the smell of the air when it's pregnant with rain, that slightly metallic smell that reminds me of the sensation you get when you put a 9V battery on your tongue. Maybe I don't love that smell so much as a I miss that smell, that's what home smells like.
o I had more fun this weekend than I have had in a long long time. I actually remembered what it was like to have a real life, not the semi-agoraphobic life I've had for the past few years. But I went to a place with the most revolting bathrooms I have ever seen in my entire life...well maybe not as disgusting as the outhouses in basic training...but pretty damn close.
o In one week I'll be in New Orleans with Katie, taking vampire tours and snapping pictures of the front of Anne Rice's house, eating beignets and drinking cafe au lait al fresco, sitting in intricately wrought iron chairs, going out to bars and hearing rumors that Lindsay Lohan might be making an appearance that night, looking for a real voodoo shop and having a psychic reading that will hopefully involve a chicken's foot and dust from the ground bones of somebody's great-grandmother who had the gift and passed it on to the person in front of me, maybe actually believing when they tell me something specifically vague like "your money will be tight for the next year but then it'll get better, and love is waiting for you but you're not ready to accept it." It's gonna be great. I'll take a ton of touristy pictures with no artistic value whatsoever for people to enjoy or criticize.

pants on fire

Distraction plays a very important role in my life, though usually not a positive one. I get distracted often. Sometimes I have trouble maintaining a conversation because I'll see a fly or somebody with a bright colored piece of clothing will walk by. Tonight I was backing into the driveway and I heard a weird crunching sound under my tire and got really distracted because I was worried that I was driving on the next door lawn, which would be a bad way to start off a new neighbor relationship. So I'm looking at the lawn and forget that my foot is still on the gas and BAM, I run into the fence. So I broke the fence, but it's still standing and I mostly got it back into place. And the obviously broken parts...well the landlady has ivy and morning glories growing all along it so come spring time when I vacate these premises...the plants will cover the splintered wood. I've already rationalized not telling her about it (ie lying) by mentally tallying all of the slum-lord things she's done like A. not fixing the gutters so that the porch becomes the super-slippery path of death or dismemberment after it rains or B. the fact that she didn't mention the fact that the cracks in the house let out all the heat so even though I leave my house at an average of 58 degrees, I still pay a two-hundred dollar electricity bill. What's a shitty, moldy three foot fence compared to that?

serenity now

If I ever end up in a comaor lose my mental faculties with ageor go completely bonkersor if my glorious mane thins and my strands become limp and stringyPLEASE for the love of all things good in the world, NEVER EVER let me believe for one moment that a perm is a good idea.

second guessing

Have I mentioned that I'm planning on moving back to Washington (state not DC, although I wouldn't mind living in DC again)? Yep, after this semester ends, the family is trucking on over to Kentucky to watch me graduate and then help me move. I really don't know how to feel about all this, I definitely have mixed emotions. On the one hand, it will be nice to be near the family again and it'll be cool to reconnect with the few people I still know. And it'll be nice to live somewhere a little more accepting and diverse...not that Louisville is all that bad, but I hope never to hear phrases like "that neighborhood is getting dark" again. And Louisville is known for NOT having a "scene" for younger people, particularly single people in my age bracket...it's all about the family unit here. But on the other hand I'm reluctant to go back because I have a certain sense of security here, I have a decent job and I can mostly afford to live on my own here, unlike in Washington where I am doomed to either live with my mother or live with roommates, neither of which is a prospect I look forward to. I can most likely get into the graduate program of my choice here. Honestly though, I think worst part of this moving thing is the idea that in ten years, my life has gone in a big circle. In ten years I'll have ended up exactly where I started...the only difference being that I'm older, fatter, even more cynical, and incredibly jaded...not really the way to start buildling a "new" life I suspect. And I know my fear/reluctance/second-guessing is nothing unique, I know that everybody asks the same questions. But if everybody has asked...shouldn't somebody know the answer?

question?

How do people manage to finish school in four years and then go on to grad school and finish that before age 28? I realize now that I never should have put off going to school. I am seriously questioning my ability to make it through this last semester. Not because the classes are even remotely difficult, but simply because my motivation level decreases exponentially the closer I get to graduation. What ever happened to the second wind? That last minute burst of energy that propels you across the finish line where you collapse into a pool of your own sweat and bile? And then there's the whole matter of what to do post graduation. I know I need to go on to grad school because my degree is even less useful than a solitary square of one-ply toilet paper, but just thinking about it gives me a huge brain-ache (not the same ache that get from my requisite skull abuse mind you). Plus I haven't taken any steps to get into grad school. I'm fooling myself into thinking that I'll just take a year off...which incidentally I told myself at eighteen and that turned into ten years off. It's inevitable that I'll end up either (A.) testing vials of blood, piss, and shit for the rest of my life or (B.) working as a barista at some corporate coffee wasteland.PS-I heart I Heart Huckabees