Changing My Spots

Because I know at least one of you—which might, in fact, be ALL of you, especially after so many recent and repetitive hiatuses (or would that be hiati?)—reads this sporadic site through a feeder, I also know that you might not notice the fact that I've changed my spots here. Unless, that is, I ANNOUNCE the change, and ask Little Girl here to assist me, thereby exponentially upping the blog's Cute Factor (however temporarily ... hey, THAT works!).

(Here she is!)



So if you can't see it through your feeder, please check out my actual site and—if you're feeling especially bold—let me know what you think of it!

(A real post is coming later today. Yes, really. And then on a REGULAR BASIS ... really ... possibly even while Little Girl and I are BACK IN WYOMING for an upcoming week-long VACATION! Where we will be taking oodles of pictures, and trying to avoid the GIANT PUMA that is roaming the woods near the cabin where we'll be staying with The Ornithologist.

We Can't. WAIT!)

Going Gray

I could blame The Exotic Neurotic for my current fixation with gray. It was, after all, the fashion magazine she loaned me—pure fluff, for an obsession-free half-hour's reading, or so I thought!—that started it all. But I don't need her to point out that I'm plenty obsessive all on my own, so I don't think I really want to go there.

She'll tell me what she thinks. I must be prepared if I want to invoke the dreaded honesty!

Anyway, so The Exotic Neurotic loaned me last month's issue of this magazine, and it was fun to laugh at pair after pair of impossible shoes, each set of which cost more than my whole working wardrobe, and butt-ugly dresses, some of which cost more than my car. Hey, if you can't laugh at the foibles of people who are rich enough to look Damn Good but just end up looking Damned, who can you laugh at?

Right. There's always Rat and Pig. The Apocalyptic Refrigerator series? Best. Comic. EVER.

But I digress. Which means I'm doing a reasonable impersonation of my "normal self," which I guess is good. So. About that magazine!

Things were going along blissfully fine until I got to the page that had the giant-ass bottle of spilled-out nail-polish in what looked to be a deep shade of gray, which I had never before seen in a nail polish. Light gray, sure! Verrrry, very light, which is pretty much not gray at all, but more of a special shade of white. Which hardly seems daring at all, much less worth featuring in the same issue that includes shoes that have a heel designed to look like it's on sideways.

But a deeper gray, a really GRAY gray—now THAT was unusual. And I thought, Wow. That's stupid. What kind of ninny would wear something like that? And yet, I couldn't get it out of my head, and much later in the night, I found myself looking for this odd shade of gray online. Which was where I found out it wasn't actually a deep gray at all, but more of a shallow, light gray, the likes of which the world had seen many times before—or at least once or twice.

See?

The problem was, you see, that I'd been reading the magazine while wearing sunglasses. Therefore, the light gray had appeared darker—substantially darker, in fact—than it actually was. Which was all rather funny, but of course, not being able to get the shade I thought I wanted (nevermind that it was going to cost $18 to get it, because OH YES, I was really, seriously considering GOING THERE, and nevermind that it had originally struck me as just plain dumb) made me want it more.

Why? Because I need a hobby, obviously. It's a distraction, people. A distraction from the winter blahs, the doldrum of gray skies, and ... wait. Okay, so maybe I was just trying to blend in. Reason has OBVIOUSLY been long-since surpassed by obsession here, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?

My point was that I was going to get the gray I thought I saw, and that was that. After establishing that such a shade did not exist in unnature (aka, the local mall), I found myself in the local Walgreens, which OH MY GOD, is a story unto itself, but it's pretty gross, so let's stick to the bit where I found Sinful Colors—a great name all by itself—"Black on Black" polish sitting right next to "Snow Me White" polish, at which point a little night-light went off over my head and I thought, Aha! I WILL MAKE MY OWN GRAY NAIL POLISH! And it will be good!

Or something.

In the process of researching the gray I sought—a matte-gray, mind you, NOT a glittery one, for I am not four years old, despite all mental appearances to the contrary—I had happened upon a delicious description of a shade someone else possessed (at only $8 a bottle, it was a relative steal, but by this time, I was not about to WAIT for it to be shipped to me from who-knows-where), and it was this: "gun-metal gray."

Due to my now compoundly-fractured brain, I had taken this as my cause ... my new quest ... MY HOLY GRAIL OF FINGER-NAIL POLISH, if you will, and what a stupid expression, because even if you won't, I will, so who cares if you won't? Well, you do, but I digress again.

Naturally, once fully committed—yes, I really should have been—I did, in fact, succeed marvelously at creating a shade of gray that very much did match my good old .12-gauge shotgun's metal barrel ... after I dusted it off, that is. The problem this time was was that this shade is virtually indistinguishable from BLACK, once applied to one's nails and seen under normal lighting. Even though if you put your hand next to something that's really, truly black and squint, you can totally tell that it's actually gray.

Being far too lazy to remove ye olde "Too Gray" polish, I waited a week before dumping a strategic quantity out and pouring a similar amount of white into the formerly "Black on Black" bottle. Much mixing ensued, leading me to conclude that if I ever do have my dream "Build a Nail-Polish Workshop" kiosk in the local mall, it eally will have to include one of those AWESOMELY VIGOROUS paint-shaker things—scaled down to size, of course, because nobody needs THAT much nail polish (well, maybe elephants do, but I don't think they'd be looking for shades of gray anyway).

But then. Oh, then! My quest hath ended, and I am now sporting a nice, deep, really-GRAY-but-also-definitely-not-black nail polish, the likes of which THE WORLD HAS NEVER KNOWN BEFORE! Unless somebody else had this idea first, which kind of pisses me off, so let's pretend I'm special, shall we? Great; thanks.

In conclusion, I will admit that the irony of the fact that I put so much time and effort into getting gray ON my fingernails while I have been known to put similar time and effort into getting gray OFF of my hair follicles does not escape me. Just so you know.

And my gray? I will name him "George." Because, while I cannot HUG him and SQUEEZE him and PET him and PAT him, he has amused and entertained me, and that's good enough for now.

Cat and Mouse

FRISKitty is, as her blogname implies, more of a playful feline than a snuggly one. She frolics at whim and runs at whimsy, sometimes pausing in her pursuit of—or by—nothing whatsoever to sit momentarily, tense and wary, her ears flattened against the back of her head and then turning this way and that, to see if she can hear the quiet padding of invisible feet. And then, with a Mrrrt! instead of a "Beep-beep-zip-BANG!" she is off again, traveling at the cat equivalent of warp speed.

As a stray, homeless and Kate-Moss-skinny, she learned to hunt, and learned it well. In the few days after she found us when we had not yet brought her in, I saw her dispatch a mouse on the lawn, and trot by with a garter snake from I wasn't quite sure where. She ate asparagus out of the garden—a trick she has not cared to repeat since arriving in of doors, where a bowl of crunchy, easy-to-pounce-upon crumpets awaits her always. But she has dispatched a disturbing number of mice here, too, only doing so more with an attitude of intensely-engaged play than for survival.

FRISKitty can be quite tolerant, and was so of Little Girl from the very beginning. She would permit Little Girl to carry here hither and yon outside, and inside, she continues to do so ... to this very day, although she will now, on occasion, protest such treatment with loud, warning MROWWWWLLing, and is sometimes driven to run and hide. She is also very good at hiding, although Little Girl caught on to the tunnel-space behind the couch fairly quickly.

In her rare moments of lap-kitty-dom, FRISKitty is no less charming than in her high-speed rocket-cat states. Perhaps because these times are so very much not the norm, I am more than willing to put off other tasks to have my currently-too-ample belly roughly massaged by kneading cat feet. The rough, grumbling purr that accompanies such tummy-rearranging is not so much soothing, but it is extremely charming, accompanied by the sight of FRISKitty's typically wide eyes narrowed into half-sleeping bliss, and the occasional butting of her furry head against my chin as if to say, "Oh yeah. It doesn't get any better than this! And you know it."

Recently, FRISKitty has noted that she has more chances to assault my lap when I am reading blogs than in my more unusual moments of television-watching. Having her pop up into my lap at such times is bittersweet, because Old Lady Cat—who is still moving along, albeit stiffly and in the confines of the bedroom, with occasional bathtub privileges—was the one who previously took advantage of those times. But FRISKitty has never been one to be anyone other than herself, and so she does not often descend up into my lap at such times, which makes it alright with me. Though I am glad Old Lady Cat can't see it, as she would most haughtily not approve of even the most casual usurping of my lap.

Anyway, not long after the unfortunate demise of my $2.50 laser pointer/pet entertainment device, FRISKitty leapt up into my lap as I read the latest writings of my favorite bloggers. She kneaded enthusiastically, she gazed into my face with her typically unguarded uninhibitedness, and she eventually settled into a half-nested position, facing the same direction that I was. And as she sat there, relaxed, and I read there, absorbed, something strange happened.

I didn't notice it at first, so subtle was the catching of mellow FRISKitty's attention, but soon her posture unfolded to full alertness again, her eyes locked with the mouse. Blissfully unaware, I read on, flipping from one subscription to another with practiced ease that didn't feel very quick, but must have been. For after a moment, FRISKitty leaned forward, and now my attention was engaged.

"What are you doing, silly?"

FRISKitty did not answer, of course, but her scholarly posture of alert awareness said it all. She was watching something, and she was watching it carefully. Because I didn't see what that something was, I went back to my reading, although it was moderately subdued by the knowledge that there might be something small, gray, and furry out there, nearby.

And then, it happened: the cord got stuck. I pulled it briskly, which is usually enough to dislodge it, and FRISKitty could not contain herself any longer. She lunged across the keyboard and lifted one paw, and as she batted, curious, at the strange little arrow that zipped this way and that across the monitor, I finally understood that she'd been absorbed by my mouse pointer, there on the screen.

Yes, where a cheap laser pointer had failed, regular mousing motions had succeeded, and FRISKitty stayed there for some time, moving her head this way and that, tracking the rapid path of her virtual prey with more curiosity than determination. And she put one paw up lightly to try to stop the thing, until I realized that, should she decide to engage another paw, the monitor would be in more than a little danger.

I sure hope this story doesn't end the way Harriet's did.

Reading, My Alethiometer

As a child, I got into science fiction early and read it often. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of the adventures I had while reading, absorbed into the splendid, thought-provoking and artfully described places of another person's imaginings.

No fancy pants or frilly dolls for me, oh no. And when my collection of largely genre-specific books outgrew its three-level shelf, I advanced it across the top, and into a second row on each of the three levels after that, aided by length-cut-to-fit 2x4s hidden behind the first rows. Once the reading bug has bitten you, it's hard to shake the stubborn beast loose, and that goes at least double for the robot insect of science fiction—it also has deep-embedding fangs rather than tiny little bug teeth.

In the beginning, I believe there may have been an odd fantasy tale or two betwixt the mostly hard science fiction stories that lined my shelves like double-walled reality insulation. But I soon disdained that related genre, finding such things generally difficult to read, or beyond my brain's ability to fully saturate within.

The dragons, ye see, more often than not, spoke in riddles, peppered with undefined terminology, and their worlds were often over-spiced with political intrigue that frustrated my ability to comprehend it, and prevented me from enjoying it.

The intervening years, of grown-uppedness and child-rearing and mundane concerns like eating and paying the mortgage, have been largely reading-free. There's even a few parenting books sitting straight, alone, and dusty where the shiny legion of science fiction once reigned—science fiction, with cracked bindings to attest to great and frequent use. Somewhere after college, I ran out of time or will or perhaps even need to drown myself in worlds where I was challenged in ways that were sure to make me happy, and make me more than I was—worlds that, unlike this one, didn't stand a chance of hurting me or making me withdraw further into myself.

But the controversy over The Golden Compass, and the strong endorsement of The Righter for the quality of the story behind the heated debate of its thematic and/or designed heresy, overrode the practice and practicality of those lean science fiction years. And not even my discovery that The Golden Compass was of the personally-trying fantasy genre would deter me, no! I bought it while Little Girl was cheerfully engaged in obliterating her first Christmas bookstore gift certificate and moving right over to tap into the second.

It took me three days to read it, and considering that I can't recall the last time I blazed through a book with such fervor, that's saying a lot about The Golden Compass right there. I suppose you could argue that I was starved for a fortifying fantasy, or dehydrated for want of a quenching draught of theme. If you didn't like the book yourself, you might say I'm just a reading-deprived idiot, and that's fine, too, because I had so much fun reading that damn book that I don't much care what you say, whoever you are, because you probably don't like melodic death metal, either!

HERETIC!

I would've read the book in one day, frankly, but I doubt my boss at corporate would have approved of me extending my half-hour luncheon to an all-day, fantasy affair, and so it was two days before the blessed weekend, and on Saturday, I devoured the remainder with ferocious joy. It was good! It was engaging! It was clever and elaborate and intricate and it turned a few facets of our too-real world around and examined them from the perspective of an alternate reality, largely unbound by our feeble constraints.

Whatever else it may be to those who have—and have not—read it, to me, it was sweet release from a place where the basic rules of time and space are a lot harder to break, and it was so far removed and so clearly defined in its fantasy-ness that I had no difficulty whatsoever distinguishing it from reality. Not for a moment, not even that long, blissful succession of moments that I was plucked out of reality and suspended somewhere else, somewhere that tested my ability to comprehend things I had failed to imagine for myself, and tried my skill to do so even as it was neatly spelled out before me.

So what I'm saying, my invisible friends, is that I LIKED The Golden Compass. I liked it a lot, and I bought the two books that complete the trilogy rather than groceries yesterday, because although the supplies are running down, there's still some dry pasta in the pantry, but what I need right now is some rich, saucy food for thought.

(I'll comment on the controversy after I finish feasting, although that may take some time, because I'm not going to binge, no matter how difficult the temptation—otherwise, that darn novel is never going to get done!)

Warm Solstice Wishes

900 red lights—and one totally awesome remote-control—later, I'm happily crossing #9 off my list.

Oh. And #5, too! :)

Rated "B" For Blathering

Whilst merrily following links the other day—we've miraculously and finally graduated from dial-up to high-speed here, and it's simply amazing how much fun it is to go hither and yon in BlogWorld, visiting all those places I'd only heard of before, and doing so WITHOUT having to walk away from the computer to do something else as they load onto the screen—I happened across a little badge somewhere out there (actually, it was here), and the badge said:



And that is, actually, exactly what the badge said when I went to the linked page (click the badge; I can't seem to make a straight link work) and entered the URL of my clean little blog of sweet wholesome purity. Yes! This one! (I know. Bear with me here.)

What was funny about this result was not so much the rating—although, if my blog can only score an NC-17, I have to wonder what foul depth one must sink to in order to procure a rating of R (and let's just leave the pirate jokes out of it, shall we?)—but rather the alleged reasoning behind it. For, neatly and clearly printed underneath my family-unfriendly blog rating were these words: "This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words" and printed under THAT, in this alerting color, were these words:

hell (4x)      orifice (3x)     bitch (2x)     death (1x)

Now. Presuming you've managed to miss the post that's generated me the most comments in, well, EVER (and also presuming that you won't bother to click a link that drops you precisely one blog entry down the page, because I wouldn't want you to endure that—it's embarrassing enough when I create the link myself), you might not be aware that said post contains the following:

fuck (6x)     ass (2x)     demon (1x)     shit (1x)     whore (1x)

As an aside, I must add that it's amusing to me to see Notepad come back from a Find with the following: "Cannot find 'asshole'" (Yes, as a matter of fact, I do laugh like Beavis; why do you ask?)

Anyway, I'm sure it doesn't seem plausible, but my point here is not to use as much gratuitous vile and unimaginative language as possible—two posts in a row—because goodness knows I have other septic systems of posting which I should like to plumb, and if I manage to get my crap together (I love a good pun, and I'm also fond of bad one), my next post will demonstrate this quite nicely. But in all seriousness, LOOK at the latter list! It's monstrous huge! And FOUL ... so very impressively, disturbingly FOUL!

Mind you, it's nice to have my reaction to the snigger-inducing "Orifice Chart" I encountered early in my corporate adventure officially confirmed as accurate, but at the same time, since when is "orifice" on par with "hell?" After all, I was quoting a chart from a publication at my corporate employer, and I do not, in fact, work in the pornography industry, thankyouverymuch.

And as long as I'm questioning such things, when did "hell" (suitable for use in many houses of worship), "bitch" (Bitch, a dog, a fe-male dog) and better yet, "DEATH" (the one thing other than birth that every single human being WILL endure at some point or another) become equivalent with scoring points for parental intervention?

It's not that I wish to make the case for blog ratings more inflated than it should be—and for the record, no, I don't think this rating badge is an authority on the subject simply by virtue of its existence—but I do wish to make the case for context, and argue that it is practically impossible to definitively state that ANYTHING is profane or even merely inappropriate without first placing it into context. Though I will grant that I'm fairly certain that when the rating site encountered "bitch" on my blog, I likely wasn't using it to refer to the resident female dog.

But the point is that there's many a precious young preschooler, who is not even quite capable of pottying, who has already been introduced not only to death, but to a gruesome, painful, grotesque sort of death—that of Jesus Christ. Sunday Schools all around the world use this context on a routine basis, people, and especially at this time of year! Again, it's unlikely that I was using that particular context in my blog, but as I have at least once in the past, how might a blog-reading robot have been able to make the <2.2-second call that I was using "death" in an unsuitable-for-chilluns context?

I guess what I'm saying is that in blogs, movies, or even—dare I say it, well HELL YES I DO—life, there is no substitution that can compare to the careful and considered opinion that one is capable of rendering only upon actually reading or seeing or experiencing. Anyone can make a decision about whether to do those things in the first place—I, for example, shall hereby NOT be attempting to scale Mount Everest—but it's simply not possible to stake any sort of reasoned claim on true understanding without some aspect of personal involvement—which is to say, that I can't say how stupidly wrong climbing Mount Everest is, when I have not done it, because I don't actually know anything more than my own glaring reluctance to give it a try. (And a whole lot of money, and a big chunk of time, and brass ones the approximate size of Rhode Island.)

I think this is the fringe edge upon which we often do not fear to tread when we decide—likely rightly so—that this blog or that movie or whatever else is not right for us. The mistake is not inherently here, but it lies in extending our certitude from ourselves out to any number of other people, some of whom may be perfectly suited to whatever it is that we are not. We can generalize on age and all sorts of things—like, say, the word "orifice"—but it's a thin line away from stereotyping, particularly when it's demonstrably obvious that something was overlooked, or glossed over, or COMPLETELY MISSED, à la "fucking motherfucker" (2x).

That being said (with apologies to The Righter for the use of that icky phrase), I cannot quite think of an instance in which the term "fucking motherfucker" can be led smoothly into the happy realm of appropriateness. Damn it.


Addendum: My list of forbidden words has improved substantially with this here post, but my rating remains NC-17. Oh, and "suck" and "crap" are naughty words, too, but "ass," "demon," and "shit" are apparently okay. Just so you know.

She Had A Name?

There is an astonishing amount of crap TV available, and if I had discovered it sooner in my unemployment, I would have still been depressed and stressed and some other -ressed, but I would NOT have been unenlightened. Oh no. Because if I'd seen this particular episode of Beauty and The Geek—a show I had never before had the opportunity to get braindrained into watching, primarily due to the fact that I'm washing dishes and shit when prime-time, non-rerun versions air—I'd've come to a startling conclusion that I really should have realized long ago, when I could have used it more to my advantage.

(Also, I would have learned that there IS a logical explanation for all of the boob jobs I've berated on Dr. 9O21O.)

Anyway, so although I'm really not up on Beauty and The Geek's basic premise—if there is one—what I did gather was this: that book-smart men are paired with beautiful women, and the teams of two work together in various competitions to eliminate other pairs. Although, while they do study together—the men helping the women learn their intellectual lesson for the week, and the women helping the men learn their weekly social (for lack of a better word) lession—the compete in gender-separated trials.

For example, in the episode I saw, the women to learn about certain aeronautics/space exploration, and the men were to learn about "things women talk about." Note that my understanding of the posed challenges is very loosely translated, as I actually missed the first ten minutes of the show, and my strategic use of quotation marks is colored by the fact that while I do enjoy reading about certain celebrity exploits, I do not, as a general rule, try to talk to men about them.

The women were then directed to give a tour at a museum featuring aviation and space flight exhibits, and were rated on their performances. And that was all fine and moderately amusing, but what really got my attention was the men's competition. They were led into a room, instructed to draw what was about to be placed in front of them, and then confronted with a naked female model with, as one of the men put it, "the biggest breasts I've ever seen." During the 20 minutes in which they were given to produce their charcoal sketches, the model talked nonstop, providing them with details on everything from her name to the movie she'd watched the night before, her likes and dislikes, and a whole bunch of prattling crap that I honestly didn't care at all about, and neither did the men, feeling pressured to produce a decent image of her while she moved and talked. And talked and talked.

After the judge evaluated the drawings—which were really quite damn funny, especially one craptacular rendition of one of the model's breasts as the center of the solar system, with men revolving around it—the men were then told that the true competition had yet to begin, and they were now going to be asked questions about things the model had said and eliminated from the game based when they failed to answer correctly.

Good stuff, right? Sucks you right into it, wanting to see boob-enamored males try to answer details on the woman's dogs or whatever else, right? Except that they didn't even make it that far. Three men (out of seven total) were eliminated because they didn't know the woman's name and three more were eliminated because they didn't know the name of the movie she'd watched the preceding evening. Which might even be understandable if she'd buried this information in between trivia about manicures or some fucking thing, but these were THE FIRST THINGS SHE SAID. And only ONE MAN could answer TWO QUESTIONS correctly!

I know any of you who haven't cured your insomnia already are just as curious as all heck what I learned from this, that I should have already known. Because otherwise you wouldn't still be reading. Oh, yes, I guess you would, because when you have insomnia, you do read stupid things to try to get to sleep. But nevermind that. What I learned, for good and for all, is the TRUE POWER of the almighty boob. I've heard it's possible to incapacitate a male with these things, but I did not BELIEVE until I saw men unable to remember something as tragically simple as a woman's name after being zapped by the mere sight of her boobs. Granted, impressively massive boobs, but boobs nonetheless.

Oh, I get it now. I do! Beauty and The Geek has shown me the truth, and I am SO going to use my "powers" for evil instead of good. And why not? There's not going to be a clear consensus on my name afterwards, anyway.

The Flasher, The Sunburn, And The Shrubbery

I'm starting to enjoy foreign spam, and while I don't think that's a good thing, exactly, at least it's not fattening, so I'm inclined to keep imbibing. See, it's challenging—I'm so incompetent that I usually can't tell what language it's in, and it's hard to establish rhythm and some tiny little semblance of meaning even when the translator site spits out even a few words I can understand—and it's utterly pointless, so obviously it's ideal for blogging.

Now that I've polished my second spam poem—taken from spam e-mail, run through an online translator, organized in verse format, and aligned to the right (I'm not sure why that's important, but IT IS)—I'm a little ashamed of my first effort. It's a bit too long winded and unfocused, I think. But, then again, that's spam in a nutshell, isn't it?

For my sophomore presentation, I give you a little Korean spam ... or, at least, that's the translation that gave me more than one English word to work with. I call it, "The Flasher, The Sunburn, And The Shrubbery." Because that doesn't make sense, either.

trouble about emptiness
it will sprain
it will be burnt

empty cloth it sprained
needle who is burnt
it will expose
it will become
and it will be burnt

the nose
cloth needle
trouble
it will be burnt
hut the bank

it exposes
it was burnt
it became
it sprouted
it takes
it held

green onion thang
the truth
it became

officialdom
the enemy was the sagebrush

Reinfected Again

I've become seriously addicted to Big Brother 8. Oh, I've watched previous seasons of the show, too, but it is only now that I've gotten to the point of actually SCHEDULING time to watch this tripe. I know the sequence of events, the players, the alliances, the deals, and the conditions of the deals. And I know there's some DAMN good editing on that show, because I have jumped out of my chair, chortling with delight, and SAID SO on the many occasions when I've seen it in action.

(And by golly, when you start talking back to your television set, you know you're good and stupided up.)

Anyway, I'm sure there's a pound or two of rationalization in it, but I had a sudden realization the other day—I will not dignify it by calling it an epiphany, but if the base subject matter had been a little more substantial, it would have come within a long shot of qualifying—that despite the fact that it's basically a soap opera in which the majority of the cast is unpaid, there is still a valuable lesson to be learned from Big Brother.

(Oh yes, there is, and oh no, I have not been drinking this morning.)

If you've not been dumbed down enough to watch the show yourself, let me briefly summarize: a bunch of people who want to be actors and/or Playmates are locked in a big, camera-ready house together. Once a week, they compete for decent food and, separately, for a privileged position as the "Head" of this motley crew of a household, wherein they nominate two other "guests" for eviction. After an often outrageously rigged "veto" competition, one of those nominees may be removed and replaced, and then, at long last, one of the two is voted the hell out.

(Basically, it's Survivor without the Great Outdoors.)

Like most other "reality" shows I've seen, this one includes a certain component of, well, LYING ONE'S ASS OFF. And I would say that Big Brother includes a rather generous proportion of requirements to lie, as in, it's practically impossible to win without deceiving at least one other person in the game, and frequently, a large number of persons. This is not new, either—it's been going on since the very first season of celebrity wanna-be household "confinement."

And Big Brother has been ratings-considerately raising the lying stakes for several years, changing the game in audience-sucking ways that include switching out twin sisters in the house without the knowledge of the other guests, and—new this season!—posing one houseguest as "America's Player," again unknown to the others in the house, in which his "eviction vote," among other things, is actually NOT his own, but is rather determined by the American public.

(Those of us with sick, twisted minds find these sorts of tricks deliciously rude.)

But back to the Thing that arrested my attentions the other day and lined them right up against the wall for a thorough—ooh!—frisking: in all these many (eight, in fact) years of lying, backstabbing, and deception, the one thing that remains consistent is that the houseguests, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, are surprised when it happens to them. They cry, they rage, and they bemoan their poor judgment skills and stupidity in TRUSTING these horrible other people, who they cite as "hypocrites," "evil," and *BEEEEEEEP!* (expletives deleted). And they never seem to notice their lying reflections in the Big Brother one-way mirrors.

(Hey! Maybe that's why they call 'em "one-way" mirrors!)

And I thought to myself as I out-loudly informed the latest distressed whiner, "YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT FROM THEM, YOU *BEEEEEEEP!* (expletives deleted)!" ... Well, if people who purport to STUDY these things can't change their own behaviors, even with EIGHT SEASONS of evidence to cite, no wonder I have trouble changing my OWN behaviors.

In the Big Brother house, people make the mistake of really trusting other people, even when past, caught-on-tape experience should show them that this is about as bright as wading into a crocodile-infested river. Outside of it, people such as myself make our own mistakes, and we make them REPEATEDLY. Knowing better, it would seem, is largely irrelevant, and although that doesn't make a damn bit of sense, it gets demonstrated over and over and over again.

And it's not just with one thing, like, hmmm, EATING ALL THE ICE CREAM. It's with any number of things, from things as simple as believing I won't hit the "snooze" more than once to thinking I CAN make a cold-call without agonizing over it for a day and a half. Or seventeen. This problem, which I've now blogofficially recognized and dubbed Big Brother Dementia, appears to my exclusively self-anointed doctorism to be pandemic, and it's not at all unusual to see an infected individual with a plethora of infections, reinfecting her or him on a routine basis, and pungently obvious to everybody else, except, of course, the patient.

Clearly, more research is needed to find a cure, but even though no one else has managed it, I'm sure I can do it.

They Made Me Do It

How neatly ironic that mere days after complaining about a demolition derby and what Little Girl learned thereat—it's so recent that linking to it is just silly; scroll back two posts if you want to see it—I should be arm-twisted into attending another one. The circumstances were, I thought, somewhat mitigated by the fact that alcohol was, at least, served at this event, unlike others I had been somewhat-forcefully compelled to view.

(Little did I know that this would only add to the irony, if only because of how I'd referred, in that aforementioned post, to anti-booze venues as being "dry.")

So, yeah, it rained. It rained, and it rained, and it rained. It rained a LOT, and then? Mere minutes before the demo derby was slated to start? The skies projectile-spewed giant fluid lumps upon the huddled, already-wet masses of the rather frightening assembly of derby-viewing rednecks, and because we were packed into the stands like factory-farmed chickens into a barn—Oh, to be in a BARN! Out of the rain!—we wound up extra-soaked, for putting up our umbrellas only served to funnel the rain down in waterfall-like torrents from the edges of each umbrella.

Little Girl was abundantly displeased, and made her distress loudly known. That Little Girl's daddy, Mr. & Mrs. Camo, and I were also now sporting drenched pantaloons ourselves did not serve to mute her performance in the slightest—in fact, she began to shiver and shake so dramatically that I grudgingly gave her the shirt off my back (from underneath my raincoat) to cover her legs and provide what warmth it could, as it continued to absorb moisture from the still-rain-darkened skies.

And when the demolition derby actually began? The fact that the enclosure wherein the cars half-heartedly—for apparently, everybody and their cousin were ganging up on everybody else and their cousin, so that practically nobody got a good run into another car before they realized that underneath all that mud was A RELATIVE and sloshed to a sloppy stop, barely dinging their "opponent" at all—batted at one other had been coated with oh, about an INCH of water during the course of the afternoon and evening, made for quite the mud-throwing madness, despite the vapidity of the "strikes" themselves.

(Which is to say, we took about as much volume of mud in the stands as we had taken rain, repeatedly putting the MONSTER BAG of cotton candy in jeopardy, and causing Little Girl to hunch over like she was trying out for a role at Notre Dame every time there was the slightest skid out in the demolition arena.)

In short, it was as far from a "dry" event as it could possibly be, and had it not been for a fairly—get it? FAIRly?—exceptional midway, would have been deemed a complete and total bust by all concerned ... yes, even those who profess to ENJOY a demolition derby. However, because Little Girl got to take her first (and second) ride on the monstrosity known as a Zipper (aka, "The Ultimate Carnival Ride") and I got to sample batter-fried "Oreos" (though I do not include any trademark references, because I SAW the "chef" remove them from their generic packages, and name-brand cookies, they were most definitely NOT), I did, drippingly, say that it wasn't an entirely unsuccessful event.

(Even though Little Girl did not appear precisely enthralled after exiting the Zipper after the first go-round, and even though it will take me the better part of a week and a half to get the flab-converted-carny food off my already voluminous hips.)

(Batter-fried "Oreos" are really, really good, by the way. Especially when they're dusted with powdered sugar post-frying.)

Antisocial Commentary Release Party

Because I'm easy (and because it's already been established that I'll take any excuse for a party), I would hereby like to help the annoyingly younger-than-me Diesel of the obnoxiously creative Mattress Police pimp his brand new book! Although that's assuming I could possibly BE of any assistance, which is probably consuming a whole lot more than the RDA of assumptions.

But that—whatever it was!—being said, Diesel is funny, irreverent, and entertaining ... so much so that I was compelled to decloak from my many moons of lurkdom just to compete in his wacky-hilarious Caption Contests (I even won one), and if I wasn't so unwillingly financially responsible these days, I'd have one of his crushingly amusing t-shirts, too. SOMEDAY, oh yes, SOMEDAY, it WILL BE MINE!

But I digress. How rude of me.

Diesel's undoubtedly classic-in-the-making book is called Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police, and it's chock full of satire and sarcasm, wit and wisdom, and possibly a pop-up or two. Well, maybe next time. But pop-ups or not, it would make a great gift! For anyone with a sense of humor, a coffee table, a warped mind, and especially for those without internet access, for they have been deprived of the Very Best of the Mattress Police.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, the book is a compilation of Diesel's best posts in handy, no-batteries-required format. Better yet, it also includes BRAND-NEW, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN material, and best of all? If you pre-order, you can get a SIGNED COPY for a song, or at least one non-chart-topping CD of songs (that's $9.95 with free shipping for those who deal better with succinct numbers than with my greenhouse-full flowery prose).

Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police will be published on August 15, but pre-orders start TODAY, July 26, so join the party NOW and save on the still-bargain regular price of $11.95 plus shipping and handling. Order your very own copy from Mattress Police today!


Click here to see a larger image.

(Alternatively, you can order mine for me. 'Cause I have a birthday coming up, and I also have a sense of humor and a warped mind. Just no coffee table. I used to have a coffee table, but it broke, and that's a long story. Nevermind. Just buy the book.)

Lost In Translation

Yesterday's hearty helping of spam—no, not the luncheon meat; the electronic stuff—was delivered in Chinese. Because I am curious (and yes, I DO know what it did to the proverbial cat), I decided to run it through an online translator.

Although not all of the characters came back translated, enough did so that I was able to get the general gist of the message, which, I believe, was designed to encourage me either to increase the size of my penis (thanks, but no thanks; I don't have one now and I'd really like to keep it that way), or to sell me a child (again, I must respectfully decline; I already made one from scratch, and that's enough for me).

Anyway, although the spamtastic message was not entirely coherent, it seemed poetic, somehow, and so I inserted line breaks at places that seemed to call for them, thereby translating my translated spam into verse, which I now present to you.

I call it "Lost in Translation," and not just so it will match the title of this blog entry:

wisdom mouse Dong?? cavity ship
silkworm .......... silkworm
mouse Dong

Stops obstructs the cavity
to stamp the 8x10 cavity
Stops obstructs the cavity
to stamp the 6x8 cavity road
coal

the auspicious corner,
the auspicious corner,

The barrel doubts
The barrel doubts the child

xi Yunnan
pulls up the xi
is luxuriant
covers Huan

Cocoon
flower bud plume
wrist mouse plume
stretches

The territory mouse is auspicious
the coal silkworm luxuriant growth,
is auspicious

kicks the silkworm Huan
luxuriant growth
coal
auspicious cavity spouse
dried meat too

the child
the ramp or ends of a bridge male flies fast
the jade pulls up the cavity
flies fast

xi
barrel
silkworm

xi mouse Dong??
Industrious, the regular script raises!

dry cavity!
Plants the friendly child
to select?
the stream that branches and merges again

1,000 children obstruct Fu?
qiang to be friendly?
understands

cavities
Yao, the source
rests clam Cao
cavity Li tired
Czechoslovakia?

digs doubts
clam Cao???!
the child
cavity looks down at
is auspicious?

tumble stamps
understands cavity Li
stamps the magnetism
to hold
stops cavity too

pulls up the cavity
to understand
the dike
to offer a sacrifice to

And there's really not much else to say, is there? I didn't think so. Mouse dong!

Taking My Toys and Going Home

I heard about it from my parents, who were also fans of the show, before I read the clipped statement online from the President of CBS Entertainment. Actually, hearing about it is what inspired me to seek out whatever explanation there might be for the fact that, once again, the ONLY show of the season for which I would submit myself to the indignity of attempting to work my bass-ackwardly wired VCR for had been summarily dismissed: cut down in its unique, creative, and enthralling prime-time slot as if were a scrawny, unwanted dandelion instead of a lush, inviting rose.

When it happened—even before the end of the season that time—with the last such show I adored, Threshold, I'd commemorated the sad occasion by blasting the network for its conformism, lack of character, cruelty, and outright stupidity. I'd ranted a good storm, all alone in my living room, and the walls had offered me the same, stoic response that I would likely get from any actual, living person with any sort of power at CBS—if I had even been able to meet and hold one's attention—and that knowledge infuriated me all the more.

It's not like I don't understand that it doesn't matter what I—or an army of people like me, assuming such a terrifying group could possibly be assembled—think; it's not MY show, even if I feel like it is. It isn't my decision or my monetary support that has any bearing on the continuation of this or any other television series. Like it or not, I am entirely negligible in this equation, because I have no investment in it: no financial investment, that is ... I sure the hell was emotionally invested.

And despite Nina Tassler's terse claim to "the fans of Jericho" that "[We] ... have been touched by the depth and passion with which you have expressed your disappointment [at the cancellation of the series]," I'm just not convinced she really gets it. It's not unique to any occupation to get caught up in the rigors of it and forget what it looks like from the outside, or forget what it feels like to dream of having such a job—if, indeed, one ever dreamed of such a thing at all. I'm sure from where Ms. Tassler sits, the cancellation of Jericho made perfect sense. "Bottom line" and all that.

But here's what it looked like from where I sat: it looked like a network that seemed to want to distinguish itself, by offering a fare other than a formulaic comedy, "reality" show, or JUST ONE MORE alternate location for the same freakin' CSI-style horror-show, had curled up and DIED—a budding individualist who had caved to the reigning high-school clique, taken the wild color out of her hair and bleached it blonde, put away her progressive-rock collection and started listening to the same pop-machine-manufactured music as everyone else, buried her eclectic style and put on a damn cheerleading costume—all in the name of POPULARITY.

It looked like a network that seemed to want to create an admirable set of characters—who, for once, were motivated by more than themselves and their very own needs—had done a complete about-face and waved to the crowd around them as if the crowd would just be okay with that. Sure, because I get enough characters with clear, clumsy humanity in them, who frequently screwed up—sometimes with tragic consequence—but still manage to band TOGETHER after an event that would seem capable only of ripping people apart on shows like ... oh, say, something that was deemed worthy of SEVEN seasons: The King of Queens. Yeah, I'm sure Doug and Carrie could do such a fine job of striving to do MORE than simply survive an apocalypse; I'm sure their flat—figurative, okay?—one-dimensional selves would have revealed depth of character and constantly developed, instead of stagnating with dull, laugh-track-style "humor."

(In case it's not blatantly obvious, I really, really LOATHED The King of Queens. It was the one show that I refused to have on, EVER, even as a backdrop, and even if I WAS engaged in a completely boring task and longed for distraction. It was, I believe, the Country Music of CBS's television lineup, and regardless of what critics might say about the acting in it, I never could stop hearing the twang and moan and "poooooor me" theme behind it. And by God, if I want twang and moan and "poooooor me," I WILL WRITE IT MY DAMN SELF.

But, shockingly, I digress. I shall endeavor not to do so for the duration of this piece: may the Force be with me, because that's a pretty majorly-difficult proposition.)

From where I sat—or stood, or paced and ranted, or ... oops; so much for not digressing—it looked like a network that likes to tout, with shamelessly self-promoting ads covering everything from depression to HIV, saying in words along with the Tinkerbell-esque, musical "TING!" at the end: "CBS Cares!" that they did NOT, in fact, care about anything but what would make them the most money. Oh yes, values and creativity and character are GREAT, but only if they attract "enough" of the viewing audience to suit CBS's needs—as if they didn't already have enough formulaic powerponies of The King of Queens's ilk—or perhaps CBS's collective, management ego. It looked like LIP SERVICE instead of caring, CRUELTY instead of kindness, and BULLSHIT instead of compost.

And it looked like outright stupidity to me, because although I am naive enough to fall for their scheme twice, there is no way in hell I'm going to do it again. I may only be one person—and NO, they do NOT care what I think (and I know that)—but I am also one sucker who has been suckered TWO too many times. You can trot out whatever unique, winged-horses you like, CBS, but if it's not mainstream, I will never watch it enough to get hooked on it, because like an unsympathetic drug-pusher, you will only YANK my supply away and LAUGH while I endure the symptoms of withdrawal, and while that may be fine and fun for you—assuming you give even the CONCEPT of me one tiny little IOTA of your "consideration"—it pretty well sucks ass for me.

OH YES, I am taking MY toys and going home, too: to my bookshelf. So there.

ps Fuck you, CBS.


Addendum: Of course, the day after I write this, something like THIS has to break. I decided to post my rant anyway, as I don't believe CBS really IS reconsidering. And they damn well deserve every ounce of those 50,000 pounds of peanuts. "NUTS!" Indeed.

Sheltered Lives

Usually, I secretly—and not-so-secretly: witness THIS BLOG—harbor the indefensible notion that people are pretty much all the same. You know, mostly and basically: we want love and affection, recognition and acknowledgment, understanding and support ... that sort of thing. Although, granted, in varying degrees. Anyhoo, every now and again, something happens that—quite to the contrary of my deepest beliefs—makes me feel like, OH NO, people are NOT AT ALL alike, and I, in fact, am a freak amongst them.

And with that introduction, I shall now tell my sad, illustrative tale:

Sometimes, on the way to pick up Little Girl from school, I cruise into the local grocer and blaze a Flash-like trail around the perimeter, picking up "just a few things" from a carefully-abbreviated shopping list. I could do this at a bit more leisurely pace if I simply waited until after I picked up Little Girl, but as any parent who is reading will understand, shopping "with child" is a rather exhausting process, and one that is—regardless of one's best intentions—likely to include far more items than one's "short list" ever specified. And that's true from the time the child is in the womb until LONG after s/he exits it.

I'd done my whirlwind shopping tour and was parked in my favorite spot outside the school when I happened to feel just a twinge of hunger—okay, it was really more like a sucker-punch of hunger—and so, naturally, I then glanced at the bag of groceries next to me. Immediately, I spied The Very Thing to assuage my now-growling tummy, and of course I lit right into it, savoring every bite and generally feeling quite satisfied with myself AND my chosen snack.

As it sometimes happens when I'm hungry, I lost a bit of my focus. Usually, I'm pretty aware of my surroundings—well, I like to think I am, anyway—but I didn't notice the man making his way to the school right away. Instead, I felt that weird little sensation of BEING WATCHED, and looked up to find him STARING at me in my car. Oh, he was looking where he was walking, too, but mostly? He was seriously gawking, and not in a "Ooh, SHE'S hot," sort of way, but more like a slightly confused—and more than a little appalled—sort of way.

At first, I seriously couldn't figure out what was going on. I even LOOKED AROUND ME to see if there was anyone eles he could possibly be looking at. Were the early-release kids out on the playground already? Nope, the playground was still empty. Was there anyone walking behind where I was sitting? Negative, not a creature was stirring back there. Was he distracted by melodic strains of Scandanavian Death Metal seeping from the not-so-sealed seals of my aging Saturn? Not likely, as I'd turned it down substantially so I could hear the school's chipper little bells, which signalled the outflow of students at the end of the day.

I must've been feeling quite satiated, really, because—although I WAS still digging into my apparently-unorthodox snack—I'd quite forgotten that I was eating, and it wasn't until the man was well past me and practically IN the school that I rejoined the real world and realized what he must have been watching.

"What the hell?" I wondered aloud. "Hasn't he ever seen anyone eat frozen Cool Whip® out of a tub with their fingers before?"

Heathen.

Fun With Peeps

I love Peeps®. These cute little blobs of marshmallowy goodness—fluffed sugar, liberally coated with crystallized sugar—are the sort of thing I would eat ALL DAY if only it wouldn't turn me into a creature of purely gargantuan proportions: like Jabba the Hutt, only with eyeliner and better hair. (Note: That's not saying much, and it wasn't supposed to.)

Anyhoo, I love Peeps so much that I occasionally troll Google's Image Search for Peep pictures. Mind you, this is not the sort of activity one should attempt with an impressionable child looking over one's shoulder (think about it: entering "peep" into a search engine ... not precisely appropriate, or precise, either). However, if you simply add "Easter" to the search terms, it filters out most of the naughtiness.

What does come out of such a Google-quest is a plethora of creative—and some extremely involved—scenes crafted by other Peep-freaks around the virtual world. Some are funny, some are bizarre, and some walk the fine, fine line between hilarity and insanity.

Here are just a few examples (captions are mostly my own):

• Peep Soup
  
• Rockin' Peep
  
• Sword-Fighting Peeps
  
• Peeps on St. Patrick's Day
  
• Lord of the Peeps
  
• Peep Show (this one is NOT naughty; I swear)
  
• Jesus Peep & Followers
  
• When Good Peeps Go Bad
  
• Kentucky Fried Peeps
  
• Roadracing Peeps
  
• Peepley Field
  
• The Passion of the Peeps

Around about Easter this year, when the Peeps were flooding the local candy aisles in a wave of unnaturally-colored, sugar-fit-inducing, nutrition-free deliciousness, I started plying my family with some of my Internet Peep-finds, much to their amusement; meanwhile The Exotic Neurotic created a Peep-scene of her own ... and she dubbed them: Rainbow Coalition Peeps



If you are inspired to try this at home—and I don't know why you wouldn't be—you should know that there is a highly refined and very particular order to Rainbow Coalition Peeps, lest the representatives along both ends reveal their fluffy white innards. Oh yes, she DID have them neatly assembled so that nary a severing mark was made, and she put them all back neatly into their original boxes (not shown), too, for delivery to the lucky recipients.

Soon after Little Girl and I had savored the Rainbow Coalition Peeps that The Exotic Neurotic had so carefully prepared for us—Little Girl's daddy being typically disinterested in the single most adorable confection ever created ... freak—I was pondering both the artistry of the creation, my own, deep desire to Make Something of the Peep-variety, the joking request of the Pretzel Logician for a box o' Peeps, and the fact that The Exotic Neurotic had flatly rejected the rare and unusual Red Peeps from her Peep Palette.

(Red Peeps, if you—like me—were unaware of their lineage, are a shade of Peeps found ONLY at Target stores; oh yes! These Peeps have been GENETICALLY MODIFIED from their natural, pastel, EASTERY colors, purely for the sake of MATCHING Target's logo! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!)

After a brief reflection upon Things That Are Red, it came to me. Oh yes, a Peep Revelation of BRIGHT RED proportions! Funny and clever and NOT EVEN something like anything I'd seen on my Peep-picture researching runs! And I knew then that I would create it, and it would be Good.

Or at least demented.

Carefully, I determined the details of the construction, and purchased the accessories for my Peepishly wicked montage—and this is where I learned that Red Peeps are unique to Target, because I visited TWO OTHER STORES before winding up at Target—and then I hurried home to implement my vision.

"Little Girl!" I called upstairs. "I would like to purloin some of your craft supplies!"

After "purloin" and the project at hand had been duly defined, Little Girl enthusiastically separated a bunch of red, medium-sized circles from her collection of thin, foam shapes, and from each of these, I carefully cut two crescents. After that, there was only the simple matter of stabbing each Peep in the head and inserting the shapes before, LO, I had made ... *drum roll, please* ...

Devil Peeps



Although for the full effect, you really need to see them in their natural habitat: Devil Peeps In Flames



Addendum: My creation, well-received by my similarly wrong-humored immediate family and dearly-twisted friends alike, did require a little explaining on my part, because Little Girl really did think we should make some for Great-Grandma. This was, of course, a perfect opportunity to have another talk with her (again) about how different things mean different things to different people, though, so I think it can only be to the good. Even if The Exotic Neurotic DID provoke a twinge of guilt when she chortled over how I'd enlisted my child's help in the now-infamous Devil Peep Project. But now that I've re-rationalized it as a creative AND learning exercise—not to mention a cavity-generating, economy-supporting, and Just Plain Fun activity—I feel alllll better. Although I am a little hungry, too.

Impromptu Shoe Shopping With The ListMaker

Some of Life's best adventures are spur-of-the-moment, unexpected experiences, and the only real problem with this is that such Great Fun is just SO awesome that you want very, very badly to repeat it—and as soon as humanly possible—but because it was pretty much a SURPRISE in the first place, well, you can't. Therein lies the dilemma with things like Inadvertent Annual Traditions, of which I have blathered before, and also things like Impromptu Shoe Shopping With The ListMaker, of which I have only just begun to blather.

Although my story is specific, it's really just one of countless cases of a much more general phenomenon. Fun happens, sometimes powerfully unplannedly so, and our instinct as fun-loving human beings is to GLOM ONTO THAT LIKE A LEECH ONTO EXPOSED SKIN AND SUCK THE VERY LIFE OUT OF IT! And then to repeat as quickly and as often as possible. But life doesn't work that way, and fun doesn't happen just for our wishing that it would—not usually, anyway—so we are left with only our memories, and the option to relive their glory as it fades proportionally with time, depending on strength and will and repetition, among other things.

Because I is a writer, however, I can do the next best thing, which is promptly commit my version of events to the memory of not only MY computer, but also its blog-serving brethren, and thus retain rather much of the Original Spirit of The Fun, even if I cannot replicate it at will. And, truth be told—hahaha—it's probably best if I can't cause other exciting, amusing, and shoe-licious successful excursions to materialize upon my whims, because I really don't have that much closet space. Unfortunately.

But I digress. Repeatedly, I think.

Anyway, after completing one of our more exotic Inadvertent Annual Traditions, The ListMaker and I were rather loathe to end an already-Great Fun Day and return to our respective abodes, and thus I proposed that we do some shopping. The ListMaker was good with that, and so we then fell to discussing where we should go, which, as anyone who knows us might guess, went about as smoothly as any one of Wile E. Coyote's schemes to catch The Roadrunner ... which is to say, we tend to be just a wee bit decision-making challenged at times like these, when it doesn't really matter what the decision is. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Somehow, we ended up at The Mall, and almost as soon as we entered the throngs—more than usual, we thought, because this was the first Beautiful Day we'd had in over a week of largely stormy weather—we were Not Amused with humanity in general. Still, having one's personal space repeatedly violated by passers-by is no excuse for not checking out pretty sparkly things, and so we continued directly towards our intended first target: The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut (not its real name, of course, but it really might as well be).

Within seconds of entering, we were both aghast, for instead of pretty sparkly things, we encountered a great many bright and bold (read: GAUDY) beaded strands, chunky baubles, and just outright hideous styles that hearkened us, all unwilling, back to the days of big hair, high-waisted jeans, and legwarmers. Yes, it seemed entirely likely, at least from the main stocking here at The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut, that THE 80s were making a fashion comeback, and not in a pleasant, hair-band musical way ... NO, but rather in a cheap-whore sort of a tacky way, and with nary a hint of glamour. You know, like when Madonna was in her early stages, pre-reinvention, and layered up leggings and foofy skirts and bracelets along the ENTIRE length of her arm—both of them, actually—and so many beads that you could barely tell she had boobs underneath them.

As fond of many aspects of THE 80s as The ListMaker and I both are, its characteristic jewelry was NOT one of our attractors, and it was giving us both headaches of flashbacks, so we proceeded to beat a hasty retreat to The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut Antithesis. The better to chase the scary reminiscences from our minds and seemingly burnt-in eyesores from our retinas, my dear!

Upon our arrival at The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut Antithesis, however, we were almost immediately beset upon by a Determined Salesgirl; oh, she was nice enough, but she WAS also determined, and thus she persisted even after our gently distracted demurs that we were "just looking." As a note for any other Determined Salespeople who may be reading, I should like to suggest that such behavior tends to draw unflattering comparisons of yourself with aggressive badgers, and no matter how nice you may be, people like us still don't know you, and are not about to GET to know you when we know YOU just want us to BUY SOMETHING—preferably, a multitude of somethings—AND GET THE HELL OUT anyway.

In addition to her slightly-apologetic-seeming aggressive badgerness, however, our Determined Salesgirl was unprepared for the The ListMaker's explicit candor, highly appalled by ugly 80s fashion reruns as she still was. This must be why, when she inquired "Why did you stop in today?" and The ListMaker tartly retorted, "Because The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut SUCKS!" she seemed inclined to tuck her badger's tail between her legs and hurry back to her den as fast as possible. Yet her training or Will To SUCCEED! prevailed just enough for her to direct us to The Mall-Staple Jewelry Hut Antithesis's jewelry section, which was full of all sorts of spikes and rings and other, more "exotic" piercing paraphenalia, which—whatever else it might have been—was, indeed, JUST what the doctor ordered in terms of chasing bad 80s jewelry "ideals" from our heads.

While we didn't end up with any new jewelry, I did find a neat little heavy metal sampler, 2 CD/1 DVD set—METAL FOR THE MASSES VOLUME 5—and thus, you may expect a future metal-glorifying musical interlude at some point. Because you KNOW I love me some new headbanging, vocal-cord-tearing, regular-heartbeat-inhibiting HEAVY. FREAKING. METAL. *sighs lustily* But, umm, I digress, and I know you're wondering when we'll get to the shoes ... hello? *tap tap* Is this thing on?

So after we'd thoroughly chased the chunky, beady demons of 80s-spawn jewelry from the vicinity—and also conversed with a multi-colored and heavily pierced Happy Salesgirl about the Inadvertent Annual Tradition in which we had so recently engaged (SHE, unlike her Determined Badger counterpart, DID talk me into an impulse buy: a $1 key tag, whose cost would be contributed to music programs in our schools ... or something ... I don't know, it's on my keyring, though!)—we were OFF AGAIN, and this time, WE WERE HEADED FOR THE SHOES.

I'd like to offer a disclaimer at this point that my passion for shoes is in NO WAY as deep or abiding or COMMITTED as my passion for jeans. Nope, no way, and NO HOW. Nor do I lack for any shoes, really, having a non-Imelda-Marcos-sized but still-quite-extensive collection from which to choose The Very Thing for pretty much any occasion, winter or summer, casual or formal. That said, however, I do love me a pretty pair of new shoes, PARTICULARLY if they have heels that put me at or above six feet in overall height, because while that sort of thing made me as uncomfortable as an agressive badger confronted by a Very Blunt Comment in high school, I now understand it for what it can do FOR me: distribute those pesky ten pounds I don't really want to negligibility, lengthen my legs to model-esque proportions, and put me at or near the stratosphere of womens' height, which while uncomfortable in some ways, is surprisingly powerful, and therefore COOOOOL, because I am a Great Big Wimp by nature.

Still and all, I had plenty of high-heeled shoes and precious little in the way of flats, and thus, when The ListMaker went one way inside The Mass-Produced Shoe Haven—to the very Wall O' Shoes that Little Girl would also fit, in fact—and I went the other way—where they keep the BIG SHOES, my darlings, not whatever YOU are thinking—I first inspected the sorta-cute flats, with an eye for something new and all-purposey for Spring. Which is still buried under about two and a half feet of snow, but which is WELCOME TO COME OUT AND PLAY ANY DAMN TIME! *ahem*

And yet, while I did find a few shoes that "might do"—you know, if they had cost $5 instead of $20—there was nothing flat-based that I just HAD to have, and so I approached the corner of the aisle to go in search of The ListMaker ... AND THEN ...

These sky-high, PINK DENIM-Y, pumps with a smoothly rounded toe TACKLED ME and FORCED me to try on their lusciousness. And all the while—while they were PINCHING MY HEEL, actually—they also whispered sweet nothings to me about their warm, Springlike color, their STUNNING height, their elegantly-tapered heels, and THE WAY THEY LOOKED TOTALLY HOT WITH JEANS. I was enthralled, and so The ListMaker found me, communing with My Preciouses, and she said, "OH! I love those!" And I would have cuddled my shoes protectively closer—and probably pulled a muscle, because I was wearing one of them at the time and I'm just NOT that flexible—but I knew they were too big for her, and so I smiled sweetly, and probably babbled incoherently, too. Something about awesomeness but want is NOT need and similar bullshit.

And I put My Preciouses back and did NOT heed their cries and prepared, again, to follow The ListMaker back to "her" aisle, where she was now checking to see if she'd missed the Attacking Pink Pumps in her size ... AND THEN ...

A professional-appearing pair of cream-colored canvassy pumps jumped me—less blatantly than the pink denimy pair had, but a clear and unprovoked attack nonetheless—calling to me with siren sweetness and dark-brown leather details, right up to and including a gentle hug around, and sweet little bow above, the peeping toe of the shoe. They were graceful but not edgy, and clever but not wild—so they were not too much like the pink shoes—and yet they were as shoe-attractive as could be, and LO, they were ON SALE for just a few dollars less than the not-at-all unreasonable pink pair, so despite the fact that I needed neither of these beautiful, beautiful shoes, I felt justified in snapping up the box and limping my single-shoe-shod self over to The ListMaker. Who warmly approved my new selection, too. And only laughed a little when, after just a few more abortive attempts to resist, I zipped back around the corner and resnatched up my Pink Preciouses as well.

Although The ListMaker was not, upon this particular day, enthralled by one or more new shoes as I was, she did manage to get caught in the trap of a sleek new pair of sunglasses. (Oh yes, Spring, we are READY for you! RIGHT! NOW!) And I think I almost had her convinced that she really should polish her toes, as I had, for the effect of my pretty polish peeking out of the toes of the second shoes was very, VERY nice, if I do say so myself, even if it was only upon a winter-denial whim that I had polished my own toes, and not in anticipation of trying on such well-suited shoes.

Our Tour de The Mall was winding down by now, but because The ListMaker's Lovely Boyfriend had just apprised us—by phone—of a Terrifically Awesome (wait for it) SHOE Sale at the west end of the shopping complex, we dove into the nearest overpriced anchor store to use what are widely regarded as some of the nicer "facilities" in the entire greater Mall area. We giggled a little at the somewhat reluctant "automatic" door, and we practically had hysterics at the poorly-pressured nearby water fountains, which were CLEARLY not designed for simultaneous use, for every time one of us tried to get a drink when the other was already imbibing, the first fountain would drop to unattainable burblingness.

The ListMaker cleverly held on to her fountain's button, anyway, though, and released it JUST when I was taking a giggle break to actually get my drink, thereby causing the pressure to return with a vengeance, and water to shoot inconveniently—for me—up my nose. Therefore, while I was reducing to laughing sputters, SHE was able to drink without interference. You know, if she'd been able to quit laughing herself.

At the overpriced anchor store at the west end of The Mall, we did find The ListMaker's Lovely Boyfriend's shoe alert to be worth checking out. While the store's "general" sale was fine and all, it was the small rack of "final clearance" that was truly amazing: upon this rack, shoes that would have once cost around $80 could now be had for a song, and $5.26 (tax included). Needless to say, we joined the surrounding swarm—about twice as large as the actual shoe rack—and struggled to find our sizes.

Inexplicably, it seemed to be MY day, and although I had to set down the bag containing my first TWO shoe purchases of the day to do it, I found and tried on a soft pair of dark brown suede boots. These boots had been restrained by virtue of being chained TO the rack, and were therefore not able to tackle me, all unawares, as the other shoes had done, but they still Called to me in dulcet suede tones, speaking in velvety softness of their ENTIRELY suede covering—right down to the heel, and even the slightly height-enhanced base of the boot—and bidding me to savor their sleek suede lines and clever leather-bow-in-the-back detailing.

So, yeah, I bought them, too.

In the end, of course—and I'm sure you "got" this from the blathering, but for those who are just waking up now, I'd like to summarize anyway—it wasn't the shoes as much as the story around them, and it wasn't the activities in general as much as the company in particular. Even though The ListMaker, herself a shoe-loving soul, wound up with nary a box of shoes to show for our travels, I think she had just as much fun as I did with our adventures, and perhaps even without the five minutes she spent in the massaging chair outside the Scary Vitamin Store while I was perusing the freakish supplements inside.

With elements of spontaneity AND surreptitious subconscious "planning," randomness AND purpose, and of course, pure enjoyment of a dear friend's company, and, of course SHOES, it's no wonder that The Exotic Neurotic, upon hearing 1) of our adventures, and 2) that I had purchased the last pair of size 9 canvassy elegant shoes in town ("You BITCH!" she said without real rancor, "Those were MINE!"), said, "Don't go shoe shopping without me again!"

No, you can't force Great Fun, but I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to entice it a little!

The New Tag

It's not "The New Math"—and that's a good thing (just ask my dad)—but what it IS, I'm not totally sure. I know what I have surmised, and that is that when you are "tagged" on a blog, it means that you must answer a series of questions on your own blog, but because I have a long-standing tradition of reading too much into damn near anything, I'm not totally confident that this is right.

(If anyone would care to post a comment and let me know the rightfulness or wrongfulness of my conclusions—HERE OR ELSEWHERE—I would greatly appreciate it. 'Cause it's winter, dudes, and I'm getting lonely of talking to myself. Though I will keep doing it, regardless; it IS cheaper than therapy, after all. Which reminds me, I need a new tagline ... suggestions, anyone? Anyone? BUELLER? *sigh*)

Anyway, my lovely friend Renée of Pointed Squiggle fame has tagged me, so I am going to do my best to play by the rules of The New Tag, as I understand them, without Googling (it just seems like it might be cheating):

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate, particularly if it's spiked with peppermint schnapps.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? When I was a kid, Santa wrapped presents and put them in—or under, if the present was too big—our stockings, but now that I'm grown up, I find that Santa's become a bit of a slacker, as he no longer troubles to wrap most things, though he retains the tradition of putting his gifts in or under STOCKINGS, not messing with the tree.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Whatever ones happen to be functioning. Or on sale. Although we, like Santa, are slackers, 'cause we don't do house decorating.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No, because I worry that the cats would eat it. Plus, the one time I did hang it? It molded. (Never a good sign, and probably a contributory factor in "seasonal" allergies.)

5. When do you put your decorations up? When I get tired of hearing Little Girl ask, "When are we going to put decorations up?" But NEVER before Thanksgiving. That is SO. WRONG.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? My mom's "Party Potatoes," which are a crowd-pleasing and INCREDIBLY UNHEALTHY concoction of potatoes, sour cream, and secret stuff (also known as, "stuff I forget without looking at the recipe," which I can never find, hence the rather inadvertent secrecy).

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: I was on the fence about Santa, and devised a test for him. On Christmas Eve, at my grandparents' home—far away from our own—and with the stockings just hung, I wrote a note on the little old blackboard in Grandma's kitchen, asking Santa to please—just this once—give a little something to all the adults this Christmas, too. I figured, if Santa was REALLY real, it would be a nice treat for the grown-ups, who never had THAT much fun as us kid, and if not, there would be no way for my parents to weasel out of the situation.

I sadly underestimated the generosity and dedication to the Spirit of the season of not only my parents, but my entire extended family, for they unwrapped—and neatly printed, in unfamiliar script—one gift for each adult out of the abundance that were apparently around. Someone also wrote a neat response to my request, which, I, full of the gloomy anticipation of disappointment, erased WITHOUT READING the very next morning, not seeing it attached to the bulk of my cynical ploy.

When I faced the pile of gifts near us kids' bulging stockings, there on the pin-marked board where stockings had hung for decades of children in our family, and my mom asked if I'd seen Santa's note, I must've looked quite the deer in the headlights, and my mind turned over and over the loss of that PERSONAL NOTE from Santa, and I was BORN AGAIN in my belief, of the love and magic that IS the reality behind the myth.

Though it was fortunate I was so young in my cynicism, or I'd've counted the gifts under the tree, too. ;)

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't know what you mean; Santa still sends a few gifts for my stocking, by way of my mom, every year. :)

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? When I was growing up, NEVER. But we now celebrate Christmas with Little Girl's daddy's mom on Christmas Eve, and we do open the presents we exchange with her then.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Our tree is decorated with years and years of memories, encapsulated in ornaments. There is one my mom painted for Little Girl in honor of her very first Christmas with us, and there is one in memory of Little Gray (we will find one to remember Good Dog by this year). There are ornaments from my childhood, too, of which my favorite is a TINY manger scene, that I rescued from a batch my parents were sorting out. There are ornaments I made in school, and ornaments Little Girl made in daycare, including several felt prints of her hand, which has grown so much, in not so many years.

And there are many, MANY bright and brilliant items I can't even think of right now, but when we pull them out of the boxes soon, I will tell the stories again, and smile, and remember.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Umm. Need you ask? I HATE THE WHITE SHIT WITH A DEEP AND ABIDING PASSION! I dread the chill, I dread the bulk, and I dread the slippery, nasty, slushy, icy, BLECH that the roads and byways and doormats become when the pristine white flakes drift down—and sideways and up and over.

But Little Girl likes it, and once the roads are cleared, it's not TOO bad. Mostly.

12. Can you ice skate? I was pretty okay at it as a kid, yeah. Our neighbors had a rink and we often had a chance to practice there. Now? I'd probably be damn dangerous, to myself AND others. (Plus one of my worst childhood memories involves a time I wound up at the neighbor's place, alone, in the winter, and was too scared of their creaky old farmhouse after it got dark to stay inside where it was at least somewhat warm. I was out on the rink, under the bright automatic floodlight, for a few hours before my poor mom realized I'd gotten mixed up about where I was supposed to be and found me. I just don't think of ice skating warmly anymore, I guess!)

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Since I think I'd have to say that the year that the adults in my family conspired to salvage my belief in Santa was my favorite, YES! Although I do adore and cherish EVERY gift that shows that the giver was really thinking of me when they made or got it for me. In that way, it really IS the thought that counts. Or so I think. ;)

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Connecting with—and, ideally, BEING with—people I love.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Without a doubt, the "Cream Wafers" that are another family recipe. They are incredibly delicate, light, and largely bland cookies, but they're filled with a sweet icing that comes in two flavors, almond and wintergreen. Wintergreen is the ULTIMATE holiday flavor and scent to me.

Although I also adore "Pfeffernüsse" (again made in by my family's own peculiar recipe) ... it is not Christmas without the scent and smell of these tiny, spicy cookies. However, they're SUCH a pain in the ass to make that I endured several Christmases in the past without them (no more, I tell you, because I'm taking VACATION TIME later this month to bake up a batch; it's just NOT RIGHT without them)!

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Spending Christmas Day with my family, and going round and round, sometimes for HOURS, as each person opens one gift at a time. Whether the gifts are silly, clever, large, small, abundant, or limited, watching ONE individual at a time—unless it's a duplicate sort of gift, like THE BRICKS, where two or more people are instructed to open certain presents at the same time—laughing, telling stories, reveling in whatever it is, or just looking at each other ... it makes me all sniffly and sentimental to think about it.

17. What tops your tree? Often, nothing, because we seem to wind up with some spindly, tall-ass trees! I think I finally found a tree-topper that was light-weight and NOT gaudy (by my snotty criteria), and if so, it was a star, but all I can remember for sure was the star-like snowflake I got that was SO DAMN HEAVY that our tree wilted like a Charlie Brown tree until the sucker FELL WITH A RESOUNDING THUD when I tried to put it on.

That's gotta be one of the "Top Ten" stupid purchases I've ever made, but that sounds like a bloggoblather for another day. :P

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? Well, I LOVE giving, especially when I figure out the perfect gift for someone. But when someone figures out the perfect gift for me, I love receiving, too. So I'm going to take the wussy way out and say BOTH!

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? "O Tannenbaum," which is, of course, "O Christmas Tree," only in German. Another favorite holiday memory is my parents' spinning those old Christmas albums on our RECORD PLAYER—Little Girl doesn't even know what one of those IS—and I can hear this one in my head even now ... I think they transferred it onto cassette tape, or even CD, because my techno-savvy dad figured out how to get those albums that aren't available in CD format off of tape and onto CD. Because while the quality may not be up to CD standards, we can all have the music we adore so much that we don't even hear the tiny little scratches that are only there BECAUSE we loved it so much anyway.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Oh, yuck, definitely, unless you can get them in WINTERGREEN flavor!

Thanks to Renée for letting me play, and now I'm