Like I need more pressure....

Even though I have a hard enough time keeping this blog up and running lately, I've created a new blog too.

I was playing with words in my head, as I so often do, and I thought "if I had a blog where I pretended I was actually cool, I'd call it 'Faux Shizzle.'"

I liked it so much, that I wanted to grab the blogspot URL while I could.

So, even though I have no idea what, if anything, I should post there, Faux Shizzle is born. Any ideas? I think that with a name like that, it almost HAS to be funny in nature.

Today's shameless excuse to break out the umlauts...

So, I'm über-psyched to see the movie "The Aristocrats." It opened to a limited market yesterday, but I have to wait 2 weeks until it opens within reasonable driving distance of me.

But, in my anticipation of the film, I've been talking it up to some like-minded individuals, many of whom did not know the movie existed.

For those of you who may not be aware of the movie either, it's a documentary about this one particular joke that has the reputation of being the most obscene and vulgar joke in the world. It's mainly used by comedians for comedians, and rarely is told in front of a general audience. Aside from the basic premise of the joke: "A family walks into a talent agent's office...." and the punchline: "What do you call your act? The Aristocrats!," the joke is entirely improvised, with the middle of the joke consisting of as many disgusting, vulgar and unthinkable acts as possible.

So, there are as many variations to the joke as there are comics and obscene acts of perversion. Like I said before, I'm über-psyched.

Unfortunately, lately when I've been mentioning it to people, I keep calling the movie "The Aristocats." Two very different films, I must say. I've had to correct myself on that at least half a dozen times now. I'm afraid people are going to start thinking I'm really weird.

Saturday Stream of consciousness*

I frequently have really random and bizarre thought processes that go on inside my head. Of course, to me, "random and bizarre" = "highly entertaining." So, for lack of anything better to post, I'm offering you all a rare glimpse directly into one such thought process. The following occurred earlier in the day, as I sipped an iced chai tea, wasting time before work. Every detail was painstakingly jotted down, by me, as soon as each thought popped into my head.

So, without further adieu, welcome to my brain. Be forewarned...it can get nasty in there. I hope you brought trail mix and some moist towelettes.

This tea is good.

It tastes like something. It tastes like something I know already. Something familiar....but I don't know what.

I bet if I can figure that out, more things would make sense....if I can figure out that one piece of the Universe's infinite puzzle, I'll be in better shape.

Fuck it. I can totally do this. THINK.

Peppery Milkshake?
Sort of, but I don't think that's it. I've never tasted a peppery milkshake before, so that can't really be a familiar taste, can it?

Wait...does it maybe taste like some kind of air freshener smells? Possibly....but I'm not sure.

Ooh! It might be gingerbread. The cake, not the cookies.

Yup. That's totally it. If gingerbread cake were an ice-cold liquid instead of taking on cake-form, it would taste exactly like this.

Whew! I'm glad I figured that out. That would have bothered me all night.

Now, I'll just kick back and let the rest of the Universe's mysteries unfold before me. That should be fun.

Dammit. Now I'm hungry for gingerbread.

aaaand scene!

Now I bet you're all sorry you've been bugging me to post more often, aren't you?

*Typing this title made me laugh, because I remembered the time in college when I was trying to help this really dumb guy study for our Arts & Ideas test on James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I mentioned something about "Stream of consciousness" and the guy looks at me, in all seriousness, and says "Now, that stream is located in Europe, right?"

I lied.

Remember when I hit that badger? (or whatever it was)

Remember when I said it was big, but not mess-up-your-car big?

Yeah. I totally lied.

Turns out that it actually WAS mess-up-your-car big. Or rather mess-up-MY-car big.



I noticed late last night that my parking light had been popped out and subsequently smashed, and the bottom of my bumper is cracked open. And there are some bits of fur stuck in it. Which is just disgusting.



Fucking badgers.

It's Friday. Let's get this over with.

Friday Random Ten. The no-frills edition.

1. Omaha--Counting Crows
2. Where is my mind?--Pixies
3. Princes and Princesses--Ellis
4. Help me out--The Clarks
5. City on down--O.A.R.
6. Y los demas-La Ley
7. Public Service Announcement--The Bravery
8. Of Montreal--The Stills
9. My Coco--stellastarr*
10. Fraggle Rock theme (the Dance Remix)--Gootch

On that note, I should admit that I have far more versions of the Fraggle Rock theme on my computer than any reasonable person should own. Or even know about.

It's a sickness.

Random Act of Blindness

In spite of the fact that I didn't have to be to work until 6pm tonight, I was running late, due to excessive napping on my part earlier in the day. I grabbed a shower, changed clothes and rushed out of the house...hair still quite wet. I had to stop at a local gas station for snack food and pop, as I had also forgotten to eat during the day. (It was one of those days.)

As I was checking out, the elderly man behind the counter smiled at me and said "My! that hairstyle really suits you, young lady!"

Now, if I was British, or could reasonably fake a convincing accent, I would have asked him if he was taking the piss.

After all, the hairstyle to which he was referring consisted of only half-dry hair, about 4 weeks past due for a haircut, being held out of my face solely by the pair of sunglasses perched atop my head. Not really the stuff dreams are made of.

But he seemed sincere. Which is weird. Maybe his eyesight isn't very good.....he was kind of old.

Or maybe he could just tell that I was having a really, really bad day.

Either way. It was sort of nice. So, a big thank you goes out to the strangely sincere elderly gentleman with poor eyesight. Because he rocks.

Ick.

I killed an animal with my car, driving home tonight. It was the first time I've ever hit anything, so it freaked me out completely.

I don't know what kind of animal it was. Whatever I hit was big, but not mess-up-your-car big.

From the size of it, I've narrowed down the possibilities to:
a) dog
b) raccoon
c) badger

Even though it's the least likely possibility, I'm trying very hard to convince myself that the correct answer is c) badger.

Because badgers are mean.

Not that I necessarily want them all dead, really. If I drive by that spot tomorrow and see a dead badger, I'm not going to, like, throw a party, or anything. I'm not anti-badger. I'm just more pro-dog, I guess.

For lack of anything better to do....

Friday Random 10. The resurrected edition.

1. Blowin' in the Wind--Bob Dylan
2. The World is Full of Crashing Bores--Morrissey
3. Give In--The Bravery
4. Volcano--Jimmy Buffett
5. So Sorry--Runner and the Thermodynamics
6. Title and Registration--Death Cab for Cutie
7. Breath After Breath--Duran Duran
8. Our Love--Rhett Miller
9. Virgin State of Mind--K's Choice
10. Kiss Off--Violent Femmes

Here's a funny one....

Blogging will be light for the next couple of days.


Har-dee-har-har.


See, it's funny because blogging has been light, like, EVERYDAY. Get it? Ha ha.

My bizarre thought of the day

Just to prove that I AM still thinking.

If you work in the porn industry, and your boss catches you looking at CNN.com or The Times online during your work hours, I bet you get in big trouble for NOT looking at porn.

That is all.

Hello

I have nothing to say.

Well, apart from that.

Is this how nihilists are made?

If you distill things down to their most basic bits, everything is a load of rubbish, isn't it?

Watching the Wimbledon finals a few weeks ago, a teenager said to me, "This is stupid. All they do is hit a ball back and forth until someone misses." And that's technically true enough, I guess. But as I explained to him, by those standards, every sport is utterly ridiculous.

Baseball: You hit a ball with a stick and then run 'round in a circle as fast as you can.

Football: Try to get a ball to the end of a field. You have four tries to do so.

Boxing: Punch someone repeatedly as hard as you can. Do your best to avoid being punched.

And it's not just sports. It's everything. My mother is a big fan of the "if you don't do this, will it kill you?" tactic. "If you don't see that band live, will it kill you?" "If you don't go there on vacation, will it kill you?" "If the restaurant is out of the soup you like, will it kill you?" And on and on.

And the fact is, no, it will not. Not doing any of an infinite number of things will not literally kill me.

Breathing is really the only thing I can think of that NOT doing will kill me straight away.

But it seems pretty silly to wake up every morning and set about a busy day of breathing, simply because it's the only thing that will kill me if I don't do it.

Once you've made everything seem stupid and pointless in your head though, you find that the reasons for getting out of bed in the morning start to dwindle.

But there's an obvious part of the equation missing here, isn't there? Emotion. Feeling. Sensation. Etc.

No matter how stupidly simple the basic bits of any given situation are, there are always those lovely, delicious, complex and inexplicable feelings that go along with it.

Peace Train by Cat Stevens is kind of a stupid song, and I'll be the first to admit it. But that doesn't change the fact that I get goosebumps every time I hear it.

No amount of distilling can explain why I have spent hours of my life, too numerous to count, staring at this Doug Argue painting of a bunch of chickens.

And there is no simplistic reasoning behind that unparalleled sublimely happy feeling I get when I slip my feet into the perfect pair of flip-flops.

I guess those are the sort of reasons I get out of bed in the morning. (or to be fair, early afternoon)

Well, those AND the breathing bit, I suppose.

Why is John Kerry still asking me for money?

Seriously. I don't get it.

I am asking you to endorse and help pay for a powerful message that will appear in the days ahead in newspapers across the country. Show the President and the Senate just how strongly you feel about protecting our fundamental freedoms:

http://contribute.johnkerry.com/

And he pastes that link in his email about 3 more times.

If me giving money to John Kerry couldn't get him elected, what makes him think that me giving him money is going to keep the REAL president from nominating an ass-hat to the Court?

I'll consider giving money to other organizations....but JohnKerry.com? I think not.

Baby-stepping onto the Blog

OK...that was a lame allusion to the criminally underrated film "What About Bob." But you get the idea.

Anyway, my partner in crime and I have teamed up to create our own short-list of potential SCOTUS nominees and posted it on The Street.

The Cheese Stands Alone

I'm going to hazard a guess that I'm the only person on the planet that DIDN'T like War of the Worlds.

And I even went into it with a good attitude. So many people told me it was SO good that I'd like it even if I don't like Tom Cruise.

But so many people were wrong about that.

Maybe my timing was off. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had seen it pre-London attack. As is was, I really wasn't in the mood to watch stuff get blown up repeatedly.

But there really was so much to dislike, I don't think even seeing it earlier would've helped.

For example, by about 45 minutes into the film, I was ready to feed Dakota Fanning to the damn aliens myself.

So, call me crazy....but I just don't get the hype.

More blogging about blogging

I'm sorry.

It's just that I'm having a little trouble getting back into the swing of things.

It's like, say you had a favorite relative or friend that passed away. And maybe you really enjoyed one particular activity with said person. Say, fishing, for example. You have all of these wonderful memories of your time fishing together.

When that person is gone, you maybe feel a little guilty about wanting to go fishing without them. You may even claim you'll never go fishing again, because it just isn't the same.

Of course, I know that you ALWAYS end up fishing again. And you even enjoy it. It becomes a way to remember your fallen comrade fondly.

And so, I'm sure I'll be up and at 'em again soon.

Except in my case, it's sort of like I murdered my friend the last time we went fishing together. Like Neri and Fredo.

I bet it took Neri a while to get back to fishing after that little incident.

Oh my....this analogy just got WAY out of hand. I shall stop while I'm ahead.

Blog Triage

Thanks to the magic of Google caches, I've found the content for most of my previous posts.

So, I'll be piecing things back together, salvaging what can be salvaged, and saving the stuff that's most worth saving, in my opinion.

I think I'm going to take this opportunity to say "so long" to the Haloscan commenting feature, now that Blogger has improved their own comments anyway. I still have all of the Haloscan comments saved, so while they won't be attached to the re-posted posts, please know that they've not been forgotten.

I may add some of my favorite comments to the sidebar, for posterity.

Haste Makes Waste

Yeah. It's all gone.

In a brief moment of bad decision-making, I deleted the whole blog.

I'm not proud of it.

I'll slowly be rebuilding, I guess.

No good deed goes unpunished

As some of you already know, I volunteer as a mentor for a 10 year-old girl. With issues.

Tonight, I agreed to take my mentee to see Herbie: Fully Loaded.

Driving in the car, on the way, we have the following conversation. Names have been changed to protect the obnoxious.

Tiny She-Bitch: Do you think you're EVER going to get married?
FJ: I don't know. Maybe. But not for a long, long time, Tiny She-Bitch.
Tiny She-Bitch: Why?
FJ: Because I don't want to right now.
Tiny She-Bitch: Well, I think you better get married soon. While you still can.
FJ: Is that right?
Tiny She-Bitch: Yeah. You have to get married before you're done with your 30s, or you really won't be able to.
FJ: Oh. Thanks for the heads up.
Tiny She-Bitch: Plus, once you're 40, you can't have babies.
FJ: What if I don't WANT to have babies, Tiny She-Bitch?
Tiny She-Bitch: Well, if you want to die alone and let your family die out, that's your business.*
FJ: Yeah. I guess that IS my business, isn't it.

Then later, at the theater waiting for them to let us in, we wasted time in the arcade area. Tiny She-Bitch insisted that we both put a quarter in this cheesy palm-reading machine. She did hers first, then I did mine. When I was done she looked at it and said. "Huh. Yours isn't really as good as mine."

So, I did what any one of you would've done.

I kicked her ass at air-hockey.

Seriously, I annihilated her. No mercy.

At one point, she looked like she was going to cry, and whined that I was too hard on her. She then insisted that I continue playing only with my left hand. I gladly agreed, and proceeded to humiliate her, 7-0. Left-handed even.

Sure, I got some dirty looks from a couple little old ladies sitting nearby. But, if they only knew the kid, they'd understand. I only did what I had to do.

Surprisingly enough....I didn't hate the movie itself. Tom Lennon of Reno 911 wrote it, and the cast was great. And I had forgotten how much I used to love the Herbie movies when I was little. It was very nostalgic. Even though I was sitting with a kid who started bawling when Herbie got taken away from Lindsay Lohan, and made intentional, audible "GULP"ing sounds during EVERY Herbie race.

Honestly, if they could just bottle this kid up, it'd be the most effective birth-control in the world.

*I am NOT making this up. Those words actually came out of a 10 year old girl's mouth. I couldn't believe it either.

Friday Random Ten: Extended Version

With random lyrics and/or useless information. Because I am bored.

1. None of the Above--Duran Duran
"I am I myself alone and realize
I never need to use no one
When it comes down to my soul
freedom puts my faith in none of the above."

If Duran Duran were a church, I'd go there.

2. Feed the Tree--Belly

This was one of my very favorite songs in 7th or 8th grade. The video was so simple, but very me. At least in 7th or 8th grade.

3. Still in Love Song--The Stills
"We were lovers, we were kissers
we were holders of hands, we were make-believers."

Once, right after Logic Will Break Your Heart came out, a friend of mine was moving away. I bought him this cd as a surprise going away present. When I gave it to him, wrapped up, he handed me a wrapped cd too. We opened them at the same time....and it was the same friggin' cd. Very strange.

4. Angel Mine--Cowboy Junkies

I think that Cowboy Junkies could be singing the lyrics to "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and it would still be so depressing you'd want to throw yourself off a bridge.

5. On Saturday--The Clarks

This has got to be the happiest, funkiest, most groovable break-up song ever. You have to hear it to believe it.

6. Take Me or Leave Me--Rent Soundtrack

Has anyone else seen the preview for the upcoming movie version? I don't know if it'll be any good or not....but I got really excited when I saw it.

7. Baby Don't Cry--INXS

Welcome to Wherever You Are was, hands down, my favorite album when I was 12. I distinctly remember buying it. And then listening to it over and over and over. Life was good then. These songs still make me happy.

8. Situation--Yaz

This is from the Rules of Attraction soundtrack. I think that's why it's on my computer. I was obsessed with that movie for a while...even though it's no where near as good as American Psycho. But the soundtrack is awesome, regardless.

9. Talk to Me, Dance with Me--Hot Hot Heat

"You are my only girl. But you're not my owner, girl."

I love them. That is all.

10. Found a Peanut--Toddler Tunes

I'm sure I have an excellent reason why this is on my computer. I just can't think of it right now.

And a Bonus # 11, because I simply cannot allow "Found a Peanut" to be the last song I listen to this morning:

11. Music is the Victim--Scissor Sisters

That is much, much better.