Ass Over Teakettle

adventures in domesticity

2008-07-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

Normally I am pro-chemical; even a perfunctory look at my hair-dyeing escapades of the past twenty years confirms this stance. I am pro-chemical, pro-modern conveniences, and a dirty whore for Western medicine.

However these days I am also poor and bored, hence my big fun over the weekend: I made my own laundry detergent. It was fairly easy and produced an ass load of pleasant-smelling and cheap detergent; the only drawbacks are the Flubber-like consistency and the unsavory sounds it makes as you scoop out a portion.

Sadly, that was only one of the events of the weekend that confirmed I need more hobbies, more friends, or better drugs; the other involved the intimate hygiene of rubber ducks.

Our bathroom has a subdued and tasteful theme of rubber duckies, so I decided to use Crash's armada of ducks for decorative purposes. Alas, given the damp nature of their natural habitat, some of his ducks were suffering from mildew, so I ran a sink of warm water and added a little bleach to it. I put the ducks in and began squeezing them so they would take in the bleach solution, then squirting out the ick. After about ten minutes of this it occurred to me that I was spending more time than anyone ever should administering enemas to artificial waterfowl.

Like I said: more hobbies, more friends, better drugs -- not necessarily in that order.

May 11, 2008

2008-05-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've been watching WKRP in Cinncinnati on Hulu and thinking about how much Johnny (DOCTOR Johnny Fever, babies!) reminds me of my first boss, Bill. Wait. Bill was not actually my first boss; I am confused here in this the latter half of my thirties. Damn all that cocaine I snorted in junior-high. I worked in the county library system for a summer at one branch before transferring to the main branch the next summer and working for Bill.

Anyway, Bill was not a burned out dee-jay in tinted aviators; he was a librarian. I remember my interview with him was more like hanging out talking to a friend about books and movies and bands we liked. He hired me even though at the time I was in a hardcore classic rock phase and had not yet figured out why Lynyrd Skynyrd deserved the plane crash. Howard Hesseman reminds me a little of him physically a bit about the eyes, but more kinesthetically: the way he would go from a very laid-back, deadpan demeanor to lighting up with some enthusiasm and getting really animated. Bill was a good friend; I miss him.

And yes, my first job was in a library and my second job was in a university dining hall and my third was as a stripper. I've made a lot of zig-zags in my checkered careeer; at this point I think my next move should be as a short stop for the Braves, or maybe a toll collector.

The other thing going on with me today is Crash. This afternoon, I told him I loved him, and he said he loved me too. Then he said "Happy Movver's Day! Can I give you a kiss?"

I gave him a kiss, and he asked if he could give me some flowers, which he did. I have a clump of pansies pulled roots and all from our yard. I couldn't be more content.

animal brides and whatnot

2008-04-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

I went to my undergrad research conference and read my paper on animal brides in fairy tales. It was a lot of build-up for a quick fifteen minutes -- twelve hour bus rides there and back, plus multiple hour-long bus rides every day back and forth from the hotel to the university. Riding on the bus is one of my least favorite activities, possibly down there with getting a pap smear, except that the pap smear is quick. Riding the bus is actually more like a bladder infection : irritating, tedious, and seeming to last longer than it actually does. No, I don't know why all my similes involve my ladyparts today.

However, bus rides notwithstanding, I received some nice feedback on my paper from people who didn't even know me; also, I got to attend some awesome presentations. I listened to one on feminine sexuality & the Wife of Bath; Japanese horror movies and American remakes; Hamlet; and Neo-Paganism on the internet, to name a few. Another positive is that my randomly assigned roommate was very cool and has potential of being a friend.

I rode up with about 30 other undergraduates, and was one of 5 people over 25 on the bus. It was mostly a nice crowd, with the exception of one girl whom I desperately wished to lure into a dark spot in a remote rest area and leave for dingoes to eat. Besides looking like a live-action Bratz doll, she had the most annoying laugh I've ever been cooped up with for 24 hours.

"Ha ha ha ha. "

*SNORT*

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Obviously she does not realize that the arguable charm of the pig-snort-laugh is its spontanaety, its suggestion that one is so overwhelmed with hilarity that all decorum has been lost, that one is just *snooooooort* overcome. One should never deliberately pig-snort; it's just gauche. Obviously she also does not realize that the woman one seat back and across the aisle is inventorying her backpack for a stabbing utensil.

This girl also got on my shit list, as if the affected pig-snort isn't enough, by copious spritzing of perfume while on the enclosed space of the bus. Subjecting others to your collection of cucumber-basil-jasmine-vanilla-chai-cruller body sprays should be a capital offense, and the executions should be swift, cruel, and public -- preferably in the open air so the fumes can dissipate.

Crash in the world

2008-04-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

Crash's first-grade year has been a roller coaster. I have written about my issues with his teacher (by issues meaning "can't stand her; want to punch her.")

I think I stopped writing shortly after our cycle of disease started. Since November we have had two cases of stomach upset, two cases of flu, two cases of pinkeye, and two instances of Crash falling off a chair at school and developing a large and gaudy pump knot on his forehead. I have shared all of these episodes with Crash except the pump knots; although I'm clumsy I don't often fall off my chair unless tequila is involved, which it rarely is these days. I have learned a few lessons.

The repeat episodes of the flu were particularly offensive. We got flu shots in November, then the first round of flu in December. The doctor explained our shot was probably not fully engaged; okay. The second time, in late February, I was sitting in the exam room, feverish and dizzy, with a feverish, lethargic child huddled against me, protesting the doctor's attempts to test us.

"We CAN'T have the flu again. We already had it, and we got the shot. Nobody is that unlucky, right?"

Wrong! When the doctor broke the news, I croaked, "This is like winning the really shitty lottery ticket."

The big lesson to retain from all of this: first-graders carry more diseases than wharf rats.

So it's been up and down. Crash's teacher and I started e-mailing recently, which has eased the friction in our relationship. She has a personality that benefits from distance -- and I understand she probably feels the same way about me.

However first grade gave me some gifts recently to buoy me on an otherwise suckalicious day. Friday, Crash had a bad day. Alexander's terrible, horrible, no-good day? Petty shit compared to Crash's Friday.

However Friday night I was going through Crash's backpack and I found a note tucked into a pocket: Dear Crash you are my BEST frend LOVE ALEXIS.

Since I am very mature I asked, "Who is Alexis? Is she your giiiiiirrrrllllfriend?"

Crash: *sigh* "Alexis is a BOY."

me: "Is he your boooooooyfriend?"

Crash: *DEEP SIGH* "I do not want to talk to you about it."

Alexis is apparently a boy. One hopes for his sake he is a White Russian princeling with a cadre of bodyguards because in our backwoods town a male named Alexis might have it hard. Whatever -- Alexis is a mensch in training and I love him. I could do worse for a son-in-law.

In addition to the mash note from Alexis, I noticed some choice tidbits from Crash's vocabulary sentences. The students write sentences to demonstrate various vocabulary words. Gotta wonder what the teacher thought of this as a demonstration of dust.

I also noticed Crash had a new Calvin and Hobbes book, so I asked about it this morning. It was a gift from another classmate, who thought it might help Crash have a better day.

Dude, these are six-year-olds, and they are demonstrating compassion that makes me want to cry. There is hope.

10. Bury the shovel; 11. Rub hands together; cackle maniacally.

2007-12-11T09:15:00.001-08:00

Ever have a day when the people you live with cause you to make idle plans of how you will kill them and bury them somewhere on the edge of the yard under the sycamores, slightly to the left of the big rock?

I am home with Crash, who has the flu. I may or may not have the flu; it's hard to tell because I'm so tired I'm delirious. I have been dealing with a child spewing vomit like Linda Blair all morning, and that is not even the thing making me homicidally cranky. My mom is decorating the house, and all morning long I have heard:

"Nooooora."

"What?"

"Nooooora."

Drag myself to foot of stairs. "Mom, what is it?"

"Nora mrgh lsh bribble grr. Nerf lister?"

Grit teeth, close lips tightly on a stream of profanity, plod up the stairs. "I couldn't hear you; what's up?"

"Is the tree leaning?"

Repeat 751 times with different punchlines:

a) "Do the nutcrackers overpower this little tree?"

b) "Do I need to fluff the branches?"

c) "Do you remember this little mouse in the walnut shell cradle Jess made in the first grade?"

d) "Look, I found the little Nativity set!"

Answers:

a) Don't care.

b) Why does the tree need to be erect?

c) Vaguely; still don't care.

d) Mom, I don't give a flying fuck unless Mary is weeping real tears, Joseph and the shepherd are doing the hand jive, and Baby Jesus is speaking from the cradle telling you to LEAVE YOUR DAUGHTER ALONE AND LET HER DIE IN PEACE, WOMAN.

In that case, I will say rock on and thank you, Baby Jesus.

just like Scarlett O'Hara, with one foot tangled in a hoopskirt

2007-12-06T09:51:00.001-08:00

In my last entry, which I forgot to portal (giving you an idea of how wildly scintillating it was) I mentioned that Crash and I were in a small car accident.

In addition to that, in the last two weeks my dad broke two fingers in a fall from his horse; my mom fell and hurt her elbow; Nehi 2 died under mysterious fishly circumstances; and I fell down the stairs.

I wasn't drinking, or wearing heels, or drinking while wearing heels; even sadder, I wasn't having a raging quarrel with the man I don't know I love about how he knocked me up after carrying me up said stairs and doing me six ways to Sunday. I just missed the first step and then hit every other step on the way down. My wrists, elbows, one knee, and back are bruised as fuck-all but I'm okay otherwise. Okay as in ambulatory--obviously not okay as in "right in the head."

I got an awesomely snotty comment several weeks ago about my "nice blog title" with an eye-roll helpfully spelled out for me to alert me there was sarcasm afoot because otherwise I might have cross-stitched "nice blog title" on a cushion in a mistaken sense of accomplishment and then been chagrined; obviously this person did not realize that ass over teakettle is simply an accurate portrayal of my usual state of falling on, over, under, or down something. I am the alpha and the omega, I am the fallee and the fallen on, I am the ass and the teakettle, yea, verily.

I had written that much and was prepared to go into a rant about how I grew up in Scarlett O'Hara's very own hometown and yet I have no man telling me I need to be kissed hard, and often, and by someone who knows how; however, I was interupted by the school calling me to come inspect Crash's forehead because he fell on it and immediately produced an enormous purple knot. You want to know how Amateur Stuntman did this? He was sitting in his desk and fell out of his chair.

I went and inspected and the knot is huge, purple, and hideous, but he was nonchalant and had scored an extra chocolate milk out of the deal. I think he inheirited my freakish ability to bruise at the drop of a hat as well as my complete lack of coordination.

I expect to go home and find Nehi's replacement Flip impaled in some kind of freak fish-castle accident. What is going on? Do I need to smudge something?

holi - what? daily?

2007-12-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

I fell off that track promptly, no?

Since December 1 I have

written my abstract;
given tech support for the stupid end-of-semester project for work that is devouring my soul;
worked on my take-home exam;
flushed Nehi 2, who died under mysterious circumstances one night;
adopted Flip, who seems much livelier than Nehi 2;
got rear-ended.

Sadly, "rear-ended" is not what the kids are calling it these days: someone hit my car from behind. Crash and I were headed down to WalMart last Friday to do a little shopping, then indulge in dinner out. We were stopped several cars back at the light when two teenaged yahoos slammed into the car behind us, which slammed into us.

The good news is we are both fine and the car is driveable. Crash was a brave little toaster; in fact, he found the entire thing exciting. Fire trucks, police cars, people running around in the road? AWESOME. Let's do this every day, Mom.

I was a lot more uptight since I went through the sheer panic of OMG we're hit Crash is in the backseat!!!; then the drawn-out tension of OMG, we're stuck in the left-hand lane with no way to get over and it's dark and some other yahoo will just mow us down willy-nilly; then a emotional meltdown of OMG I can't get in touch with Mom and Dad and we could have DIED and we are all alone in the world.

My inner voice says OMG a lot and I think it watches The Hills.

introducing myself, several months into the game

2007-12-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've been futzing with online journals since . . . (does math in head, slowly) December 2002.

In December 2002 I was married, living in a house in Florida, wrangling my 16-month-old son, and I had just met Anna Rain. I was having crushing anxiety attacks every four minutes or so and working a really stupid job that I hated.

Now it's December 2007. I am separated and my husband lives across the country from me. We lost our house in Florida and moved into an apartment, then into my parents' home in North Carolina, then into a rental house. Now I'm back in my parents' basement.

My son Crash is six now, and the most amazing kid. I am so lucky to have him, even if I occasionally threaten to sell him on Ebay or put him on the curb with a sign that says FREE TO A HOME.

I am separated. I haven't written about it because I don't know what to say. My tenth anniversary happened a week or so after I moved out.

Anna Rain is one of the best women I know. I'm lucky to count her as a friend. Also, she is so funny she kills me--like when I ask her how much I could get for Crash on Ebay and she says -16,000 dollars, the same she would get for her daughter Jane. She's also kind: Jane is smaller and cuter than Crash and I'd bet she'd go for -10,000 dollars.

Due to better living through chemistry my anxiety attacks have gone down to one every six months or so.

I like my job a lot better.

I'm in school now, very slowly working at my undergrad in English/Psychology. I just submitted a paper to an undergrad symposium. The paper was called Selkies and Fox-brides: Dangerous Marriages, or a Paper Written By a Bitter and Deeply Neurotic Newly-Separated Woman.

Put all of this together, and I am actually very happy right now. I feel more myself than I have in a long time, and I think I like that.

How are you?

field trip

2007-10-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Jesus fracking Christ on a pop tart. I have peered into the abyss: I have chaperoned a field trip for the first grade.

The morning started LATE. We zoomed through the shower and dressed with all possible haste -- I dressed with such haste I neglected a belt or a jacket.

At the school I parked on the grass and we erupted from the car as if shot from cannons. Before we were halfway down the sidewalk Crash's aide was urging us on from the door: "HURRY! The buses are about to leave!"

I ran with my pants falling down, dragging Crash behind me, our backpacks bouncing on my shoulder. We managed to tag onto the end of the line and we collapsed on the bus. Once on the bus I realized that the bottom third of my pants legs were soaked from skidding through a puddle and the bus did not seem to have a heater. I huddled next to Crash and pondered what desperate criminal actions I would take for a cup of coffee but my opportunities for such actions were limited and none of the no-neck monsters in my vicinity seemed to have a thermos.

A long cold bus ride later we sat through an adaptation of the epic adventures of Junie B. Jones. The production values were roughly on par with your average elementary school play, minus the charm of the kids and plus the creep factor of adults dressed like kids, and in some cases cross-dressed like kids.

Back on the bus for a long trip home and a stop for a picnic lunch where Crash made me laugh as we re-boarded the bus for the last time. In order to keep track of the kids they do headcounts throughout the day, and so the teacher was dutifully counting: ". . . twelve, thirteen, fourteen--"

Crash: "I don't want a number! I am not a number!"

Me: "Fight the power, son."

Seriously, who does he think he is, The Prisoner?

Respectfully submitted,

the new Number Two

100 books and one neurotic betta

2007-10-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Nehi II is installed in his bowl, but he keeps eating a flake of food, pondering it, then ptooie, spitting it out. My research indicates he is either stressed by the move or else a finicky eater who requires brine shrimp and other betta delicacies and not the plebian kibble he's been getting.

Or else he is bulimic. Set your Tivo for Bowl of Secrets: Nehi's Story on Lifetime Movie Network.

On to books: here's a meme swiped from many other people.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users as of 30 September 2007. Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but didn't finish, and underline it if you watched the movie adaptation, or if you can figure out how to underline in Blogger, which I can't seem to do.

1984
The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
Angels and Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged (GAG. Will never finish without a gun to my head.)
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales (Worst English major ever, that's me.)
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces (It pains me when people report they hate this book. My valve snaps shut.)
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Emma
Foucault's Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity's Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver's Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (I have no idea why I finished this. HATED IT. Part of the issue was that at the time I kept confusing Dave Eggars with Dave Sedaris and wondering why he had been reported to be so funny, but I think there was enough in the book to make it hate worthy all on its own.)
The Historian
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood
Inferno
Jane Eyre (Probably my favorite book.)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Couldn't get into it.)
The Kite Runner
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
Mrs. Dalloway
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
On the Road
The Once and Future King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Oryx and Crake
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Scarlet Letter
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Three Musketeers
The Time Traveler's Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Nehi is dead, long live Nehi

2007-10-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

The last week has been crazy busy. My friend Shaz flew in from AZ with her baby and visited for a few days. Shaz and I met in fourth grade when we discovered we were kindred nerdlingers who loved Little House on the Prairie and climbing trees. We remain kindred nerdlingers with better glasses and less Melissa Gilbert involved.

We spent most of the time riding herd on our kids, gossipping about mutual acquaintances, drinking wine, and googling former crushes. Perfect visit, really.

In between wine and gossip, we took the kids out to a pet store at one point. Crash has been campaigning relentlessly for a fish, so I decided to get one. We picked out a nice purple betta whom he eventually christened Nehi.

We took Nehi home and installed him in a nice bowl with unchlorinated water of an appropriate temperature, gave him a grain or two of kibble, and then Crash settled down to watch him. All afternoon I kept getting reports from the bowl: "Nehi is swimming!" "Nehi ate some food!" "Nehi is swimming again!"

I tore Crash away from his beloved to eat dinner. After the meal he ran back downstairs to check out Nehi and reported: "Nehi is sleeping!"

Shaz and I looked at each other, then ran down the stairs to see for ourselves. Indeed, Nehi was sleeping in that endless sleep, dirt nap, bought the fish farm kind of way.

I turned out the light and told Crash we shouldn't wake Nehi up, then hustled him out. I am sure other people would have taken the moment to teach Crash some true facts about life, death, and fish; I choked. Nehi the first got a top-secret flushing while Crash was at school, and Nehi the second will take his place before he gets back from his dad's. Switching identities totally works on Days of Our Lives, and if television has taught me nothing else it is that convoluted plots of deception are always better.

Hear Me Roar

2007-09-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

Do you know what makes a woman feel confident, sexy, and totally in control of her destiny? Living in her parents' basement, that's what.

It's a totally superior basement. At the moment Crash and I are sharing the guest room, which is decorated in a very nice feminine style. My room has two windows and a door which leads out onto a little porch, from which I can look out at the woods, the pond, and the barn. I have a walk-in closet and my own bathroom. I am adjacent to my father's Man Room, so I can sometimes sneak beer from his refrigerator and watch a Braves game with him.

Superior or not, though, it's the damn basement. I am a living cliche.

Before I complain about my mother (cliche number two!), let me state as a disclaimer that my parents are amazing people. They are bailing out their loser daughter and grandson and they want nothing but the best for me. I do not come anywhere close to deserving them.

Disclaimer aside, they have a magical talent for driving me BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY. It's their job.

I dyed my hair red over the summer and have since been subjected to relentless commentary from my mother about how terrible I look as a redhead (untrue) and how pretty my natural hair color is (could be true but no one has seen it since I was in my teens) and why don't I try some highlights and my niece could do it for me, and on and on and FREAKING ON. She is the nicest mom in the world but she is unrelenting.

So several weeks into this torture, I bought all the stuff at Sally's Beauty Supply to rid myself of the red. Life is short and my patience is even shorter.

Mom: "Are you doing something to your hair?"

Me, squirting toxic goo onto my head: "Yep."

Mom: "I hope you're not doing that because of something I said . . ."

Me, head now bursting into flames: "OH NO MOTHER WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT???"

Then I stomped down to my basement lair to write some poetry in my notebook and listen to The Cure.

Like I said, I am a sexy, independent woman (now with very pretty hair of what we assume to be its natural color).

No More Mr. Nice Guy

2007-09-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

I like poetry readings not for the fantastic poetry but for the entertainment value.

I've been to some memorable readings, like the one at Borders where Poet Boy dressed like Rainman and spoke like someone recovering from dental surgery in a slurry monotone from which I could only make out one line:

"Pain! Pain! Pain! Pain!"

Then there was the guy who decided to take the bar hostage with his endless poetic filibuster on the hypocrisy of millennial era yuppies. Sorry, you pretentious little twat, you are not savagely skewering our culture as much as savagely boring us silly and hogging the stage for thirty minutes is only going to get you banned from every open mike night in the city. And when you've been banned from open mike night in Orlando, you are officially the biggest loser on the spoken word circuit. The last notable poetic atrocity is the guy who wrote a smarmy little poem about his Nice Guy rage. The poem wasn't bad, but the sentiment behind it made me roll my eyes until they ached. I hate Nice Guys.

Nice Guys are different from guys who are nice. Nice Guys have built a whole persona and mystique about being Nice. Nice Guys like to rattle off their qualifications like: I don't hit girls; I open car doors; I don't interrupt; I bought her candy on our anniversary which I remembered; I say bless you when she sneezes.

Wow, Nice Guy, do you also breathe? Because that's also a bare minimum dating qualification for most people and not a positive entry on the ledger sheet.

The Nice Guy has listened (kind of) to women bitching about their mates and somehow gotten the idea that A Nice Guy is so hard to come by that by exhibiting the barest traces of civilization, by not tearing apart his girlfriend's pet and devouring it raw on her doorstep, he is a rare find indeed. He may not be smart, witty, fun, or have anything in common with the woman he's chosen, but damnit, he is a Nice Guy and that should be a free pass into her panties.

The really icky part of the Nice Guy delusion is the seething anger that develops when the chicks don't flock to him in droves. Girls are stupid bitches who prefer bad boys who treat them like crap. Girls suck for not appreciating a Nice Guy when they come across one.

Well, some girls do prefer bad boys, some girls are caught up in cycles of abuse that are difficult to break, and some girls simply suck, but if you can't avoid swiping all of womankind with your huge brush of aggrieved generalizations then you are not only not nice, you are kind of psycho.

I ran into a fair amount of Nice Guys when I was stripping. Strip clubs are rank with the stench of sexual desperation and Nice Guys (smells kind of like sweat and Drakkar Noir). Nice Guys like strip clubs for a couple of reasons: a) the obvious, boobies; and b) the belief that strippers are so burned out on the churlish louts who frequent strip clubs that a Nice Guy is guaranteed to get laid. I don't think I need to spend a lot of time on that first reason, so let's skip on to the latter.

I used to hate Nice Guys in strip clubs because they would say things like "I don't want you to dance for me, I want to talk to you" or "I'm so uncomfortable in places like this."

My internal response was something like "Well, I don't particularly want to talk to you because I am working and the way I make money is by dancing naked and having guys tip me. Also, protesting that you don't like strip clubs doesn't make me think you're sensitive, it makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious, and kills the confident vibe that helps me work. If you don't like strip clubs, stick with Bingo. "

My own worst Nice Guy experience came with someone I met through a strip club, although he was an employee rather than a customer. I met Buddy at my first club; he was a nighttime DJ.

We ran into each other here and there over the years and eventually I was between boyfriends and he asked me out. I wasn't interested but I made the classic mistake of ignoring my instinct and saying yes.

The trouble began when he wanted me to come to his house to make dinner for our first date. I demurred because I didn't know him that well and the idea had spooked me a little. So he got irritated about that and also because I scheduled the date a week out because of my work schedule.

Next problem came a few days later when he sent me a ceramic Cinderella figurine, because I reminded him of Cinderella.

OK, I'm obviously the anti-romantic, but I found that icky because Cinderella is a doormat who requires constant rescuing courtesy of her fairy godmother and all the little birds and rats and pumpkins in her vicinity, not to mention she's a fucking moron who missed her curfew when that was the only task required of her. Good job fucking that up, doofus. I thanked him politely, however, because it was a nice gesture and possibly I read too much into his choice of fairy tale heroine. Also, possibly I'm completely neurotic. Possibly.

Then he sent me flowers three days in a row and I began to get creeped out because we hadn't yet been on our first date yet and our phone conversations weren't really burning up the wires; . in fact, there was a palpable lack of chemistry. On the third day he not only sent me flowers again but showed up at the club when I was working to see me. I chatted with him for a little while, and then I went back to work.

He called me the next day to tell me it was obvious I didn't appreciate a Nice Guy. I wasn't enthusiastic enough over the Cinderella, I wasn't grateful enough for the flowers, and I hadn't hung out with him long enough when he came to see me. Partway into my knee-jerk protests, I realized he was forcing me into the psychological corner of proving I was a good person by pretending to like him more than I did. I thanked him for the gifts one last time and told him the date was off. I sent the Cinderella figurine back via a mutual friend who worked with him. She reported back his analysis of me: I was emotionally stunted and couldn't recognize romance when I saw it. Gosh, maybe the wizard will give me a heart one day, and maybe you can hit him up for a sense of appropriate boundaries.

Just to prove I am not the Tin Woman, I'll let you in on the secret of the truly nice guy. He doesn't put women on pedestals; he likes a girl because she's fun, because she kicks his ass at Scrabble, because she thinks Blade Runner is romantic. Men like this understand that some girls don't like Disney princesses or flowers because they understand women do not posess a hive mind/vagina.

This kind of man does things like holding a door open or walking someone back to their car because it's what he does and he doesn't have to trumpet these amazing feats to the world. He also does things like this for other men and even for women he's not interested in banging because he understands acts of simple courtesy are more than ploys to get laid. The authentically nice guy doesn't churn with rage when a woman doesn't want to go out with him; he gets on with the business of meeting someone who does.

Be sarcastic, be silly, be a comic geek or a football dork or an orchid grower; hell, if you want to, be nice. No woman is Everywoman, no matter what that crackhead Whitney Houston says, and no man should settle for being a generic Nice Guy. Trust me: it doesn't work. Just ask Buddy.

Shakespeare Talk Soup

2007-09-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

God bless my professor, because he demonstrates an amazing ability to keep a straight face during class. That, and an amazing ability to keep from calling some of his students fucking morons.

Perhaps I should reconsider my career goals, because I think I lack the same restraint.
Yesterday we were discussing Othello, and one of the comments was "Why didn't Desdemona leave him?"

Well, for starters, that would leave us not with a tragedy but with a Lifetime movie.

And where the fuck is Desdemona supposed to go? What is she supposed to do, rent a cute little two-bedroom apartment with Emilia and go to support group meetings for Women Who Love Men Who Love Not Wisely But Too Well?

This led me to imagining literary characters on talk shows. Desdemona, Othello, and Iago I see on Dr. Phil.

He'd give Iago seven steps to reaching his goals! "You wanna be Othello's lieutenant, son, you gotta create some accountability for yourself. Failure is no accident; don't blame old Cassio for your problems."

He'd tell Desdemona to get a backbone, and Othello to connect with his wife. "Turn toward your spouse, not away!"

Romeo and Juliet would show up on Oprah, on an episode about Teens Who Marry Too Young. Oprah would tell them their love will last, if it's real! They've got to go to college first!

Cathy and Heathcliff and the rest of the Wuthering Heights clan would be the best, though. Of course they would show up on the trashiest show possible. Ricki Lake? Maury Povich? Jerry Springer? I don't know what the latest trainwreck show is, but they'd be on it.

shimmer shimmer dream sequence shimmer shimmer

First Edgar would come on, all downtrodden, wearing khaki pants and a French blue shirt, talking about how he loves his wife, but he just doesn't understand her. And (his voice drops with shame) he thinks she might be cheating on him.

"MIGHT BE? Hell fucking yeah I'm cheating on you," Cathy bellows as she enters. She wears a white wife beater over a black bra, and lowrider jeans that showcase the top of her thong and the tramp-stamp tattoo on her lower back that reads HEATHCLIFF.

Heathcliff trails behind her, wearing black, smirking.

Edgar rises to kiss Cathy on the cheek as she evades him to the hoots of the audience. As C & H sit, Isabella comes trailing in wearing mom jeans and a sweatshirt. When she cannot find a chair to sit next to Heathcliff she plops down next to Edgar and begins snivelling into a tissue pulled from her sleeve.

"What are you crying about? You couldn't keep your man, and someone else done got him," Cathy says. "I mean, my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So step off, biznatch!"

Edgar borrows a Kleenex from Isabella. Heathcliff snickers and gets a pinch of Skoal. The audience hoots and barks.

shimmer shimmer dream sequence shimmer shimmer

I really need to get out more, don't I?

Beat him with a boot

2007-09-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

My son has developed this new habit of getting my attention by grabbing my hair at the nape of my neck and pulling my head in his direction, and it annoys me so intensely that I'm surprised my head hasn't burst into flames from the intensity of my annoyance.

Seriously, this is so crazy-making that if you look up 'Grabbing and yanking Mom's head' in Dr. Spock, the gentle peacenik doctor suggests "Beat offending child with an old boot; then drink grain alcohol."

Sidenote re: Dr. Spock. Shortly after Crash's birth, we were at the crazy estranged in-laws, and Spock came up in conversation. My father-in-law got all pissy over 'that Communist rabble rouser'. I'm not sure why Will found Spock so objectionable: it had to do with either Spock's protest of the war in Vietnam, or possibly he confused him with Mr. Spock (goddamn those hippy Vulcans). Anyway, since then every time I see mention of Dr. Spock I yell, "COMMIE PINKO RABBLE ROUSER."

I didn't say it was a good sidenote.

Shakespeare

2007-09-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

Crash has a new expression: great googly mooglies! I've made him repeat it to the grandparents and several times to me. This will never get old.

Class was interesting yesterday; we took a partial retest because the professor decided a section of the test was poorly designed. Oh my god, the grumbling and complaining, the pissing and moaning from the rest of the class. Horror Guy, whom I cannot stand, nattered on for a bit about how stupid it was. Shut up, Horror Guy.

Horror Guy participates a lot in class, despite the fact he either doesn't read the plays, doesn't understand the plays, or maybe has a grave short term memory issue like Guy Pearce in Memento, in which case I will tattoo SHUT UP on his palm. In our discussion of Othello he managed to miss the fact Othello and Desdemona were married and at another asked, "Othello takes place in Venice, right?"

The teacher explained it begins in Venice, but then the action moves to Cyprus. And in the play, several lines discuss the Turks attacking Cyprus, Othello has to go to Cyprus, Desdemona goes with him to Cyprus, blah Cyprus blah Cyprus.

Horror Guy: "So, wait, Cyprus is a real place?"

The same guy plunged into a discussion about Macbeth by saying, "So, yeah, Macbeth's wife? What was her name?"

The professor said "Lady Macbeth?"

Horror Guy: "No, no--what's her first name?"

Professor, with enviable deadpan: "Cynthia."

Me: smothered hysterical laughter.

I have no exciting plans for the weekend. I need to re-read Hamlet and the Harold Bloom book I bought about Hamlet, to maintain my status as class brown-noser and keener.

That was the other thing in the pre-class moaning session: various bitter comments on brown-nosers and favorites. It makes me feel the age gap because it highlights the difference in my approach to class. For me class is a break from work, a chance to stretch my mind, a chance to think about something besides Crash/job/home/bills. It's fun.

For most of the kids, it's a hoop to jump to get to graduation and start 'real life'. In certain ways it's nice to be on my side, not the least of which is I couldn't care less about being a brown-noser (meaning I study and participate). I want to wring everything possible out of the experience.

And free-associating regarding class, I was privately amused when one of my classmates mentioned a strip club in Florida that performed Shakespeare. I used to work there! It was prior to the Shakespeare thing, but it was the last place I worked before hanging up my garter and stilettos. A year or so after I quit, the city passed a law banning nudity unless it was for an artistic purpose, and so the club started a performance of Shakespeare in the nude.

Which begged the question, based on my experience of the women who worked there, how the hell did they get the dancers to memorize the lines? I'm not saying strippers are uniformly stupid, but that particular club seemed to attract more than its fair share of dingbats, including one dancer who once told me that you could get, like, a virus from computers. I kept meaning to go see a performance but we never made it. Artistic experience missed; many regrets.

The Fog: movie review

2007-09-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched The Fog, original version.
I enjoy The Fog quite a bit; it's not as suspenseful as Halloween, but it has nice visuals and it has that somewhat coherent plot that I'm more or less a stickler for. Did that sound wishy washy? As a devout horror fan I have to qualify my need for a tight plot: I'm just happy when I cannot drive an actual tank through the plot holes.

Anyway, something started cracking me up about The Fog. The evil undead seafaring lepers (not making this up) are such nice polite revenants! Their evil undead leper mommas raised them right! They always knock on the door before slashing their victims to ribbons with their evil undead hand-hooks.

So, every time these guys knocked, my brain supplied lines.

"Hello, evil ghostly lepers calling!" We have razor sharp hooks and Skin So Soft(tm) too!

"Hello, pizza guy! I mean, land shark! I mean, evil undead leper---shit!"

"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Evil undead pirate leper!"
"Evil unead pirate leper who?"
"Evil pirate unleper---ahhhh, shit!"

"Get the door, it's a Vengeful Spectre!"

Scholarship Essay

2007-09-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

Why do you feel you need this scholarship? What motivated you to continue your education?
How would attaining your goals further your career? Statement should be approximately 1,000 words.

I need this scholarship because . . .

Because.

Because I am po'. Multiply by 250, done!

I was motivated to continue my education because it pisses me off when I meet people I consider more stupid than myself who have degrees.

Stupider than myself? More stupid? Nice sentence structure, brainiac. I'm sure they'll be impressed with that, if the bitterness doesn't wow them first.

I want . . .

I need . . .

I was inspired . . .

I am inspired . . .

Learning inspires me . . .

Learning completes me . . .

I have long held the goal . . . long held? What am I even saying?

zog want school. go school get job get lots of green paper $$$. buy food, stuff in Crash's foodhole. school good, $$$ good.

Attaining this scholarship will keep me from killing myself in bleak despair. I will be a better employee because I will be alive and not a rotting corpse. Studies prove that live employees are more productive than dead ones, unless you factor in zombies. However I feel that zombies skew the study results by eating the live subjects and creating more of their kind, so that all the zombie studies end up being 100% zombie.

I do hear they're good workers if you can get around the brain eating.

Maybe cow brains? Kind of like on Buffy when Angel got his blood from the slaughterhouse?

I promise I am not going to school to learn about zombies; they are just kind of a side interest.

Although if they had a degree program in Horror Studies I would be totally all over that shit. I would avoid the Vampirology students though; you know they'd be hanging around all the time gossiping about who gave whom the Dark Gift and whose blood tastes like cabbage, and oh the angst and woe.

Sigh.

My need for education speaks for itself, doesn't it? Please give me some money. Thank you.

Hamlet flings poo!

2007-09-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

So last night in class we discussed infinity and probability and coincidence. The teacher brought up the old saw about monkeys and Shakespeare.

"If you had infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, typing for infinite amount of time, what is the chance one of them could produce Hamlet?"

Dead silence. I might have answered except I was almost dead with boredom. And, duh, within the parameters of infinity anything is possible. Given infinite time I might even figure out how to set tabs in Word and not have the fucking paperclip eat them to fuel his demonic power.

"Is it possible? Time going on forever, monkeys going on forever, all banging away on keyboards, could one of them come up with Hamlet?"

Dead silence.

"Anyone have a guess?"

"Well," said one girl, slowly. "They educate them now and all, like sign language? So I think they could do it."

I put my head down on my desk, no longer bored, now imagining standing in front of a class, telling the students to settle down and quit flinging shit because now we're starting Act III.

Chewing On the X

2007-09-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last night we went over to my boss's house for dinner. It was a great evening: good food, good conversation, everything good. Of course, there is an and then, or this would be a very short entry indeed.

And then Crash lost his shit.

Boss's son Jack is a little over a year old. He is the cutest boy toddler in the world (at least, since Crash is no longer a toddler, and not counting Jane who is the cutest girl toddler, or Master Jamie, who is not yet a toddler.) He has huge brown eyes and crazy curly hair, and he wanted to toddle around after Crash and make googly eyes at him.

This was all good until Crash found the alphabet letters on the fridge. Crash began meticulously putting the letters into their proper order. There was a speed bump when he couldn't find the G, but then we located it under the sofa. The trouble started when Jack began to move the letters around.

At first Crash would kind of sigh and put them back. Then, just to let us know there was trouble brewing he announced to the rest of us, "Mixing up the letters!" There was a note of indignation.

I tried re-directing Crash to any of the 8,000 other totally cool toys available. We reminded him the letters were in fact Jack's to mix up as he chose, and big boys need to remember to share and take turns.

This worked for a while, but as the evening wore on, Crash's temper was visibly fraying. Jack, of course, bopped along all googly-eyed and adorable and mellow, like a tiny cartoon kitten busy destroying the sanity of a huge cartoon bulldog. Crash began to try to hold Jack off with one hand, creating a no-mixing-up zone around the refrigerator. I took Crash for a walk to the back of the kitchen, reminding him again that the letters were not his--

"CHEWING ON THE X!"

Jack had not only removed a letter from the refrigerator but was gumming it with abandon. I could not identify the letter at a room's length but apparently Captain Compulsive could.

"Crash, those are HIS TOYS and he can chew on them--"

"CHEWING! ON! THE! X!" The outrage was mixing with tears.

"Crash, he can chew on them if he wants and if you can't share you can't play with them."

"MIXING UP THE LETTERS!"

--and that was the last coherent phrase for quite some time.

Crash lost his shit. His shit was lost like the civilization of Atlantis; like the Roanoke settlers; like D.B. Cooper; like the gold initial pendant I got for Christmas at 7:30 am, December 25th, 1980, which disappeared forever by 9:45 that same morning. I cannot think of enough lost things to truly give you the sense of how lost his shit was. I carried my thrashing child into the living room and announced that we were going home. Instead of me typing and re-typing Crash kept screaming you must assume the next few paragraphs took place with an outraged, eardrum-puncturing scream oscillating continuously in the background.

Our hosts protested politely.

We demurred.

We looked for Crash's shoes.

I took Crash to the bathroom.

Crash spent several minutes careening around the guest bathroom.

Crash collapsed to the ground, pressed his face against the cool tile, and almost fell asleep. The silence was shocking.

After a minute or two, I picked him up and he used the bathroom, and we left, mumbling abject apologies to our hosts.

I wrote that yesterday, still in the mortification zone. Today I saw Bossman, and we chatted about it, and he reassured me a little. He told me if it hadn't been Crash, it would have been Jack, and it happens to everyone. I feel somewhat better.

Crash feels somewhat better too, although when I told the story to my mom on the phone a few minutes ago, he chimed in with "Mixing up the letters!" as if to make sure I included Jack's outrageous transgressions.

Who knew magnetic alphabet letters were such objects of contention?

Housekeeper of the Year

2007-09-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

When I brought my plants in for the winter I didn't have a good place for my aloe plant because the pot is too big for the window sill. So I ended up sticking it on top of the washing machine, on the little ledge formed by the control panel. Nothing bad could happen to it there, right?

Today the machine decided to do some weird Frankenstein's monster thing, or evolutionary leap, or show that it could be a ballerina--it has the heart!--and it lurched halfway across the laundry room floor. The aloe plant face-planted directly on top of the lid, and potting soil sifted through every available opening to cover my freshly washed wet laundry.

I searched for some tips on how to deal with a metric ass load of dirt in my washing machine, but apparently this is not a common problem. I am a unique snowflake of dumb. I did run across some instructions for washing the washing machine which is apparently a common household chore I've never heard of. I regard the washing machine as inherently clean.

My second thought was that yes, it makes sense because mineral deposits and detergent residue can build up.

My first thought, though, was NOT ANOTHER GODDAMN THING I HAVE TO CLEAN ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING KIDDING ME???

This is similar to my reaction when I read Home Comforts, a terrifyingly thorough household encyclopedia, and found out I was expected to wash the walls on some kind of regular basis. I knock spider webs off the walls and I wipe up specific stains like fingerprints, but actually washing entire walls, top to bottom? Walls are vertical; dirt just slides off them, right?

Jesus. Next I'm going to find out letting Crash lick the dinner plates clean isn't sanitary.

St. George the Curious

2007-09-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day cleaning my filthy sty of a house and making key lime pie for my boss's Christmas party.

The party was by far the best office Christmas party I've ever attended. At first it was slightly weird because two of the couples were all uptight and silent, standing there clutching cups of soda and, well, just standing there. Standing there sucking the party dry.

One of my co-workers is simply taciturn by nature: she's a programmer and although she's got a killer dry wit she is simply not a social butterfly. The other one . . . no idea.

I made with the mingling and trying to draw people out into conversation. It's a mix of being co-dependent and Southern and also it's my way of dealing with my own compulsion to hide in a corner and stare at my drink. If I have a job of some sort, even the self-appointed job of helping conversation along, I have less time to focus on how no one likes me and how they all wish I had gotten waylaid en route to the party by murderous bandits.

Yes, sometimes I treat my deeply-rooted mental illnesses like toddlers by distracting them.

Anyway, the quiet people left fairly early, and the rest of us retired to the den to have riotous discussions of B-movies and religious theory.

I like discussing religion, but I don't want to deflect proselytization or risk seriously insulting someone. However, I enjoy listening to people discuss their relationships with their faith (or lack thereof), and I really enjoy talking about the evolution of Christianity and how it became what it is today (I'll just let you fill in exactly what I think it is today). Not to get all Da Vinci Bore on you, but I do think a lot of current religious theory is based on some cover-ups and what you might call disciple-wanking in the early church. Also, I think Paul needed to get laid in the worst way.

My own faith-o-meter points at agnosticism, which I think of as a positive choice, not the default pick of a chronically wishy-washy psyche. The number one tenet of my faith is If you think you have the solution, you're wrong.

First of all, if one does believe in a supreme and omniscient power, it is just a little presumptuous to declare you have him/her/it all figured out. When I hear a zealot declaring what his/her best friend God just told him, I always imagine God over at the bar telling a sympathetic bartender, "DUDE, I barely even met the guy!" Deciding you've worked out the mysteries of life and the afterlife is just begging for a karmic smack down. It is the religious equivalent of being in a horror movie and declaring, "I'll be right back."

The second tenet is, The answer is not the point; the question is the point. I may have cribbed that from a re-run of Kung Fu, but I still think it's sound theology.

Asking questions is the key to learning anything. Questions are the stimulus of personal growth, artistic creation, scientific inquiry--all the good stuff. One of these days I plan to get a question mark pendant to wear as a religious symbol; agnostics need jewelry, too. Then I'll work on my first canonization: St. George the Curious. He'd make a good medal.

People Are Strange

2007-09-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

One of my birthday gifts from the mister was The Lost Boys, which completely delighted me.

We watched it earlier this evening, and I am pleased to say the movie held up quite well. Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland are still really freaking sexy, although I now feel slightly ooky being hot for their teenaged characters.

In this movie Kiefer is in sort of the larval stage of his sexy psychopath stock character. The eyes are there, and the menacing yet velvety voice is beginning to come in to its own. He is somewhat impeded by his Billy Idol-esque vampire mullet, but it was the eighties, and fashion was not kind to anyone.

Jason Patric is a perfectly sexy teen in this movie; I think he warped me for dark-haired, blue-eyed men for good (although Pierce Brosnan helped with that). It's sad that Patric seemingly went on to do fuck-all after this.

Other highlights of the movie: double Corey-fu, Feldman AND Haim; plus Grandpa Gilmore as a meanie. I also love the general setting of the movie in a California beach town with a crappy boardwalk and third-rate attractions. This movie could have easily been set in Daytona Beach or St. Augustine--that same kind of tawdry background that is just made for something bad to happen against it.

Lowlights of the movie include the horrible shoulder pads present in every outfit; Dianne Weist as Most Ineffectual & Clueless Movie Mom With Bad Haircut Ever; and Cry Little Sister on the soundtrack.
What, you've never heard Cry Little Sister? Obviously you were never in a strip club employing a Goth girl between 1987 and 1993. Because there was always a Goth girl, and she always wanted to dance to this song, which bears the distinction of having a running time 37.5 times longer than the movie in which it was featured. This song is an endless rhythm-free dirge of lyrics like:

Cry little sister (thou shall not fall)
Come come to your brother (thou shall not fall)
Unchain me sister (thou shall not fear)
Love is with your brother (thou shall not kill)

Now, putting the nonsensical and creepily sibling-cestual lyrics aside, imagine this song being sung by very aged monks. Now imagine hundreds more stupid verses sung in the same monotonous funereal pace, and then imagine dancing naked to it. Cry, little sister, indeed.

SO FRUSTRATED

2007-09-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

I need to write my own parenting book.

I will call it Parenting Your Weirdo Kid: A Mom Reports from Through the Looking Glass. I will be on Oprah like Super Nanny, except with a less hotsy-totsy accent and more bleeped-out words.

I suppose I should worry about content before planning the outfit I'll wear on Oprah. Maybe I should think about the solutions to some parenting dilemmas, because right now I am fresh out of solutions--another way in which I differ from Super Nanny is that I have no actual constructive advice. Case in point: last night.

A little background before the story: Crash has a fantastic memory. He memorizes books, huge chunks of dialogue from movies, the placement of all 892 signs on the walls of his classroom, all kinds of things. He uses the memory banks to fill in some language gaps, particularly with abstract or emotional concepts.

It's interesting to experience because if he is feeling upset or angry or some other confusing tangle of emotions he finds a spot in a movie where the emotion matches. For example, last year his signal phrase as he approached meltdown was, GREAT PUMPKIN, WHERE ARE YOU?

Putting the words aside, at that moment Linus sounds totally frustrated and upset. It's not a bad match job as far as the emotional resonance. The problem is the actual phrase itself, which is sort of hard to explain when you are in the doctor's office and the nurse who is trying to give your kid a shot is asking, "Did he just yell something about a pumpkin?"

We've moved on past the Great Pumpkin. These days Crash is employing an exchange from some little computer game.

"You won't get to see the dinosaurs."
"I know. I am SO FRUSTRATED!"

So last night, we were having bedtime issues. And Crash got stuck on that sound bite. Completely freaking hung, to the point I wanted to turn him upside down and shake him like an Etch-a-Sketch to reset him (employing hyperbole; hold those e-mails to CPS).

At first I tried the constructive response:
"I know you are frustrated because you don't want to go to bed."

Later, the guilt-trip response:
"I know you are frustrated. I AM FRUSTRATED TOO."

Later, the non-committal response:
"Mmmm-hmmm."

And then no response.

Not responding is harder than it sounds, because it involves a lot of internal seething and the feeling that if you hear about the mother fucking dinosaurs one more goddamn time your head will explode like that dude in The Fury and why is this kid out to get me anyway? WHERE DID I GO WRONG WITH MY LIFE? GREAT PUMPKIN, WHERE ARE YOU, YOU FAT ORANGE BASTARD?

Eventually the dilemma was solved: we both fell asleep.