The Simplicity of Anthuriums.
2007-01-27 8:51 p.m.
I forgot my mother's birthday. I always forget her birthday. Dad casually mentioned on the phone with me yesterday that he bought her some king salmon at Fred Meyers for her birthday dinner and it cost a bazillion dollars. It was like thirty four dollars which makes no sense to me as they live where they can practically walk outside, hold out a frying pan and a king salmon will willing jump right in it. It's not like they have to be shipped from the other side of the globe on the concord. They live in Salmon Country. *trumpets blare* But I didn't come here to write about salmons or trumpets, although the image of salmon playing trumpets is rather endearing. In order to restore my status as Favored Child I went through the USAA website to get my 20% off Teleflora and bought my mother a lovely floral arrangement. My mother, the Master Gardener, is deathly allergic to flowers. Ironic, no? So I painstakingly went through every single option and came up with the gorgeous arrangement you see in the picture insert. I figured the sticks wouldn't have any pollen and the anthuriums looked rather benign, like they wouldn't swell her eyes shut or turn her into a petite little snot machine. Well, mom called tonight and thanked me for the lovely birds of paradise, tulips and blueberries. What the hell? The name of the arrangement was "The Simplicity of Anthuriums." Apparently so simple that no Anthuriums were necessary. We giggled about it when I described what I ordered. She's going to send me a picture of it. She says they're lovely. If she dies during the night from choking on her own snot I'm suing Teleflora. I should have just sent her a bottle of Claritin and some freaking roses. Happy F-ing Birthday Mom! I love you!
Photoshoot Thursday
2007-01-25 5:59 p.m.
Sometimes they do surveillance on claims.
2007-01-25 12:50 a.m.
Surveillance Day One:
10:16am Subject answers door for UPS wearing black yoga pants and tank top. Hair is distinctly disarrayed. While accepting package small gray furred subject escapes and proceeds to start eating the iris bulbs.
10:17am Subject retrieves small gray subject and goes back inside.
11:00am Subject can be seen sitting on the couch drinking Diet Coke and using strange looking remote control.
12:17pm Subject consumes what appears to be a triple meat Lean Cuisine pizza and swallows various medications. Small brindled furred subject drinks out of the water glass and put arm in water glass repeatedly. Subject doesn�t seem to notice and finishes drinking water.
12:45pm Subject appears to be rendered unconscious for two hours. Distinct drool line in right corner of her mouth confirms she is not deceased. Small furred subjects crowd around her for warmth.
2:56pm Subject does some stretching exercises. Subject looks down own shirt and begins to rearrange her breasts. Whether this is a monthly breast exam or strictly for self gratification purposes is unknown.
3:15pm Subject leaves room and returns with a one liter bottle of Diet Coke. Subject appears to be praying or reciting some sort of mantra before opening and consuming contents.
3:34pm Subject sniffs left armpit and sneezes. Subject leave room to reappear half an hour later with wet hair. Subject sniffs pits again and sighs with apparent pleasure/relief.
4:12pm Subject paints toenails in color best described as �hooker red.� Subject then lays on back with legs in the air and laughs hysterically at television set.
5:23pm Subject consumes something in a plastic tray. Gray furred subject sticks face in tray and runs off carrying what appears to be a piece of meat and a foot long noodle. Subject shrugs her shoulders and continues to eat.
6:15pm Subject wraps herself in quilt and continues to stare at the god damn television set. Investigator is getting quite bored at this point and considers setting off her car alarm just so she�ll do something. Anything. I mean What. The. Fudge? She does nothing but lay around all day eating and sleeping? I mean come on! She could at least do that boob thing again. Oh. My. God. I am so freaking bored. I�m going to McMenamins for a burger and a pint. This is a load of crap. She�s obviously disabled and the most boring woman on the earth. Pay the damn claim.
0 People have tried to sell me ViagraMy Gifts to You!
2007-01-23 11:45 p.m.
If you ever feel like you're taking yourself too seriously you need to go look at Maggie Le Chat's photos. Her set "The Goose" will make you laugh until you pee your pants. I loved the space camp picture where she's dressed in a foil bikini with her cat in a foil hood with a sign that says "Beam me up, Bitch!." I'm still giggling. She's an amazing photographer and has an amazing sense of humor. I want to be her friend.
My other gift to you is this free time waster that has been sucking the life out of me. Download iPoker for free and play it until your eyes bleed. I'm up 5,000 dollars. I like the little movies for player interaction and how you can make them stupid so you can play better (I only made them play just a notch faster and looser, I swear).
You should also dig through your old note books and submit any cringeworthy entries to the Cringe Book project.
Last and not least is you should run over to the Bad Girl Anthology of Filthy School Yard Songs and see if they left any out. I noticed one that we used to sing on the bus during choir trips *ahem*
Salvation army! Salvation army!
Put a nickel on the drum
Save another drunken bum
Salvation army! Salvation army!
Put a nickel on the drum and you'll be sa-a-aved.
Then someone shouts out a joke like this:
In our town!
All the girls wear grass skirts.
And all the boys carry lawnmowers!
*insert hoots and hollers and cat calls*
Sing refrain and someone else shouts out an offensive lyric. Repeat until teacher screams at the top of his lungs and bites a pencil in half.
Here's me singing the song: 
Now give me a gift or leave me a dirty school girl lyric in the comments.
0 People have tried to sell me ViagraExpert digressions.
2007-01-23 3:13 a.m.
I ended up moving to Portland because I thought it was fate. I applied for graduate school all over the West Coast and the day I got my acceptance letter from Portland State, I was notified that the tiny bookstore I was working in, Tower Books, was opening a branch in Portland. So I decided to move. (UC Davis was an oh so close second) The guy I was seeing didn't take this news well (we weren't serious?!) and a peregrine girlfriend started talking smack about me to try to win him over. The sad thing was, I was one foot out of town and would have gladly giftwrapped the bastard if she had just waited a few days. The unfortunate result took years to repair our friendship and it unfortunately will never be what it was. But I digress.
I loved working in a book store. I felt terribly smart and I enjoyed getting more and more titles slapped on me, if not actual raises and promotions: Night Manager, Accounting Manager, Merchandiser, Buyer, etc. We had one customer named Mr. Taylor, I believe, who would special order academic books in the philosophy category. He studied the strangest things. I remember we ended up studying Derrida at the same time and I would corner him and pump him for information. You see, I'm an absolute dolt when it comes to deconstructionism. When my Lit Crit professor told me that a sucessful paper on deconstructionism would deconstruct its own argument throughout the paper, my head nearly popped right off. I've never been the same since. I can tell you right now exactly where that damn Derrida book is on my book shelf. I shiver whenever I walk past it, it's my god damn Kryptonite. Again, I digress.
So I started looking through class schedules of the different colleges, trying to figure out where Prof. Taylor taught at and I couldn't find him. One day he came in and I pulled out his stack of special orders and he was going through them figuring out which ones he'd buy today and which ones I'd continue to hold for him (academic books tend to run between fifty and a hundred dollars) and I finally asked him where he taught at.
He was a janitor.
I think that made me love him even more. He purposely chose an occupation that was manual labor and would not stress him out or fill his mind with useless crap. He could work efficiently and read on the job and spent all of his hard earned money on books.
I too go through periods of time where I spend a ghastly amount of money on books. Lately, I've been reading mostly gratuitous fiction (see list on the right) but there are subjects on which I have studied into the ground and feel like I could hold my own with any academic/expert types. That would include the following subjects: Geisha, foot binding, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Bronte Sisters (and Branwell), Percy and Mary Shelley and Clair Clairmont, not so much Lord Byron but I'm getting there, Chaucer (including who he read), 15th Century British Writers, Dorothy Parker, Zora Neale Hurston, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, The court of Henry VIII including all his wives - poor things, women's spirituality: this is kind of difficult to describe, not the fun witchy poo stuff that I also read, but myth and history of the goddess in different parts of the world generally before the evil patricarchy set in and Joseph Campbell. Things that I study but have too large of a canon for me to ever be proficient in this lifetime: Shakespeare studies, medieval Latin, Roman History particularly the transformation from paganism to Christianity and Biblical Archaeology. Nevermind the fiction I like which would be, science fiction, romance (well written not formulaeic harlequin), horror, chick lit, historical fiction especially turn of the century, the classics and just good books.
If you're thinking this is a really weird list, you're probably right. I have no idea how I became obsessed with foot binding last year, Geisha studies came naturally after reading Memoirs of a Geisha
I know that all of you readers are passionate about something. What are you an expert in? I won't quiz you so fess up! I know I'm not the only one to become obsessed with strange things.
0 People have tried to sell me ViagraMy cat, my connection.
2007-01-22 1:44 a.m.
First off, I'd like to apologize for all the cat stories. What can I say, I'm on disability and spend half my time in bed and the other half on the couch. I either watch Tivo or watch my cats. I can't read much because I only have one good eye. I'm sick and in pain. I'm on drugs. Therefore, I think my cats are hysterical little darlings and assume that you do too. Plus, I'm still hoping I can catch on video mice shooting out of my heating vents so I can get my ten thousand dollars from Bob Sagett or whoever the hell is the host of that television show. That's one that Tivo doesn't record for me.
So, onto the cat story. I was watching the Venture Brothers tonight and eating a Ding Dong. The kind by Hostess, I didn't get lucky with the pizza delivery boy, and Loki was avidly watching me upwrap it. I have purchased every high end Sharper Image cat toy that has ever been made, but my cats prefer low tech toys. Loki will practically have a catgasm if he even hears tin foil. I explain to him that I am not cheap and this is actually a Ding Dong wrapped in very thin platinum and is the most expensive cat toy he will ever own. I wad up the foil platinum into a little ball and his ass starts shaking, it's like he's listening to Shakira on his iPod, and I throw it as hard as I can into the next room. There's a lot of noise as he slides across the hardwoods into the wall and then gets his soccer game on. A few minutes later he smacks it back towards me and it goes under the couch. He flattens his chest against the couch and his little arms are going crazy trying to reach the toy. He finally finds something and pulls out a v1c0din. He pats it a couple of times looking quite disappointed and eventually pushes it over to me with a plaintive Meow? It seems a fair trade, so I swallow the pill and get on the floor and snake my arm under the couch and pull out three foil balls, two fake meece, a super ball and a marble. It's like Christmas all over again. Good kitty.
Changes and Googlemania.
2007-01-21 6:33 p.m.
I don't know what it is about the New Year but I always want to revamp my blog. I'm fighting that urge, by doing some small changes. First off, there's a couple of new offsite bloggers listed on the right. It's difficult figuring out who to post because I have a page and a half of bookmarked blogs that I read on a regular basis, but I find I'm reading TranceJen and Warcrygirl whenever they update and enjoy both of their wacktacular personalities. I have also added some new script from Amazon for their links. So if I were to be blathering on about a cool book I'm reading like Pride and Prejudice
Just for fun I thought I'd list the most recent google hits I've gotten lately along with my comments:
Dave Vanian fangs This sounds like one of my lascivious dreams.
Kicking women in the groin. I'm sure this is related to kung fu but you'd be amazed how often this comes up.
Why is sleeping nude healthy? Uh, I dunno. It sounds cold to me.
La da boom de ay I thought it was tra la da boom de ay?
Sarcoidosis can't take the pain This made me so sad. Tell your doctor! There's help.
Mistress training Sydney Heh, trust me, I wouldn't have a clue on training, but I could refer you to a couple of people...
Bazoombas Pretty self-explanatory.
Bikini Burkha Worn together or a binkini made out of a burkha?
Battlestar Orgasmica That sounds lke fun, sign me up!
My new kitten meows alot why Your cat is Siamese, stupid.
Paralytic sex It was only a matter of time.