With a doodle and cock



Hey internet, hey baby. Who's a good girl!

It's still 11:11 twice a day, and we all know that is lucky. It's true, it is. Why do I notice 11:11 all of a sudden? Is it the Lord? Is it Fibonacci? Is my clock broken? Who is trying to tell me something? Oh, it's iCal. It says I have a lot of work to do. Drat. Hi, iCal, hi. I like your pretty colors. This has all happened before. I am special, and there is money stuffed in my socks*.

But seriously, this 11:11 thing is a big old deal. A lot happens on November 11th. Did you know that in 1634, the Irish House of Commons passed "An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery?"

The nosy church billboard down the street says "ATM Inside: Atonement Truth & Mercy." I guess they do not manufacture vinyl commas for those boards.

I went with a friend this morning to pick out a board to display photos of her father at his funeral next week. What is someone going to pick for me some day? It's too much. I am going to have everyone I love slaughtered as if I were a pharaoh, so you may not want me to get too attached to you. My father plans to die at a specific time. I do not doubt that he will achieve this, because he's just that stubborn.

*Not really, but it would be nice, provided the money were in the form of large bills, and the socks were loose enough so as not to constrict when this extra volume is considered.

Posted 3:13 PM by Licketysplit

Internet refrigerator

My, my. This week is just flying by. My lawyer is out at a seminar all this week and can't handly my lawyerly needs, so I've been calling other lawyers he is lawyer friends with. They are equally lawyer nice, so I settled on the one with the best name. Then after my scalp massage and disco yoga class, I had to practice my Chinese. I did this very, very loudly so as to bother my upstairs neighbor. This is payback for hearing one of his students mangling "The Yellow Rose of Texas" earlier. Wednesdays are apparently adult ed days.

It's hard to tell good ideas from bad ideas, isn't it. Should I be learning Cantonese instead? Should I have made that spreadsheet of all the food items in the house? Is a $28 haircut ever going to be as good as an $85 haircut? Why does anyone care about finding the largest prime number*? All of this confusion is why I like to look to the Lord. But the nosy church billboard down the street says "We love Him because He loved us first." This is probably the most co-dependent sentiment ever expressed. Lots of awful people have liked me in the past, and I believe I've done the right thing in sending them packing. Now, I'm not calling the Lord awful, per se, but what has he done for me lately? You have to work for this, people. You wanna a piece of me, you hafta make it worth-a my while. Press the button, get a piece of cheese. So when the Lord weighs in to tell me if I should get a stackable washer/dryer or a side by side unit, I'll love him. Or not, because he may not agree with me, and then I'll have to ignore him.

*2^25964951-1, so far

Posted 11:16 AM by Licketysplit

Vomitous

Well, bokka bokka bokka. I am waiting to hear back from the mortgage people to see if Mr. H and I are worthy of helping to tip the American housing market completely into the toilet. This is rather nervewracking, as if I were waiting for free clinic test results after sleeping with all of BU. Or perhaps Bennington. I am in full "what have we done?" mode. I want to throw up. But I won't, because I didn't eat breakfast yet. Maybe after. Guess I won't have oatmeal, that would just be gross.

The Vomitola domain expires in a few months. Should I keep it, or should I pick something new? www.OMG.com is taken. This is a hard choice, people. I want my "personal weblog home page on the information super highway" to reflect my unique personality. I think my blinkie gallery goes a long way towards that goal, but I don't know if my love for dogs is showcased enough. Oh, and my jokes page could use a Swiffering. When it rains, it pours. There has got to be a New York Times article about just this modern situation.

Posted 10:19 AM by Licketysplit

Wee paws for station identification



OMG, Internet, OMG. We've been on quite a spree around my place. The clocks are all flashing 11:11 at least twice a day, and the sink isn't clogged anymore.

We went to my little nephew's "parade" for Little League opening day. It was pouring rain, and we stood in it while hundreds of children swarmed around the block, led by a police car that occasionally flashed its lights. It was a real zen koan of a parade: Is it still a parade if no one is watching? This didn't really bother my nephew, because he is a star. He is doing jazz hands in the group photo.

So what the fuck else. I'm learning Mandarin Chinese, and that's tough. The inflections are a killer. You think I'm kidding, but I'm afraid I'm not. The more plausible something seems, the more likely I made it up. So if I'm telling you I brushed my teeth, I probably didn't. Bought tickets to Easter Island? You bet!

I was having dinner with some friends the other night, and we were doing "roommate rundown." I mentioned someone I'd lived with for three years, and idly wondered what happened to her. After dinner, we stopped at a bookstore, and her father stopped me in the Shakespeare aisle and gave me her phone number. Noo noo noo noo, twilight zone. But why is that if I say "I wish I had two billion dollars," I never run into that in a bookstore?

Then today I think we impulse-bought a loft. We were just out for a walk, and then a little of this and a little of that, and some business cards were exchanged, and things were signed, oh boy. We should not be allowed out without supervision. My lawyer is gonna love this. Oh well.

Then I called to tell my parents about the loft, and somehow I ended up having a conversation with my mother about anal sex. For the record, she's not that into it, but I suggested that she just didn't give it a fair shake.

Posted 10:52 PM by Licketysplit

Any way you reich it

Aw, you there, you look peaked. Have you tried Emergency Chocolate? Me Time? You might want to light some candles and take a soothing Aromatherapy Bath. I hate to say anything, but your delicate undereye skin is suffering, and, as a friend and good Christian woman, I must. Cortisol: it's just hell on the complexion.

At least that's what I'm going to say to Drunk Cheryl the next time I see her. Honestly, all the aromatherapy in the world isn't going to help. Have you seen her Fame and Popularity corner? So tacky what she did with that. Can we say Hope-less!

Cheryl's husband is a piano teacher, and he's deep into Gilbert and Sullivan these days. When he's not screaming at Cheryl's child from a former relationship (i.e. before 3PM), I get to hear little ditties like "Three Little Maids from School Are We" tinkling and plonking through the ceiling. And after 3 PM, this is augmented by the stomping of the spraddled hooves of the child (it may actually be a Clydesdale) and the aforementioned screaming.

So I went out to work at a cafe, and whaddya know, in walked Creepy Neighbor. Creepy Neighbor lives on the top floor. He always wears a beige baseball cap and black turtleneck and workout pants. He also bears a strong facial resemblance to this drunk copywriter I used to have the misfortune of seeing at work, except he smiles a lot. This all bothers me. I'm not saying he was following me, but he was following me. I should spray the deck with Gremlin-Proof and Serial Murderer B-Gone.

Clearly I need to get an office, maybe in another country. The thing is, I don't DO anything anyway. I mean I do this, and I do that, and I get money, but I realize I've turned into one of those people where you have no idea what they do for a living. Sometimes I don't even know. What was I saying? I need some more anti-oxidants. Then I have Yogilates.

God, me boring self. As you may have noticed, Lambchop jumped ship a few months ago, and she was the head of the Vomitola Mania Division. I usually handled Ennui and Existentialism, so I'm just all over the place these days. There's no way I can fall down a flight of stairs like she could. I may call a temp agency. A floater, that's what we need. How about this: I'm weaning off my Mother's Little Helpers, and I predict a 93% increase in bile and desire to hurt others. Can you stand it?

Posted 9:45 AM by Licketysplit

Pope Destructicon XXX

Well, there's a lot of laundry on the bedroom floor. I can't tell what's clean and what isn't, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sniff it all. I hope my laundering is not interrupted by drunk Cheryl from upstairs again. Cheryl is all "I have to do one load of laundry by 4 pm!" And I'm all "You should have planned ahead, fuck me for doing laundry on a random Thursday afternoon." And she's all "no, really," and to end the conversation before she tells me why 4 pm is so important, I just take my laundry out. Then when hers is midway through the wash cycle, I go down and unplug the machine. I am kidding about that last part. I think.

There is an obese family that lives downstairs, and they do so much damn laundry. I had to take some of their stuff out of the dryer the other day, and I realized why they are constantly in the laundry room. Because each load only holds two pairs of supersized pants and a sweatshirt. Think of that wasted water. Sea otters could be cavorting in that. They also produce an amazing amount of trash, what with eating an entire box of Honey Smacks each at every meal. Or so it seems as I stare out my window with binoculars. OK, I sit out on the deck and openly stare, while yelling "Stop eating so durn much!"

I am Gladys Kravitz rolled into Dr. Phil rolled into a watery grave if I don't watch my mouth. I can't wait to purge the church of all the fornicators.

Posted 11:07 AM by Licketysplit

There's always more to worry about

I am convinced I've got a pre-cancerous spot on my left shoulder. Also, I need a new belt. Who knew that eating nothing but croissants and ham for a week could have a salubrious effect, particularly in the area of the waistline? Of course the croissants are half the size that they are in the US, and the ham is served in tiny portions because it is more valuable than gold. Or something.

Yesterday we were invited to our nephew's "baseball recital." This child wants nothing more than to DANCE, and he is quite good at it. But his father is making him do sports instead. He was going to be in a parade for the opening day of the season, and in his mind I know he saw himself wearing a sequined jacket and riding an elephant. In the end, the league put the wrong date on the mailing, and it's actually next week. So we all milled around a park for a while, and finally went out for pizza lunch once the mix-up was exposed. He was fine until the cheese slid off his pizza, and then the entire restaurant was filled with the most plaintive, soul-shaking howling.

Here's some vacation pictures!

The first three are Madrid, then some from the train, and then we remain in Barcelona for the duration. Click one to enlarge it, and then you can tab through or run a slideshow.

I called the white dog Flash. He was so fast. Flash! You are so fast.

Posted 11:18 AM by Licketysplit

C'est si bon

Flying does not make me nervous. Mr. H closes his eyes and grabs my hand when we take off, but I am usually scrambling to turn the video screen to the channel that shows the under-plane camera and jamming in ear plugs so I can start ignoring fellow passengers. However, on the return trip, I am paralyzed with fear as soon as I get off the highway within five miles of my house. I call this "The Zone of Ironic Death." I have no qualms about being vaporized at 35,000 feet over some place exotic, but to get hit by a garbage truck around the corner? What a waste of my victim tribute photo that would be.

We had a lovely time in Spain. The food was soooo delicious. We ate at Pizza Hut, Subway, KFC, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Burger King, and McDonald's. I am totally kidding. There are 14 McDonald's locations in Barcelona alone, and there is no way we had time to go to all of them. We counted 10 Starbuckseses too.

As usual, the only people who annoyed us were other Americans. There was the spoiled college girl loudly espousing her life philosophy and complaining about having to fly back for her cousin's Bat Mitzvah in Connecticut, and of course we spotted people wearing sneakers and sweatshirts and braying about the prawns having heads. Luckily, we passed for European of Indeterminate Origin, so Americans wearing fanny packs asked us directions, shouting at us so we'd understand. Donde esta THE TRAIN STATION. I always lied in broken English. No wonder Americans think everyone else in the world is out to get them.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store, and my soul was nearly crushed by the lack of delicious yogurt. I came outside only to find that some intrepid soul had managed to use his vehicle to ram a shopping cart into my passenger door. I dropped to my knees and swore bitterly. Clearly America does not want me. To add insult to injury, the paint smear indicated that the cart must have been one of the blue ones from the Wal-Mart across the plaza. Poor people indirectly touched my car!

I am still hunting through photos, trying to find the ones where we are wearing pants. Control yourself, Internet.

Posted 9:38 PM by Licketysplit

The camera adds 50 pounds, er, euros, er, nevermind

I have pre-travel agitation. My horoscope that arrives via e-mail each morning usually says something easily ignored like "Beware being mauled by a shark" or "Isn't it time you tossed that mascara?" But today it said "This is not a good time for travel as frequent obstacles can arise." The hell!

Perhaps I will write again later when I am still sitting in the airport in Boston long after I should have arrived at my destination. I will be the one swearing and drinking a bottle of Purell while trying to stab someone at the Air France counter with my travel lint roller. Or maybe I'll never even make it to the airport. I think I feel a reaction to exfoliation coming on. Throat closing.... Initiate emergency self-tanning procedures....

Mr. H and I are going to try an experiment and post a photo every day during our vacation. Of course there are many variables that may interfere, including terrorism, the Pope's funeral, the Mercury retrograde, and whether or not we murder each other. We love to travel together, but it's just not a vacation without at least one screaming fight. Luckily I speak Spanish and he doesn't, so I have the upper hand when threatening to leave him somewhere.

Posted 9:09 AM by Licketysplit

I could feel at the time there was no way of knowing



Well freaking well, internet. It's April already! You may recall that last year around this time, I was seized with a bout of experimentation in home anti-aging breakthroughs. That didn't go so well, and I still have a little scar.

This year, however, I've had great success with cosmetic dentistry. I went to the dentist today, and he complimented my teeth. I'd never seen this dentist before, but I soon took to him, falling asleep as his bear-like Russian hands cupped my jaw. Such a gentle brute. When I awoke, he had filed down my front teeth. At first I was all "Hey, isn't this a little Charles Dickens?" But then I took a second look, and I must admit the effect is pleasing. "There," he said. "ocharovatel'naya, charuyuschaya ulybka" And I had to agree. Damn.

Now I'm wearing 2 layers of Crest Whitestrips. I accidentally swallowed one, but I think I'll be fine. The things I do for beauty.

Posted 1:37 PM by Licketysplit