Sunday, July 06, 2003

As if you didn’t already know this, I am a fricking dork.  I like to pretend I am cool, but really, I am not.  Thus, I present to you...

DOT REVIEWS
READ MY REVIEW
My score:  95/100

FLEUR REVIEWS
READ MY REVIEW
My score:  84/100

PENDING

PEACH REVIEWS

CHERRY REVIEWS

Saturday, July 05, 2003

Here’s what Paula had to say...

And now some words from our guest judge Neil Sedaka...

Finally, the moment of truth.
Simon Says...

Woo hoo!  I was on American Idol!

My house smells like the fricking zoo.

Seriously, it smells like the fricking zoo.

I�m not ashamed to admit it.  I mean, I�m not the best housekeeper in the world, but I�m not the worst, either.  I�m not one of those people you see on the news who have their children and pets put into foster care because they’re living in squalor and feces is everywhere. I�m just obsessive-compulsive enough to keep my home in fairly respectable condition.

I like to keep the house picked up in case someone drops by (which rarely happens because I am Queen of the Losers) and I vacuum and dust regularly.  I try to keep up with the rolling balls of pet fur that seem to multiply in a creepy X-files kind of way, and I don�t leave baskets of unfolded laundry around unattended, due to a certain canine companion’s penchant for eating socks.  The kitchen counter is uncluttered, the beds are made, and the toilet is scrubbed.

Don�t get me wrong, I�m not a fanatic.  If one of the cats misses the litter box a little, I wait juuuuust long enough to see if maybe The Dog With The Taste For Cat Turds will eat it before I run my lazy ass all the way downstairs for the paper towel to pick it up.  I don�t run the garbage disposal after every banana peel I drop in and there’s unknown crud in the sink drainer basket.  And I want to be clear about one more thing...I don�t rinse the tub after I shave my legs.  But generally speaking, I’m no slobola.

So why does my house smell like the fricking zoo?  I�m getting to that.  Sheesh.

I have hardwood floors in my home, which I love.  Dirt cannot embed itself in hardwood the way it can in a nice berber carpet.  Swiffer, sweep, vacuum.  That�s it.  Easy.  I left the floors in the living room and the staircase bare, but in the dining room, I have a rather lovely area rug.

Several times a year I like to pull out the ol� carpet cleaner and steam clean all the softy surfaces in the house, especially the rug in the dining room.  It�s in a high traffic area, and with 3 dogs and 2 cats, this is a necessity, not an option.  I drag all the furniture out of the dining room and steam to my heart�s content.  It�s very satisfying to pour all that grimy water down the drain, and the house smells all nice and springy FOR ABOUT 5 MINUTES.

I�m no scientist, but I have figured out enough about the laws of nature to know this...

Thus, my house smells like the fricking zoo.

Friday, July 04, 2003

Kelly and I must have rubbed some genie’s lamp the right way.

We’ve been wishing and wishing for a picture of Clay Aiken in shorts, and lo and behold, Kelly finds THIS...

After careful inspection and lengthy discussion, I have decided to rename Our Buttercup. 

Please sit down for this one. 

Clayton Aiken will henceforth be known as...

Our Downy Ball.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen...We’ll be here all week.

Thursday, July 03, 2003

I can’t sleep so here comes a gratuitous Clay Aiken entry.  I’ll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

I think this speaks for itself, don’t you?AND NOW...PRESENTING...TEENYBOPPER QUIZZES TAKEN BY AN ACTUAL GROWN WOMAN WITH A JOB AND A MORTGAGE WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS Are you obsessed with Clay Aiken?
brought to you by Quizilla

MY RESULTS:

ALL ABOARD THE CLAYTRAIN, CLAYMATE!
You are the kind of fan that Clay is proud to have!
you vote for Clay every Clayday, and you watch
his performances over and over again!
Congratulations, you are an official Claymate! :)

Click Click Clickity Click
MY RESULTS:
Clay Aiken
brought to you by Quizilla

MY RESULTS:

Yeah, you’re pretty obsessed. *shakes head in
shame*

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

In the eighties, we were concert whores. 

I had this little fantasy that I would write a series of entries about the concerts I’ve attended, but then I realized you can only squeeze so much juice out of sentences like “Oh My God, he is so totally hot.”

So here are some highlights.

One of the first concerts we went to was Eddie Murphy.  The Eddie Murphy concert experience confirmed our suspicion that our parents really believed that we were good Catholic school girls.  Because parents who mistrust their children usually check out their social activities before approving them.  Our parents had blind faith.  (Further proven in ninth grade when we had the big party at Kelsey’s house while her mom was working the voting booths where some girls from our good Catholic school whose parents were spending loads of money each year on tuition barfed all over the kitchen and crapped in the bathtub and when we told our parents we didn’t know how they got in the house and that they brought all the booze with them when they stormed in uninvited, which we didn’t drink ANY of, they believed our lying asses.) Anyway, this Eddie Murphy concert was the foulest content ears can hear.  When you’re 13, nothing is funnier than hearing the F word about four thousand times in an hour.

When we saw Robert Plant, it wasn’t because we were Led Zeppelin fans.  Oh no.  We didn’t even know Led Zeppelin existed.  The only bands we knew were ones in which the men wore lots and lots of makeup.  We went to see Robert Plant because we were into that crappy ass song “Sea of Love” by that crappy ass band The Honeydrippers.  What the hell?  So we get all decked out in our pastel miniskirts and ankle socks and head on down to see the fricking Honeydrippers.  Of course we make my dad drop us off about three blocks from the auditorium to avoid MAJOR adolescent embarrassment.  So then what do we do?  We draw mad attention to ourselves with much loud giggling and screaming, not to mention those pastel miniskirts.  We take our seats among all the black-shirted, ripped-jean wearing headbangers and proceed to shit our pants.  We were terrified.  Within the first seven minutes of the concert, some dude behind us accidentally hit the dude in front of us with a cigarette butt.  The dude in front of us stood up, tore off his shirt - literally TORE it off - and started screaming that the dude behind us was gonna get a piece of him.  We stayed for that crappy ass “Sea of Love” song and hightailed it down to the lobby and called my dad to come and pick us up.  In front.

The Fixx concert was held at the amphitheatre of an amusement park.  Sheri and I really wanted to hear the concert and look at Cy Curnin’s sexy moves.  Kelsey and Seana wanted to pick up guys.  Which they did, successfully.  Sheri and I, in a jealous rage, started a long running joke where we would just look at eachother and say, “You didn’t even WATCH Cy!” before breaking into fits of laughter. We were dumb asses.

We loved to flirt with bands.  We flirted with INXS, thus obtaining Gary Garry’s guitar pick.  We flirted with the Psychedelic Furs and Talk Talk.  The lead singer of Talk Talk winked at me.  Lecherous perv.  Once I touched Howard Jones, but that wasn’t because I flirted with him, it was because I PUSHED MY WAY UP TO THE STAGE AND TRAMPLED ANYONE WHO HAD THE UNMITIGATED GALL TO IMPEDE MY PATH.  Dammit.

The Thompson Twins played a triple-header with Berlin and Billy Idol.  We dressed like Madonna for that one and traded clove cigarettes for sips of 7 and 7s with the couple sitting next to us.  Drinking out of strangers’ cups...ah, youth.

Last year I went to see U2.  I splurged on good seats.  All around me, people were smoking, no one would sit down and the screaming was fricking deafening.  During the entire concert, I obsessed about why the security guards weren’t doing anything about these blatant violations of the law, not to mention the crossing over of the concert etiquette line!

I am so g.d. old.

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

I am a diaryring WHORE.  I just need to belong, see.

I create rings and no one joins them.  Once again, I am Queen of the Losers. 

I wear my crown proudly.

People I know go camping.  Why?  Why do they do this to themselves?  What’s fricking WRONG with them?

Nature and I don’t mix.  The Great Outdoors is total bullshit.  My idea of camping is a hotel that doesn’t have a built-in hairdryer or an in-room coffeemaker. 

My hate-hate relationship with camping began in third grade when the geniuses who ran my elementary school thought it would be a grand idea to get us city kids out of our nice comfy environment and send us to HELL.  They were Catholic nuns, so this was bound to happen.  This was Back in The Day when adults were allowed to transport other people’s kids in their cars without having to worry about getting their asses sued off if a kid got a paper cut while in their care.  The ride to camp was the one and only highlight of the trip.  My parents were ultra involved in my whole school life, so they were ubiquitous, especially when it came to field trips.  Because my parents were chaperones and drivers, I was allowed to choose who would ride in my car.  And because my parents practically ran the school, I chose FIRST.  It’s all about ME, remember?

I won’t bore you with the details of this excursion into nature, but here’s what happens when you take a bunch of city kids into the forest:  Missy was whittling with a pocket knife (Back in The Day when a kid could play with a pocket knife and not sue the shit out of the pocket knife company when the following happens) and stabbed herself in the leg.  Ian bashed his head open in the Bear Caves.  There was a lot of falling and getting hurt in general.

To make matters worse, my parents hauled my ass back to the city every night of The Trip I Would Have Been Happier Not Going On so I could perform in my shiny dance recital.  Lucky, lucky me.

You’d think the Geniuses would have figured out that city kids going camping was a big fat hairy mistake.  But no.  In sixth grade, they made us go again.  With the fifth graders.  We had this crunchy granola teacher and her husband (who my dad called Bert the Old Sea Dog, because, well, his name was Bert and he looked like an old sea dog) who loved to camp.  When I found out about this nightmare, I wanted to scream, “Don’t force your hippie lifestyle on ME, tree hugger!” But I didn’t cause it was Catholic school and they would have whooped my ass good for that comment.  Once Sister Angela gave me and Kelsey a spanking just because we got a drink of water without permission.  Okay, we were spitting the water at each other in the hall and cackling like a couple of hens but that’s not the point...

So they drag us bodily to another campground.  We didn’t even get little cabins this time.  We all had to sleep on the floor up in the loft of this big multi-purpose building.  My Holly Hobbie sleeping bag looked quite out of place next to all the L.L. Beanish numbers my classmates’ parents had purchased because Buffy and Skip just had to have the best of everything (she says through clenched teeth).  At least on this trip I didn’t have to pee in an outhouse.

The only major catastrophe I remember about this extravaganza of nature is this fifth grader named Ross who got stuck in what we all thought was quicksand but was probably just a big ass pile of mud.  He was screaming like a girl and Bert the Old Sea Dog got a big stick and pulled his crybaby ass out.  Ross was one of those kids with a big shot lawyer dad who gave a lot of money to the school.  Ross didn’t act like his shit didn’t stink at school anymore after his little quicksand rendezvous.

Apparently my teachers were atoning for some horrible sins they committed because when I was in eighth grade, they decided to take the ENTIRE JUNIOR HIGH camping.  All the seventh and eighth graders.  What the frick were they thinking?  We were hell on toast.  They should have known this when in June of the previous year, we pulled stunts like Everybody Turn Their Desks Around and Hum For the Duration of Social Studies Class.  Mr. K ignored us and said, simply, “Humming will not be on the exam.” We threw poorly drawn cartoons of him through the window over the door of his classroom daily.  (This was also the year that Julie told everyone my white shirt looked like a napkin and was pseudo, so I got the entire junior high to gang up on her and give her hell until she apologized to me at the school dance.  Don’t fricking mess with the napkin-shirted bitch, people.) We passed notes making fun of our English teacher’s husband who, rumor had it, was missing a leg.  We made a habit at the beginning of every English class of running top speed to the back row of the classroom so we could giggle and pass notes for an hour.  After about 30 minutes, Mrs. G would yell, “Marie...Rebecca...MOVE” and send one of us to sit in the hall where we would take that opportunity to flirt with ninth grade boys who walked by on their way to the loo.  Once she made the mistake of getting into a debate with me about my behavior in class and I was sent to the hall following a comment that went something like this:  “Well, you could just put my chair on a revolving pedestal in the middle of the classroom so I can observe my subjects at all times.” She was not amused.

I think they knew this camping trip would be a great punishment.

The usual begging to stay home didn’t work and we all went camping.  My dad and Seana’s dad were chaperones, but we didn’t even get the benefit of the Passenger Choosing Ceremony, because they hauled our asses to camp on a big yellow bus.  Woo hoo.

We had cabins this time.  Cabins whose floors were covered in turds.  Little tiny round droppings everywhere.  One of the boys’ cabins was infested with some sort of flying insect and the entire campground smelled like eggs.  Holly and I were into screaming “You lucky sow” to get the boys’ attention at this phase in our adolescence, and we ran from cabin to cabin yelling it in the windows and running away.  Boy were we smooth.

This trip was injury free, because by this time in our lives we expended our energy in psychological torture rather than childish physical stunts.  We spread rumors that the teachers in Cabin 8 were drunk off their asses on vodka every night (and how could we sneak some of that?) and tried to make the seventh grade girls mad by flirting with their boyfriends.  We were having mad fun, until...

Sister Breathe In Jesus showed up.  Her name was really Sister Mary Something.  All the nuns had these girl-boy names which probably explains their overall gender-bending style. Names like Sister Mary Robert and Sister Angela Fred and other such crap.  Sister Breathe In Jesus was our religion teacher.  She was short and squat and looked like a troll doll.  At the beginning of every class she performed this meditative little chant where we had to breathe deeply.  She said we were breathing in Jesus and exhaling our evil thoughts and deeds.  And she brought this routine of hers to camp.  It sucked all the fun out of what we were doing and filled us with the guilt that haunted our every normal and age-appropriate move. 

But, alas, the laws of karma and sweet justice do prevail.  The years of pleasure she derived from infliciting major guilt on our asses was about to be repaid. 

I’m in the outhouse, waiting for Holly to finish peeing, when I hear this violent sound.  It’s loud and foul and hilarious and it’s someone farting the biggest gassiest nastiest farts I’ve ever heard in my time on this planet so far.  I am peeing my pants laughing and yelling, “Oh man, Holly, that is DISGUSTING! I can’t believe you are FARTING like that!  You are such a PIG!  HOLLY!  STOP!  STOP!  That is SO GROSS! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

And from the next stall, a small voice, one that sounded like it just breathed in a whole bunch of Jesus, said, “That was me.”

I fricking love camping.

Monday, June 30, 2003

I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  Don’t get all nervous and jerky, I’m not gonna give anything away.  Sheesh. 

It’s no wonder I was able to read 870 pages in three days.  The vast majority of solids and liquids that have entered my body during that time frame have been of the caffeinated persuasion. 

Although I am extremely partial to the coffee served by a favorite local establishment, and will continue to be loyal to this cup-o-joe, I have recently discovered the insane pleasure of The Starbucks Latte.  To be truthful, I don’t particularly enjoy Starbucks’ coffee per se, and I will admit that ordering their crap is a little intimidating (which do you say first - the venti or the latte?) but I am becoming rapidly addicted to these frothy concoctions.  I will gladly make a fool of myself at the counter just to get that baby into my bloodstream, and fast.  No flavorings, no sugar, just espresso and milk whipped into a frenzy.  Oh yeah. 

Yesterday I was too engrossed in Harry Potter to fathom dressing and leaving the house for my daily fix, so I actually MADE a pot of coffee for myself at home.  The problem here is that I drank the entire thing.  Myself.  And because I own one of those Bunn commercial-grade coffeemakers, 48 ounces of Liquid High is always just three minutes away.  I figure this is a good way for me to get in those 8 glasses of water a day I’m always hearing about.

When I’m not downing ridiculous amounts of the hot stuff, you can find an open can of ice cold Coca-Cola at my fingertips. 

Oreos are, in my opinion, a food group.  They are at the bottom of the Food Pyramid; therefore, I should eat 6 to 12 servings of them per day.  It’s getting kind of humid here, so I am enjoying the frozen Oreo as the current main staple of my diet.  An occasional chocolate ice cream cone finds its way into my digestive tract, but for the most part, it’s Oreo City in there. 

So far today, I have consumed one pot of coffee, two cans of Coca-Cola and one chocolate ice cream cone. I’m done reading Harry Potter. 

I bet I could read the whole dictionary.