Since David and Marcie Are the Only Ones Who Read This…

I was reading Steve Martin’s Shopgirl yesterday on the couch, and I came up with a very funny, evil plan.

If you knew someone only superficially and didn’t care about getting to know them further, you could do this. Buy them a book – preferably a long, terrible book. And then give it to this person empathically gushing that you just thought of them throughout reading the entire thing. Then say it really changed your life and made you like them even more than before – even more than you thought you possibly could!!! And then gush that you just had to buy a copy for them. “Once you start it, you’ll really see what I mean! This book is so you!”

Flash forward weeks later.

I am imagining a conversation where this person walks up to you and says, “OK, the book is about a lesbian pedicurist who has an affair with a car-full of male circus midgets and realizes she isn’t really gay. Then she spends the rest of the book executing creative ways to get blood samples from the midgets, so she can figure out who is the father of her unborn child.”

“Yep, isn’t it FASCINATING?!?!”

“Well…I guess...I’m still trying to figure out why or how you thought of me in this story… I mean I am not a lesbian or a pedicurist or a little person. I've never gotten pregnant or gotten someone pregnant. I've never had an orgy with circus performers...”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, in fact I read the book twice, and I still cannot figure it out. Now, how did you see me in this book?”

“Oh, well, the cover is that shade of blue, and you have a t-shirt the same color. And one of the midgets has the same initials as you! Except reversed!”

Hehe. Bwahahaaha.

I don’t know why I find this idea so attractive.

Annuzer Quiz

What is your favorite restaurant, and what do you usually order there?
Right now, it’s Paulie’s and I order the eggs benny with sausage instead of Canadian Bacon with crispy home fries, a decaf coffee, and a gigantor glass of water.

What’s your favorite candy?
Those little balls of dark chocolate with alcohol in them – you get them from Belgium. I think they’re called Belgian Little Balls…no wait, that was the name of my last boyfriend…never mind.

What was the last CD you bought?
New Order’s Waiting for the Sirens’ Call, and it’s pretty awesome.

Name 5 songs you listen to frequently, or that have special meaning for you?
Like Marcie, it’s always changing, but right now it’s:
“My Balls Are Itchy” by Inappropriate Activity
“Rash” by Ex Boyfriend
“Get Me to A Doctor” by Ambulance
“A Bad Diagnosis” by Someone Who Has Had Too Many Malpractice Lawsuits
“A Tasteless Joke” by Schmacko

If you were a fashion designer, which fabrics, colors, and styles would you probably use the most?
I would combine Prada and Vera Wang or Halston and Vera Wang, and if ya know what I mean, you are very very gay!

Do you have any bumper stickers on your car, and what do they say?
Just my Duran Duran sticker…

What is your middle name? Would you change any of your names if you could?
If so, what would you like to be called?

My middle name is Danger!

Nah, it’s Jerome. Which is Asian Yiddish for “Danger” I think…
I used to want my dead brother's middle name, Joshua. Is that terrible!

Using the letters in your first name, write a sentence.
Say, try Eve’s vagina, everybody!!!

A List of Firsts

CD: A friend and her five kids gave me the Beauty & the Beast CD. First CD I Bought was Duran Duran’s RIO. Am I gay?

KISS: There was this girl who lived down the street from me named Donna Miller (no relation). We kissed A LOT on her backyard swing. I think I was about 5 or 6. I remember she admired my Mickey Mouse shirt with the moving eyes, and the rest of the neighborhood kids were grossed out that we were kissing. We did it all summer, only stopping to eat or go behind her garage and show each other our privates.

FLOWERS: Back in Iowa, my boyfriend in high school planted a whole field of daisies on the side of his dad’s farmhouse, and he brought me out to see them when they bloomed. My sister says they’re still there every year. Their farm hugs a major road in our county. Wonder if his parents know about how the daises were first there.

BEER: God, I don’t know – I’m Irish. I assume my mom’s breast milk had a little residual beer in it.

CONCERT: Ooo, 1982, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My sister Tink and her friend Teresa and their boyfriends took me to Blondie and…tah da! Duran Duran opened for them! Am I gay?

CAR: A 1976 Ford Elite the size of a small, New England state!

DAY of COLLEGE: I went early, because I was cast in Hello Dolly. GAG! I went out back of the theatre in this gravel parking lot looking out on corn fields, and all the hip college students were out there trying to roll a joint. I finally said, “Christ!” and took it from them and rolled it. And I had friends for life.

BIKE: I remember I was given my brother’s robin’s egg blue Schwinn. Lots of hand-me-down bikes in our family.

DATE: When I was in sixth grade, I went to see a movie with Brenda Trumbo. I cannot rememebr for the life of me what the movie was, but I do remember we sat in the front row of the balcony.

JOB: Delivering Creston News Advertiser papers.

PET: A Siamese named Kitty Blue who loved me dearly and would viciously attack almost anyone else.

BROKEN BONE: My mom accidentally ran over my hand with the car when I was four. Yep, she accidentally super-glued my hand to the driveway and then accidentally got the car into position and then accidentally ran over it. Three times.

STITCHES: See above.

AWARD: I was given an art award my Mrs. Scott, my first grade teacher who looked like the love child of Spock and Jabba the Hut.

CIGARETTE: Corey and Corby DeBord and I used to steal their mom’s cigarettes and smoke them under the Division Street Bridge.

FIST FIGHT: I beat up David Adair in first grade almost every day. Then Mike Freeman and I stuffed David under the merry-go-round and threatened to spin it. Somehow, David’s nose ended up broken, but he never told on us, so I quit beating him up.

BOYFRIEND: My first was when I was 13 and he was 18…I know, ick. And he was a very handsome young man named BJ Wiley who lived in Wapello, Iowa, and was the poor son of the Baptist minister. He and his boyfriend settled in Chicago. BJ was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in 1996. I still keep in touch with Julian, his other half.

SPRING BREAK: My college freshman year, we had to tour around singing to different congregations and high schools, but we did spend a long weekend in Kansas City at Pam Minthorn’s house making Jello shots and trying to bed her hunky cousin.

BAR: We were always going into Charlie’s to drag our drunk dad home.

LOVE: Not sure. I kinda sorta fell in serious lust in college, but I’m not sure if it was love. I’ll say Sarah French.

TIME: Well, a week before I met BJ Wiley, there was this girl. I was 13, she was 16, and she took me up to my cousin’s room and we got that out of the way. A week later, BJ and I borrowed my cousin’s boyfriend’s car (the boyfriend was named Buddy) and we found a corn field where we parks and consummated our passion, which was more fiery than a cinnamon Jolly Rancher…

Athera Fraknlin

We had a talent show at work today. A dyslexic woman sang "Respect"

"R E C T E S P
Find out what is means to me!"'

???

If I could be like Mike!!!

This is a Marcie quiz:

If I could be a scientist… I find an end to cancer...and hurricanes...at the same time, yeah!
If I could be a farmer… I would grow whacky weed.
If I could be a musician… Ooo, I’d be like Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran
If I could be a doctor… I’d shrink heads.
If I could be a painter… I’d be a combination of Pollack and Kandinsky with a little Caravaggio thrown in for flavah!
If I could be a gardener… See whacky weed comment
If I could be a missionary… I’d sing The Eurythmics’ “Missionary Man” constantly – “Don’t mess with a missionary man, heeey, heey!”
If I could be a chef… Ooo, Italian-Japanese fusion foods, like stir fry lasagne
If I could be an architect… I’d only design homes for little people, cuz it would be less math.
If I could be a linguist… I'd be cunning. (Stealing Marcie’s answer)
If I could be a psychologist… I would publish books about my stupid patients barely disguising their true identities.
If I could be a librarian… I’d find an annoying way to say “SHHH” and do it all day!!!
If I could be an athlete… I’d be something that finally gave me a killer body rather than this lump of lard genetics has cursed me with.
If I could be a lawyer… I’d be in the only population in the world that benefits from class-action lawsuits, malpractice suits, and frivolous litigation, and there would be absolutely no laws that could stop me and my kind from constantly spreading our evil.
If I could be an inn-keeper… Nah, I’d be an OUT-keeper.
If I could be a professor… I’d get really geeky glasses and coats with pads on the elbows and I would only teach things that are totally useless once my students got out into the real world.
If I could be a writer… I’d prove once and for all for every dreamer, for every self-defeating writer, and for the purpose of our species’ advancement that Shakespeare’s work 400 years ago wasn’t the only brilliant height humanity could reach.
If I could be a llama-rider… I’d name her Tina and feed her ham. “Goll, eat the freakin’ ham, Tina!”
If I could be a bonnie pirate… I am...I am a butt pirate.
If I could be an astronaut… I’d take off like Major Tom in that 80s song.
If I could be a world famous blogger… I’d be Marcie Schwalm.
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world… yep, US Supreme Court, and I’d be the worst flaming liberal the world has ever seen!
If I could be married to any current famous political figure… which one has the most money?

Fruits and Vegetables

Some idiot “clothes-lined” me in the hallway at work yesterday!

“Clothes-lining” is a term from when I was a kid growing up in the Midwest. We used to play late-night games of Full Contact Hide-n-Seek. Every so often someone running around in the darkness would forget a clothes line in a neighbor’s back yard and end up on the ground clasping at their rope-burnt necks.

So, now, as a “grown-up,” I use the term to signify how morons stop you in the hallway when you’re in the middle of something else. For a while, every time this happened, I would grasp my neck and fall to the floor gasping for air. But the company frowned upon my “excessive editorializing” of common corporate events.

So, Ignoramus asks, “How do I get into this class?”

Umm. Oh, God, how many times a day do I have to tell people this!?!? I know the classes are full. I take a deep breath:

“Well, you can sign up for every occurrence of the class, and once an opening is available, we will email you. Or you can have your Human Resource Manager send us an email confirming that this is a vital development need which has alreayd been captured in your Performance Review. Or you can have your Human Resource Manager or supervisor send us a note saying that you need to take this class as part of a Performance Improvement Plan (not good, by the way!). Or you can show up the day of class; we always have a few extra seats at the last minute, and you can fill one of them.”

And Ignoramus acts all off-put and huffy, and then he asks, “Yeah, but besides those ways, how do I get into the class?”

So I laughed at this walking vegetable. And I patted him on the shoulder and told him, “Your sense of humor should get you far in this business. I’m sorry I can’t chat longer, but I’ve got to be anywhere else but here right now.”

And I walked away. I just…walked away.

What a fruit!

++++++++++++++
Speaking of fruit, I am finding I like the brand of Fructis hair putty better than the spray-on gel. THESE THINGS ARE IMPORTANT!

++++++++++++++
And on the vegetable front: The Federal Gov’t (pronounced “gov'ment”) tells us we should eat at least nine fruits and vegetables per day. (Oh, if I only could find nine fruits to eat per day…but I’m sure the gov’t doesn’t mean THAT!)

Have you tried eating nine fruits and veggies per day?!?!?

It’s insane! I had carrots for breakfast!

Well, thank God that President Dumbya Bush and the Repuritan Congress has now said that potatoes are vegetables! Well, good! I mean, five Biggie Fries from Wendy’s and you’re sure to have your quota for the day met!

Whew. Problem solved.

And one wonders if Dumbya can actually spell “potato,” doesn’t one?

Oneword

1. Your Father
Devolutionary

2. Your Mother
Fertilizer

3. Today
Tuesday

4. Your past
Midwestelodrama

5. Your future
Posifoggy

6. Your job
Labor-like

7. Your favorite place
Augustine

8. Your last meal
Hispomlette

9. Your best friend
Davicathy

10. Leave us with one final word
Iloveyouallandyouknowimeanit

>>>

Thing That's On Your Mind Right Now:

How tired I am and yet I have to prep for a class tomorrow and I have this luncheon today for a coworker’s birthday and all these scripts to read and I am so tired…

2 Songs You Like Right Now:

1. Apart by Elkland
2. Honest Mistake by The Bravery, whom I am seeing in concert on July 20th

3 Things That Make You Angry Right Now:

1. People who don’t understand that they can put themselves into foul, unconstructive moods and even convince themselves that they are crazy. I have to put up with these people at work as a part of my job, and I get sick when I see my friends sabotage their own mental health in the exact same way. I now refused to put up with friends’ self-inflicted mood-swings from now on.

2. People who look at me sour, especially when they are simply a guest in my house.

3. A simple, non-emotional “yes” or “no” will answer the question I asked – I don’t need all the messy emotional baggage that you simply adore lugging around.

4 Things That Make You Happy Right Now:

1. Hehe – Duran Duran is coming back in July, and I am going to see them again. I may even try to win another meet-n-greet!

2. I have some great events coming up – Erasure this weekend, Gay Days in early June, and of course Sons of the Revolution in August (plus the two concerts I mentioned)

3. There are a few people (David, Jeffrey Lurie, Mikey Norris, David Dean, Michael, and Sarah French pop to mind) that have this magical ability to make me like them even more the more time I spend with them.

4. My Schweetie

5 People Who Have Made A Big Impact On Your Life:

1. Lorena Midgorden – she is my grandma’s best friend, and she became our adopted grandma after mine died.
2. Susan Maroldo – my college communications teacher
3. Gary Heisserer – college theatre professor
4. David Almeida
5. Cathy Thompson