Of chips and toilets and friends and alien probes.

For some reason, I have a burning desire to eat chips. Not just any chips. The extra crunchy local type that looks a bit like wax. It’s not as disgusting as it sound. Actually, that’s not true. Chips are pretty disgusting. They make your insides feel greasy after you eat them. Not to mention that I stuff myself with the crap so rarely, I inevitably end up spending the evening on the big porcelain telephone, trying very hard to make a call.

I know all of this. It makes no difference.

Since I don’t have any chips, I’ll distract myself with a random brainfart. Lately (since I ran out of chips) I’ve been contemplating the fact that I have a certain selection of friends and no idea where they came from. I can’t remember ever having met any of them. Suddenly, they were just there. Like alien implants.

Hang on… alien implants aren’t really supposed to be sudden, are they? They’re usually preluded by the presence of little green men in your bedroom, whisking your pyjama-clad, half-conscious carcass into their big and flashy, yet subtle mothership, leaving you with an inexplainable memory of not being abducted by spacemen, but of seeing an owl or something.

I did see a fox once on my way to class. Or did I? Could it be that my mysterious friends from nowhere are my very own alien implants?

Choochoo thinks about spandex and soft, fleshy areas

Everybody has a mental list of things they would like to achieve in life.  My mum has always wanted to see Rome. I have a friend who dreams of owning a walk-in closet filled with nothing but high-heeled shoes. His name is Joe. Personally, I would like to develop an actual superpower. I think that’s the only hope I’ll ever have of being able to pull off wearing spandex. On the other hand, I don’t really want to wear spandex, so learning how to fly or to shoot lightning bolts through my eyeballs, isn’t really a big priority, all things considered.

 

Among my somewhat realistic goals, is learning how to drive a car. I would also like to drive the pope-mobile, but that’s more of a random that-might-be-fun idea, which is categorized along with things like going skiing in the mountains. The rational part of my brain – which I like to call Bergerac – knows that it will most likely end with screaming, pain and an extended stay in my friendly neighbourhood hospital.

 

Driving classes and such are ridiculously expensive in these parts, and the powers-that-be are completely anal about letting people get into a car without knowing how to “control the vehicle and blah, blah, blah.” I always figured I could just apply the same technique to my driving that I do to my skiing: go forth at ridiculous speeds and then hope to land on a soft, fleshy area.

Pooch's brainscape

Every now and then – and more and more often, unfortunately – it’s necessary for me to do my impression of a responsible adult. In my case, adulthood consists of reading research papers, writing research papers and growing gunk in petri dishes.

 

During these bursts of maturity, Pooch tends to get bored. So when I occasionally glance up from my Pile of Nerdy Brain-Melting-Papers, she gets excited.

 

And sometimes when she gets excited, she’ll spin around in circles. And sometimes, when she spins around in circles, she’ll bang her head on the wall and wobble a bit. She’s done this ever since she was a little puppy. By today, she will probably have had hundreds of blows to the head. This is probably why she’s the strangest dog I’ve ever met.

 

She’ll spend all day in the bathroom, staring at the laundry. Sometimes she’ll even cock her head and listen very carefully to it. She won’t eat her denta-sticks if they’re straight. I have to bend them for her. Then they’re wonderful. When we go for a walk, she has to stop in the exact same place every day to chase something that’s clearly not really there. Today she had a long grumbling exchange with her back paw, which ended with her sticking said paw in her mouth and staring into space for ten solid minutes.

 

I wish I could take a peek inside Pooch’s brain to see what she’s thinking. Then again, I’m not completely sure I really want to know…

Curse of the plastic bags. Or whatever.

Today I had an adventure. Grocery shopping does qualify as an adventure when judged by The Hellholian Scale of Excitement. Besides, when you’re living with Pooch, who has a habit of licking things that should not be licked and developing farts that smell just like the circus, a change of air might not be such a bad idea.

There I was, puttering around between the isles, my little, blue plastic shopping basket in one hand and my shopping list in the other. Ten minutes later, I had worked up quite an impressive selection of items, some of which I needed but most of which I simply wanted. And deserved, dammit.

“Would you like a bag?” the cashiere with the dead eyes asked me, after she’d finished the laborious task of ringing up all my groceries.

“No, hidden inside the dark bowels of my coat, I have more arms than an army of octopuses and would have no problem carrying a million things home,” I thought. I didn’t say that, of course, because I am a polite and civilized sort of person. In stead I simply smiled and said “yes, please.”

So the woman yanked out a plastic bag from underneath the registery, where it lived with its family and friends inside a little cardboard box, dumped it on top of my small mountain of groceries and then she quickly got up and disappeared through the plastic doors in the back of the store, labelled “staff only!!!”

That’s right: three exclamation marks.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of math went on inside her head to make her think that said mountain was going to fit inside a single plastic bag. It is, after all, exactly as big on the inside as it appears to be from the outside. It’s a typical, run-of-the-mill plastic bag – not the bloody starship Enterprise.

The thing is, they always give you one -1- plastic bag, regardless of how much crap you’re hauling with you. If you want more, you have to specifically ask and carefully outline how many you think you’ll need. I momentarily forgot this, and ended up standing there with 80 bucks worth of groceries, a tiny plastic bag and the distinct feeling of just having screwed myself over.   

I bet they all just sit in their little staff-only area, stuffing their faces with chips and watching the little surveillance screens to see how the customers try to work out this little equation. Well, I wasn’t going to be their lunch entertainment. I stole a plastic bag, I did. Hell, I stole TWO.

Thus my life of crime has started. You gonna do something about it, mate? I have a pooch with flatulence and I’m not afraid to use it.

 

Because we all go a little crazy sometimes…

And that, in turn, may lead us to come up with… oh, I don’t know…. say, an evil plot to take over the world.

STAGE 1:

To begin my plan, I must first devour Superman, thus stealing his super-powers. This will cause the people of the world to whisper amongst themselves, overwhelmed by my arrival. Who is this criminal mastermind? Where did she come from? And how can she look so good in her wizard’s robes?


STAGE 2:

Next, I must seize control of the moon (oooh, tides!). This will all be done from my underground secret headquarters of doom, a mysterious place of unrivalled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the people of the world will wet their pants, as countless hordes of computer programmers (or one really, really clever one) will hasten to do my every bidding.


STAGE 3:

Finally, I must tauntingly wave my secret death ray, bringing about pain, suffering, - the usual. My name shall become synonymous with “dear god no,” and nobody will ever again dare make me clean my room. Everyone will bow before my mind-boggling insanity, and the world will have no choice but to give me control of the planet.


All in favour say: Nyahahahaha!

Just thought I'd mention it

There's something that I love even more than lemon squares and strawberry milk. Hell, if you mixed strawberry milk and lemon squares into a big bowl and topped it with a collection of the worlds cutest puppies and kittens, it still wouldn't make it to nr. 1. That's just how it is. And here's something which makes me think of that thing:

What not to do. Unless you're bored.

There are some very strange laws in the world. And when I say strange, I don’t mean strange as in a toaster sitting in a tree. I mean strange as in the combined bird trap and cat feeder.

Too lazy to feed the cat? Here is the perfect solution which will provide your cat with all the food it needs and at the same time depopulate your whole neighbourhood of those pesky robins, wrens and sparrows. The device works by enticing little song birds into a welcoming, homely, birdhouse. Once inside they step onto the pivoted stand and are ejected down the shoot into the lower section where they remain trapped until puss is ready for his lunch. You will never need to open a can of cat food again in your life.

You telling me that’s not strange?

For example, there’s a law in Alaska that says you can’t look at a moose from an airplane. In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal. California law prohibits a woman from driving a car while dressed in a housecoat. Actually, there probably should be a law against wearing a housecoat in the first place, and there certainly will be, when I take over the world.

In Tennessee, a woman is not to drive a car unless a man warns approaching motorists or pedestrians by walking in front of her car. You also can’t drive a car in Tennessee while you’re sleeping. In New York, you can’t drive a car if you’re blind. But I guess hitting the road while you’re asleep is okay.

In Rochester, Michigan, the law is that anyone bathing in public must have the bathing suit inspected by a police officer. I wonder what would happen if I were to travel to Rochester, put on a bathing suit and ask a police officer to inspect it. In Kentucky, it’s the law that a person must take a bath once a year.

In Utah, birds have the right of way on any public highway. In Ohio, one must have a license to keep a bear. I wonder what the punishment is for bear-keeping without a license.

In North Carolina, it is against the law for dogs and cats to fight. In Singapore, it is illegal to chew gum. In Cleveland, Ohio, it is only illegal to chew gum in public places. Otherwise, it can be your dirty little secret. Maybe you could get down with your bad self and go to dodgy gum-dens.

I never knew the kind of pressure chickens were under, either. In Virginia, chickens cannot lay eggs before 8:00 a.m. and must be done before 4:00 p.m.

In Massachusetts, it is against the law to put tomatoes in clam chowder.

In Washington State, you can’t carry a concealed weapon that is over 6 feet in length. In San Francisco, there is an ordinance, which bans the picking up and throwing of used confetti. In the state of Colorado, a pet cat, if loose, must have a tail-light.

In California, a law created in 1925 makes it illegal to wiggle while dancing. In Utah, daylight must be visible between dancing couples. In Michigan, it is against the law for a lady to lift her skirts more than 6 inches while walking through a mud puddle. What if you stand next to the puddle with your skirt above your head? Can they get you for that? In Missouri a man must have a permit to shave. There’s also a law stating that more than 3000 sheep cannot be herded down Hollywood Blvd at any one time.

Some of these I would really like to try out.