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.

Ghostly lumps and award-winning cuteness

sThis weekend I was scratching pooch and talking to her as if she was a big baby, the way we usually spend out weekends, when I suddenly noticed a sizeable lump above her ribs. “Oh my, we’d better call the vet,” I thought. And since I can recognise brilliant thinking when I hear it, I did.

The next day Pooch was standing on that glossy, black table in the vet’s examination room, being poked and prodded, but the lump was nowhere to be found. It was a ghost-lump. Seriously, the thing had vanished faster then Michael Jackson after the sex-scandal. It’s probably out shopping for a burka as we speak.

Aaanyways.

I also found an old newspaper clipping that my mum had been saving. It’s an interview of my favourite subject: me. Allow me to share with you my fifteen minutes of fame:

- you have to be careful so it doesn’t jump in your face, says a smiling Choochoo from Hellhole, Hickville. She’s four years old, and her and the stuffed gorilla, who’s name is “Nothing”, are the worlds best friends.

- But it isn’t dangerous, is it, Choochoo, this gorilla of yours?

- Oh yes, it’s very dangerous. It eats people. And it’s very old. Nine!

- Are there more gorillas in Hellhole?
- Yes, two.

- What about bears? Are there bears here?
- Yes, on TV. And there was one up on the roof.
- What was the bear doing up on the roof?

- It ate the chimney.

- That must have been a peculiar bear. You do other things during the day, then play with your gorilla, don’t you?

- I play with rocks.
- Do you build houses with them, perhaps?

- No, I kick them. There are lots of great rocks to kick around here. And the gorilla has to eat, you know. It likes rocks. Just like the bears. All gorillas and bears like rocks. Then they become strong and fly through the air.

That article was so damn cute, it won an award, it did. Yeah, I'm adorable.

Ho, ho, frikkin ho!

’Tis the season to be… well… running around like a frenzied chicken while you try to figure out who you still need to buy presents for and what the hell you should get those people. Not to mention wrapping the things and shipping them off while there’s still a snowballs chance in hell that they’ll get to where they’re going in time. I think that date passed sometime last week.

All this you have to do accompanied by the sound of cheery Christmas music and cheery Christmas lights and santas of all shapes and sizes yelling “ho, ho, ho” at you. This is the only time of the year when a man can get away with shouting that after a gal without getting pummelled by either her handbag or her boyfriend. You also have to tolerate the presence of screaming two-year, who are all out in force during the holiday season.

There was an interview in the paper the other day with a reverend something-or-other who was upset that the purpose of Christmas had gotten lost somewhere along the way. Most likely, somewhere along the way to the mall. Santa, he said, was clearly a false idol and he wanted everyone to explain to their children that Santa was a false god who made people sick and broke apart happy homes. That’s what he taught his own children when they were growing up.

I’m sure his kids could throw a tantrum to dwarf all other tantrums in the history of tantrums, both past and future, whenever you took them to the mall with all its Christmassy decorations. A few years back, my mum decided she was a lesbian and so my parents got divorced. We had several cardboard boxes of decorations.

Anyways, I’m going away. See you all next year.

Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve been tagged. I now have to pick up the book I’m currently reading, go to page 56 and jot down the fifth line. Iiiits… *drumroll*… “It wasn’t nearly as easy to dance with Charlie.”

Fascinating.

The things I put you people through...

I have decided to subject you all to Norwegian comedy at it's finest. MMmmmmhm. Mostly it's because I have exams and can't be bothered to think of something brilliant to say.

Bubbles!

For years I’ve had a strange and abnormal addiction. I’ve trudged through snow, rain and hail in order to feed it. I’ve spent my hard-earned cash to make sure I had enough of it. When I chased my strawberry milk dragon, world war three couldn’t keep me away from the drug store.

But now I have a new addiction: bubble baths.

My new flat sports a shiny, white bathtub. I remember the very first time we met. It was a lovely Monday afternoon. The landlady was showing me the apartment, walking behind me and letting me open doors and snooping around, just like they do on those reality shows where they sell houses. Because it gives the impression that the apartment is bigger than it really is. Although it didn’t seem any smaller on the way out, when I walked last. But what do I know? I’m not a realtor. And they did say so on TV, so it must be true.

But I digress.

There I was, opening the bathroom door and there It was, sitting pretty in a corner, looking all white and shiny. It was love at first sight, it was.

Once I’d moved in, I promised myself two things.
1 – my tub would always, always, always be clean and shiny.
2 – I would muster up some self-restraint. After all, it takes a lot of electricity to heat up all that water, and electricity is ridiculously expensive around here and I am, after all, a poor, starving student.

I’ve been able to live up to nr 1 just fine. Mostly because the tub is more often filled with soapy water than not… Those little specs of dust flying around doesn’t have time to land there before they’re washed away. And when the tub is empty, I find myself looking at it, picturing it with water and bubbles and me, happily splashing around.

So my self restraint has gone out the window, the way that my self restraint usually does. Why would it be different this time? I might starve to death during the winter, but at least I’ll smell nice.

pretty, pretty, shiny, shiny

I’ve had a cold. Did I mention that? I know I did, actually, I just wanted to see if you had been paying attention. Shame on you if you haven’t. What kind of fan are you, anyway? I expect much better from you in the future.

Anyway, my cold never quite got over its commitment phobia. After a while, it decided to settle in my right ear. Which I suppose is much better than having it throughout your whole head, so I’m not complaining. Then it went away. This caused for some sort of celebration, I figured. Movie, snacks, candles. And a bubble bath. Not necessarily all at the same time.

As soon as I’d decided to purty my flat up with candles, I reliced that all my make-the-room-look-real-purty-stuff was still crammed into cardboard boxes from the move. Images of myself throwing things into whichever box happened to be closest whilst cursing The Powers That Be for not having invented self-packing belongings, flashed into my head. I didn’t have the faintest idea which box held my tea-light candleholders and even less inclination to go searching for them. Clearly, I needed new stuff. Not only did I have cause for celebration, I also had an excuse to go shopping. This was turning into a pretty good day.

Now, a few hours later, I’ve watched a couple of movies, my flat is full of luvely light and I’m all pink and wrinkly from my bath. Course, the bubbles turned out to be of the cheap variety and I smell a little bit like a wunderbaum, but you can’t have everything. I suppose.

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn, plus other things you might as well learn:

1. Interchangable parts - won't.


2. Leakproof seals - will.


3. Selfstarters - won't.


4. If you try to please everyone, nobody will like you.


5. A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.


6. Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate


7. Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work.


8. In order to get a loan, you must first prove that you don't need it.


9. The chance of a piece of bread falling buttered side down, is directly proportionate to the prize of the carpet.


10. Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.


11. If it jams - force it. If it breaks it needed to be replaced anyway.


12. If you fool around with a thing for very long, you will screw it up.


13. The repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before.


14. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, as soon as you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.


15. The other line always moves faster.


16. Every solution breeds new problems


17. All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.


18. There is always one more bug.


19. A bird in the hand is better than one overhead.


20. Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.


21. Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.


22. Smile... tomorrow will be worse.

A commitment-phobic cold

I have a commitment-phobic cold. Unlike a regular cold, which will creep up on you at the most inconvenient of times, and then reduce you to a flem-soaked, sniffling wreck, a commitment-phobic cold only turns up for a few hours at the time. You feel a slight tingle in your throat as you wake up in the morning. Your head gets woolly while you’re watching your favourite tv show in the evening. What really separates the CP cold from the onset of a regular cold, is the fact that the CP never stays the night.

That’s probably just as well.

Sometimes a commitment-phobic cold might be confused with a shy cold, but there are some very distinguishing marks. A shy cold will rear its little head just as your falling asleep. Or you might wake up at night, not feeling 100 %, with just enough presence of mind to think “I hope I’m not getting sick.” The reason for that is that a shy cold is… well, shy. It would rather not draw too much attention to itself.

Sometimes a CP cold – and sometimes a shy cold, although this is rarer - grows into a full-fledged man-cold. That’s what happens when a CP cold overcomes its fear of commitment and decides that it would rather never leave, and focuses all its attention on you until you’re completely convinced that you’re going to drown in your own mucus.

So let’s hope that doesn’t happen…

Life lessons vs. pizza

When I was a kid and I didn’t want to eat the crusts on my sandwiches, my mum would remind me that there were children starving in Africa. I thought that, in the event that I should put my bits of bread in an envelope and send them to Africa, they would be pretty inedible by the time they got there. Also, it seemed to me that the best way to help the starving, would be to not stuff yourself full of food when you were no longer hungry.

I guess what my mother was really trying to teach me, was to be grateful for the things that I had, and not how to solve world hunger.

Last night, I tried to keep that lesson in mind after I dropped my last slice of pizza on the floor. Pooch knows full well that if something edible lands on the ground, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s hers to pounce on. However, if this something edible falls directly on her head, the rules change.

At that moment in time, Pooch, at least, was very grateful for what she had…

Life and death of Mr. Sausage-Rope.

I have mentioned in the past how much Pooch loves Pigface, her hysterically pink puffer fish-pig squeaky toy. But once upon a time, in the grocery store, I bought another potential friend for her.

Mr. Sausage-Rope.

There he was, hanging from a rope with the other members of his family, just people-watching. I picked him up, dangled him back and forth a little, evaluated his shape, colour and all the little faces on all the little sausages. Briefly I wondered what it would smell like, but then I pictured myself standing there, in the middle of isle 4 while sniffing a dog toy, and changed my mind.

Into my little, blue basket went Mr. Sausage-Rope. He didn’t even have time to pack or say goodbye to his family. But I suppose that they had prepared for one of them getting bought, and that they’d therefore done all the goodbye-hugs-and-kisses-stuff. That would make the most sense.

The first thing Pooch did when she was given Mr. Sausage-Rope, was to remove one of his noses. Actually, “remove” might be the wrong word. She held him down with her front paws, grabbed his nose with her teeth and tore it off, along with his mouth and parts of his right eye. Then she spent half an hour bouncing around the apartment whilst throwing the nose up into the air and catching it again and again.

Then, after the original carnage, Pooch was content to carry Mr. Sausage-Rope around in her mouth, giving him a thorough shake every once in a while. Early one morning, I found Mr. Sausage-Rope in a corner of the kitchen, where Pooch had tossed him the night before. One of his sausages had gone mysteriously missing. The rest didn't have noses anymore.

Pooch was sleeping in the sofa, like a little angel. A little angel covered in small, brown pieces of plastic. Some of which had what looked like a nose on them.

Eggbert, Hallbert, distractions and all the serious research-stuff

My poor Eggbert is still at the hospital in Big City for sick computers. I had thought that with Eggbert being away, and therefore unable to distract me with games and such, I would get more work done. After all, Hallbert, who is Eggbert’s understudy, is getting on in years. He’s not very fast or playful. Also, being a laptop, Hallbert, with all his slow seriousness, can go with me wherever I am. So there’s no excuse not to work on my thesis.

But I can always count on the universe to assure that my plans never, ever turn out the way I thought.

Take the other day, for example. I took Hallbert and my papers with me to the park. If you can call a small path with a large puddle covered in reefs and algae a park. Actually, it’s more like a swamp with a bench in it. But I digress. The plan was to do all sorts of scientific, serious research-stuff. However, the universe immediately set out to wreak havoc on my plan.

First came the annoying bee. Bees don’t bother me, but this one was determined to crawl up my nose and would not take no for an answer. Then came the screaming children who were left to wait in the car for their parents just a few paces away. Their considerate folks had let them open up all the windows, to make sure they didn’t use up all the oxygen in the vehicle with all their jumping and howling. After a while I began to suspect that their mum and dad had abandoned them. Not that I couldn’t understand that.

“I’ll go home,” I thought. “I’ll make myself a nice cup of coffee and get tons of work done,” I thought.

Twenty minutes later, Hallbert was all set up at my desk, a large cup of coffee steaming away right next to him. I sat down, wiggled my fingers in preparation, took a deep breath… and heard drums. Then there were more drums and what sounded like trumpets, and it all seemed to be coming closer and closer.

Before I knew it, a marching band was marching up around and around in circles in the parking lot outside my house, showing no signs of leaving any time soon.

Well, you don’t have to knock me unconscious to make a point. The serious science-stuff’ll just have to wait a little while longer.

Gaaaaah!

My apartment consists of piles. It’s not that I’m fond of piles. They’re not a regular part of my décor. It’s also not due to me being messy or sloppy. Although I do confess that I’m a big supporter of the orderly chaos. It’s also not that I think “Hey, sugar. Want to come over to my place and check out my piles?” would be such a great pick-up line, should Prince Charming come along.

It’s because I’m moving.

In not too long – and certainly not a second too soon – I shall be free of the Upstairs People. No more noise, no more garbage everywhere and no more weird smells in the hallway. But as much as these things fill my heart with joy and make me want to giggle hysterically, I do hate the moving process.

Because it reduces my existence to a series of piles. Piles of cardboard boxes, piles of things that needs to be packed, piles of things that need to be thrown away, piles of things that I might want to throw away. Piles of things that I had no idea I owned.

And then it all accumulates in hours of heavy lifting.

Moving BITES. And blows and sucks.

Pooch loves Pigface and there's an enchanted acorn hat

I had just made my way up the hill and started across the green lawn, shiny with dew, which lead up to the magic castle where the Bubble Gum King lived. He had stolen my enchanted acorn hat and wouldn’t give it back. At first I had thought that the hat had simply been misplaced or eaten by giant beetles, but then the herald had shown up, reading loudly from a fancy scroll. “The Bubble Gum King has stolen the enchanted acorn hat and won’t give it back. Nanny, nanny, boo hoo.” Being the heroic no-bullshit gal that I am, I was going to save it from his grasp.
Anyway, that was the plan until something hit me on the back of the head.

Next thing I know, I’m in bed and its 3:35 in the morning. I couldn’t see Pooch, but I could feel her stare drilling into the back of my neck. Sighing loudly, I rolled over.

“EEEEEEH!”

The rubbery spikes of Pigface the squeaky toy dug into the small of my back and I had to shift a little. Pigface is a pink mockery of nature, a round freak with the body of a puffer fish and the face of a laughing pig. The spikes used to be in an assortment of different colors, but after spending hours and hours being carried around in the dog’s mouth, it was now simply just pink. Pooch loves Pigface. And when Pigface squeals it’s quite obvious to her that it’s in distress. Horrified, Pooch grabbed her beloved toy and dived into bed where she commenced the necessary licking and sympathetic whining that it took for the thing to feel better about itself.

In the meanwhile, I took the opportunity to crawl back under the duvet and concentrate on going back to sleep. I was nearly there when Pigface came flying towards my head again. Then Pooch got up on her hind legs and put both front paws squarely on my face, managing to squish my mouth and my nose together. Clearly she was serious about the whole getting-out-of-bed-thing.

Reluctantly, I complied and was rewarded by a happy roar and dance from Pooch which sent Pigface flying into the kitchen, and that in turn had Pooch flying after Pigface to make sure it was alright.

Usually there’s some sort of reason for why Pooch would throw a hysterical fit this early in the morning, so I staggered into the living room to check around. After concentrating for a couple of minutes, I managed to persuade my eyes to open enough for me to have a look around. And indeed, in the middle of the room, was The Reason. A big, wet pile of Reason.

“Next time the Chinese students from across the street offer you an eggroll, just say no!” I yelled back across my shoulder. “Or at least try to not swallow the whole thing at once.”

I cleaned up the mess, threw it in the garbage and left the bag in the hallway. Hell, if the upstairs people can keep their trash out there until it stinks like the inside of a bin, then my little bag could certainly stay there until morning.

It was now 3:58 and I was looking forwards to crawling back into bed, only to find that this might be a bit more tricky than I had anticipated. Sprawled out on my bed, lay The Pooch, on her back with her front feet tucked under her chin, her back feet straight out and her head on my pillow. She was snoring gently and her little toes were wiggling in her sleep. I always have trouble waking Pooch up when she’s all cute looking. So instead I slipped under the cover, very gently so not to wake the sleeping doggie, and ended up sleeping rather badly on the edge of the bed with barely enough duvet to cover ping-pong ball and no pillow to speak of.

I will be hitting the coffee hard today.

Eggbert and The Styrostinkers!

A week ago the unthinkable happened: I turned on my computer to find that the screen was black as pitch. Then a little, blue square appeared and in it were the words “no signal detected!” With an exclamation mark, as if this failure to detect a signal was very especially panic-inducing. I tried turning the machine off and then on again. And off and on. And off and on. Off. On.

“No signal detected!”

Something was very wrong, so I made a decision. I would call customer service. Even though that meant making a long-distance phone call with my cell phone, something which most students on a budget tighter than Boy George’s pants in the 80s, would be reluctant to do.

Two minutes later, there I was, sitting on the kitchen chair, staring at my blackened monitor and listening to Shakira sing how fortunate it is that her boobs are tiny so that they’re not mistaken for mountains, occasionally interrupted by a man’s voice saying: “thank you for holding. You will be serviced soon.”

I had a friend once who claimed to have dumped her boyfriend for saying that.

While we waited, Bergerac (my brain) and I started to conjure up images of me pushing setting Shakira’s hair on fire, and just as we were getting really good at creating scenarios, we were interrupted by Bob.

“Hello, this is Bob. How may I help you?”

I explained my problem to Bob and pictured him sitting in his office chair behind a desk with his headset, while nodding solemnly as he listened to me speak.

“I see,” he said after I was done. “Is the computer plugged in?”

The idea that the computer would, in fact, not be plugged in, was so far from my mind, that Bergerac needed some time to mull the question over before I could say yes.

“Are you sure?” asked Bob. I noticed that the tone of his voice never changed. Again I pictured him sitting there, behind his desk, but this time he was Data from Star Trek. And I was standing behind him, arms raised above my head, ready to beat him to death with a mallet.

“No, I’m a dribbling idiot. Of course it’s plugged in,” I said.

“Very well. Please turn the computer off and on and blah, blah, blah.” Said Bob in his ever-unchanging tone of voice.

He didn’t actually say that last bit, but that was what I heard. After much back and forth and blah, blah, blah, it was agreed upon that the computer would go to the computer hospital in Big City.


This immediately brought about another problem: Eggbert (my computer) needed something to travel in. Since I’d thrown out the packaging that the computer originally came in, I needed new stuff. I hadn’t thought that would be too much of a problem, but I completely forgot that everything is a bit complicated when you’re living in Big Hellhole, Hickville. After three hours of wandering the streets, hitting one store after another, I had to admit that it was a lost cause. I would have had an easier time striking gold.

Bob, of course, had secretly scurried down here and abducted all the cardboard boxes and Styrofoam, at the same time erasing people’s memories of them ever being there to begin with. He was being a very naughty little android.

What’s that? Ridiculous? It most certainly is not. However, the idea of living in a town where there is no cardboard or Styrofoam truly is. Now what? Paranoid? How dare you?!?

Moving right along…

Just as I was about to give up, I did manage to get a hold a sack of little marbles-like balls made of Styrofoam, each about the size of 1/2 ping-pong ball. They were crunchy with old age and smelled funny, kinda like Pooch smells when she’s tired. Pooch has smells for everything. But I digress.

I wrapped the ailing Eggbert up in generous amounts of bubble wrap and put him in a cardboard box that I found in the back of my closet. Then I filled it up with ping-pong stink-balls. Finally I closed the lid.

It didn’t fit. Eggbert was too tall, causing an odd looking bump on top of the package. But I didn’t have another box and waiting for Eggbert to shrink or the box to grow seemed like a futile idea. I also noticed that the box itself wasn’t in the very best of shape. It was time for lots and lots of tape. Soon I was whizzing around the box, Styrofoam stinkies flying everywhere and the tape making swooshing noises. When I was somewhat satisfied that the computer would stay put and the box wouldn’t fall apart, the package consisted mostly of tape. I used the whole roll.

Only then did it occur to me that there was no way in hell anyone would be able to get it open again without using some sort of saw. After which they’d be attacked by stinkies loaded full of statical electricity and a merciless taste for technical engineers. But it was too late to turn back now, so I got on my cellphone again and called a cab to take me down to the post office.

There I put Eggbert on the rattling conveyor belt and as he slowly floated down past the black plastic curtains, I hoped that he would be okay and that he’d be home soon to distract me from school work and household chores. Until then I’ll be working on my thesis and picking styrostinkers out of my hair.