CHESS. It’s a well-known board-game, a phone company, a book AND it was a youth club in Little Hellhole, back when I was a kid. It’s quite remarkable that Little Hellhole could have had a youth club, considering that - with a few exceptions - I was the only youth living there. Then again, it did end up having a shorter lifespan than your average boyband.

Chess was more or less run by the three queens of our junior high school and their ladies-in-waiting. Every school has them: the picture perfect, trendy – and vicious – girls who seemingly sold their souls to the devil to make themselves irresistible to every guy and hated, yet idolised, by every girl around. This might also account for the clubs sudden death: 15 year olds don’t make good businesspeople. Especially the ones with no social skills. Go figure.

But I digress.

The Trio of Hairspray kept court once a week and spent the other six babbling about how much fun they had the last time. Tami was on top of the food chain, with an endless string of boyfriends and emotional issues. I suppose I should feel bad for her, for all the crap she put herself through, but in my head her name is still synonymous with the term “raving bitch.” Second and third to the throne were Helen and Mindy, respectively. Both did their very best to push Tami off said throne. When she wasn’t around to see what they were up to, that is.

The reason why I bring this up is because I recently ran into Tami again. I recognised her immediately, since neither her hair nor outfit seemed to have changed since junior high. Since then, a large, white spot of crusty baby spit-up had been added to her jacket and she had gained enough weight to make my week and then some. She didn’t recognise me. Nobody does. That might be just as well, really.

On my way home, I walked past where Chess had used to be, in the basement of a grocery store. The black and white linoleum floor from where it had derived its name, visible through the large glass windows, seemed terribly small. I’m very glad that I’m not 15 anymore.

And I’m very glad that Those Girls are now fat and earning minimum vague.

Ever since then, I have walked around with a bounce in my high-heeled steps. I am cheerful, yes I am.

I recently watched a documentary on plastic surgery among the hopeful wannabes in Los Angeles, because there’s nothing like the madness of others to make you feel good about your own life.

I doubt that I’m in any danger of ever feeling the urge to live in La-La Land, but I still had to do some philosophising on the issue, cause I’m… well… me. And I can never resist a little good old-fashioned philosophising. You know that by now if you’ve been paying attention.

LA is probably the worlds biggest chop shop. Only it’s got a twist. In stead of the cars going out with all new parts, their drivers do. A great, big masquerade where the masks don’t even come off at midnight. It’s got to be strange living in a city where you have no idea what anyone really looks like.

Just imagine: Miss Perfect Barbie meets Mr Buff Hunk. They fall in love, have their fairy-tale wedding. Nine months later, everyone’s shocked when Princess Plastic starts popping out babies who look like a cross between Bert and Ernie.

I doubt that I’m in any danger of feeling the urge to move to the city of angels, but if I did, I suspect I’d be to creeped out to ever date anyone ever again. My love life would be deader (if that's a word) than it ever was back in Little Hellhole. And I actually declared it dead and buried it there. Tombstone and all.

So I think it might be fair to say that summer is finally here, even though its raining at the moment, and I’m not sure whether or not I’m on vacation yet.

Every fall, winter and spring I burn off loads of calories thinking about all the things I would like to do on my summer vacation. In fact, this particular activity makes up around 60 % of my exercise regime. I dream of doing wonderful and exciting (and expensive) things, like skydiving, travelling the world, learning to fly a chopper and loosing weight so that I could have that perfect booty wear nothing but bikinis. Tiny ones. But I suppose that last one isn’t going to happen as long as I insist on having food as a part of my diet.

When summer finally rolls around, all I really want to do is lie around in the sun with my nose buried in a book. Yet again I’m starting to suspect that I might be dull, but what the hell.

This summer, however, I have a whole new project going: I’m declaring war on my inability to tan. I will get a tan. Even if it kills me. And it just might.

It’s funny, I can go from a cool eggshell white to a blistering hot pink in less than 30 minutes, but at no point do I get anywhere near a shade of brown. Or beige, for that matter. And every summer I am forced to watch people around me turn more and more golden. Thanks to tanning studios and spray-tans, a lot of those people also go through winter with a skin colour that would only be natural if their mothers did the nasty with a cheese doodle.

This summer is going to be very different. My project started three weeks ago, when they began to fill the stores with those body lotions containing tanning agents. It didn’t go well at first. For a few days, I was forced to walk around with brown knees, whereas the rest of me was as pale as always. Then, in round two, my left leg had a nice tan, but my right leg didn’t. Tomorrow I give lotion nr 3 a shot. If that doesn’t work, I might just have to dip myself in paint, or something.

Circus farts, q-tips and pig-bottoms

After eight years of semi-anorexia, Pooch suddenly got it into her head a couple of weeks ago, that it was time to start eating like a normal dog. One of those normal dogs that not only eat their regular dog food, but also scoffs down garbage wherever she can find it. Combined inside her belly, all these elements starts to produce impressive amounts of gas. However much Pooch might eat like a normal dog, she sure doesn’t fart like one. Pooch’s farts smell like the circus, bringing back memories of popcorn, pink sugar floss and elephants.

Pooch isn’t shy about where she releases her airy creations, either, as I discovered the last time I had people over. There we were, eating muffins, drinking coffee and having very intelligent conversation, when the smell of clowns chasing each other across a floor of sawdust suddenly filled the room.

Pooch lifted her head off the floor, sniffed twice before she got up and left. Luckily, it’s summertime, so we could just open up all the windows.

Speaking of summer. I think perhaps I’m on my summer vacation. I could be wrong. The professor in charge of the project I’m on, is away this week. When he gets back, he might just pile more work on me. The last time he got a hold of me, it ended up with me having to insert huge q-tips up the bums of very large, very uncooperative pigs. As in pork. I didn’t just go down to the bar one night. Mr Professor said I had to practice, cause I’m being shipped off to Lithuania in the fall for a research trip to do the same thing to wild boars. Only they’ll be dead. You should never sneak up on a wild boar and shove a cotton stick up its ass. That would be stupid.

And finally, to celebrate my triumphant return to blogging: