The art of injury

For the first seven years of her adorable life, Pooch was a very cost efficient doggie. This made me happy, as I am a chronic student and therefore as broke as an investment banker during the great depression. She didn’t require much veterinary attention. She had no interest in food, other than what it took to keep her alive.

As of the last year or so, though, that has changed. She injures herself. She eats. Probably because you burn off a lot of fuel when all your energy is directed towards hurting yourself. Of course, when you insist on running everywhere as fast as you can with your eyes closed, it usually results in injury of some sort. I suppose I should be surprised that Pooch has lived to be eight years old.

Last week we visited the veterinarian, yet again. This time it wasn’t an injury that brought us there, though. It was those stinky, brown blobs that have been coming out of Pooch’s ding-dong every now and then over the past couple of months.

“You’ll need to bring in a urine sample,” the vet told me on the phone.

And so, being the devoted dog owner that I am, I search my cupboard to find something in which to gather up Pooch’s toilet treasure. It took me a while. My cupboard is an unbelievable mess. For instance, I had no idea peanut butter could grow such a thick and glossy fur. I named it Johnny and threw it in the trash. Then, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon a lovely, little Tupperware box which was now given a purpose that the creators probably never thought off.

I was very happy with my cunning pee-harvesting plan. However, Pooch refused to cooperate. I always imagined that Pooch pees on thing that she consideres to be hers by right.

“The oak tree… MINE! The neighbour’s fence… MINE! The neighbour’s underpants that blew off the clothes line… MINE! Ludo, the sleeping cat…. MINE, MINE, MINE!”

But never, unfortunately, has Pooch wanted to own a Tupperware box. As soon as she sat down to do her business, I would slide the box underneath her and immediately she would stop, looking at me as if I’d suddenly grown tentacles and turned orange. Every time I managed to get half a drop at the very best.

Desperate to squeeze som wee-wee out of the doggie, I patiently led her all around the neighbourhood in search of things for her to do her business on. I don’t mind telling you, I got some very strange looks. Not just from Pooch. But eventually I did manage to get about a tablespoon worth, with some help from the rain.

Then mum called to remind me that a urine sample needed to be kept cool, or it would give a false reading. Suddenly I was torn between having to get a whole new sample tomorrow or putting the one I already had in the fridge. Neither option seemed appealing. Reluctantly I wrapped it up in umpteen plastic bags and stuck it on the top shelf. Instinct told me to move everything else on the top shelf to some other shelf, but the fridge was full. There was no place for anything to go.

The strawberry jam never hurt anyone. The butter never said a cross word to anyone and the half carton of juice was completely innocent. But now they are all pariah – outcast.

Because the universe is a bitch with a very developed sense of irony, Pooch’s tinkle turned out to be completely normal. There were also several absolutely regular blood samples and a completely necessary ultra sound test, for which the poor doggie had to have her tummy shaved, which made it all itchy and nearly drove her nuts. Her temperature also needed checking, they said. That took two vets and a muzzle. Pooch hated them both with the fire of a thousand suns, but then they gave her chicken and she got over it.

Dogs tend to find it kinda hard to scratch their stomachs, so if it’s itchy, all they can do is spin around in circles and shriek. Which she did. Lots. Which in turn nearly drove me crazy.

Anyways, they couldn’t find anything wrong with her, so the stinky blobs of death remain a mystery. I’m working on a theory, though. It’s got aliens in it.

So long, suckers!

I am going on VACATI-ON! Yes, I know that's not how to spell it, but I don't care. It's my blog and I'm claiming creative licence, or whatever.

What will I do, you ask? It's only natural that you would wonder, seeing how my life is oh so glamorous and exciting, and all. Am I going on one of those space trips with the millionaires, perhaps? Swimming in the French riviera? Shopping in Hollywood? Or maybe I'll finnaly get around to stalking Jensen Ackles?

Well, you're almost right.

I'm going to my mum's cottage. There is a river, or a lake or a fjord, or some sort of body of water, anyways, so there will probably be swimming involved. Aaand there is a small grocery store somewhere around there, so there will also be shopping. Mostly for hotdogs and chips and such, but as long as there is an exchange of items and money, it still qualifies. Although not in the exciting euphoric kinda way that shopping for things that you don't need to survive brings about. And should I happen upon Jensen Ackles throughout my holiday, then by God, I intend to follow him around like a horny puppy-dog. That doesn't make any sense, does it? Oh, to hell with it. My brain, Bergerac, has left ahead of me. I'll be following it on Monday. Horray.

There are a lot of things in this world that I just don’t understand. Stuff that truly boggles the mind. For instance, what would possess Pamela Anderson to say she envied flat-chested girls because they looked so slim? Why would someone invent a motorized picnic table? But the greatest mystery of them all, is why so many people don’t have the sense to eat.

A girl I once worked with was a devoted follower of most insane diets. “Last night I forgot to eat, all together,” she told me once, while munching away at a lettuce leaf. “I just had a piece of toast for breakfast and a bowl of cereal before bed.”

But if your brain is so numb it actually forgets that you should eat, wouldn’t your stomach remind you? My stomach is so full of suggestions, reminders and demands, it is practically an entity upon itself. If it gets any more pushy, I will have to name it. I can’t even go to the frozen food section without it giving a lengthy speech about how any ice cream with the word “pie” or “cheese cake” in its name, has a natural place in our freezer.

Still, a great many people don’t seem to be on speaking terms with their middle bits. I’ve hardly ever been to a class, meeting or any gathering of people, where at least one persons stomach didn’t make noises that you’d normally only hear deep in the woods at night.

So why don’t intelligent (supposedly) adults just frikkin eat, already?

Can someone please tell me that?

pic by proscilas for http://www.flickr.com/

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:

Aliens, those darn indjuns, rectal examinations, my bike, laboratories and boredom

Hello people. Sorry about the long absence. I was kidnapped by aliens and then them darn indjuns ate my homework. Or maybe it was the other way around. It’s all a bit fussy.

I fear that I may be becoming boring. “Noooo,” you say. “Not you,” you say. “You have a fascinating life and an overwhelming intellect,” you say. And yes, most of that has been true up until the last month or so, but lately I’m starting to feel… well… dull.

Right now, for example, I am not out chasing down terrorists like those people on TV (just being able to fight crime and keep their teeth –that- white makes them interesting). I am not being worshipped by anyone other than The Pooch. Money is something that I mostly see on television. In stead of, say, learning a new language I am stuffing my face full of almonds, whilst inwardly whining about how I will now have to brush my teeth all over again. In fact, the most exciting thing I did this week was to have my bike repaired.

Outside of the bikeshop, near the garage across the street, a man was arguing with a mechanic about repairs that had been done on his car which he’d never asked for. I’m assuming that he did ask for some sort of repairs at some point. I don’t think they actually kidnapped his car from his driveway. He was like an alzheimer patient at a brothel: shocked that he’d been screwed and refusing to pay for it…

That’s not true. Not really. I did get to do some work in the laboratory all by my lonesome, with nobody to supervise me. If I had decided that I wanted to smear disease all over the walls, there would be no one there to stop me. Although the only disease-producing germ I have access to at the moment, is the kind that gives you explosive diarrhoea. My lab chores took less than an hour, though, so I was back home in time to watch Oprah closely followed by Dr Phil. Which brings us back to me being boring.

I did have a rather colourful murder fantasy while I tried to ignore the sounds of one of the upstairspeople shticking it to his girlfriend again, though. They started out as a light pain in my ass and have now blossomed into a three-fingered rectal examination.


I will go out and observe something screwy to tell you about later. And if I don’t, I will lie and make something up. It might even be coherrent. No promises, though.

Pooch becomes the victim of a bath

Most people carry around an internal to-do list. I do, as well. It’s always got stuff on it like going the dishes and dusting and vacuuming and all those domestic things that make me angry and impossible to be around. That’s why I find it best to put these things off. But I digress.

There are certain to-do things that gradually sneak up on you, until they become inevitable truths. That happened to me last week.

Pooch needed a bath.

There are several problems that occur when I try to bathe Pooch, all of which stem from the fact that Pooch hates bathing. Pooch won’t even go outside when it rains. But I’d much rather have a wet’n whiny dog than a stinky sticky dog, so the job had to be done. I didn’t have much trouble tricking her into the bathroom. A little bit of sausage was all that it took. ‘Course once I closed the door behind us, Doggie Doodle started getting suspicious.

I turned the shower on.

Pooch hid in the corner and did her best impression of laundry.

I wasn’t tricked by her sneaky disguise, got her out of there and into the shower, accompanied by loud objections from my bath-victim. Earlier that day, I’d been to the pet shop to buy her a shampoo which I had snuck into the bathroom cupboard when Wonderpooch wasn’t looking. Doggie can tell pet shampoo from any other bottle of product. That is her superpower. And once the identification has been made, you’ll never get her out from underneath the sofa.

This whole thing was carefully planned in advance, you see. You can’t just spring this kinda thing on Pooch without planning it out first. If I did that, I would be the Ed D. Wood of animal trainers.

“For removal of coat build-up,” said the label on my chosen shampoo bottle. Boy o boy does Poochiebaby have coat build-up. And you know it’s gonna fall off eventually, giving room to new coat build-up, in what seems like an endless cycle of fur. In fact, Doggie Woggie’s got so much coat build-up, sometimes when I wake up in the morning it’s as if she’s given birth to puppies during the night. I was so focused on the labels intriguing message, I didn’t even notice the fact that it was bright red and strawberry scented. Hell, not even strawberries are as strawberry scented as Pooch’s new shampoo.

That whole day I didn’t need eyesight to tell Doggie’s whereabouts, I could just sniff around for the smell of strawberries.

Now I not a bit more about what it must be like to be a dog.

True joy and all that crap

My internet connection is gone. Vanished. I don’t know where it went. Maybe it’s off skiing in the mountains along with all the good, little Hellholians. It’s what people do around here. I’ve never been able to understand why.

Anyways, I am now hoping for a little man to come fix my connection. I’m just not sure on when he plans on showing up. Then yesterday morning, the doorbell rang. I knew immediately that it couldn’t be the upstairs-people. They’ve never figured out the intricate workings of my doorbell. It’s complicated. A button on a wall. Oooh. The upstairs-people just knock. Which I figure is a good reason to pretend I don’t hear them.

But I digress.

The doorbell rang, and I thought it had to be the internet-fixer-man. Who else could it be? So I hurried to answer the door, completely forgetting that I had make-up on only one – 1 – eye. That eye did look damn good, but still…

As the door swung open, I expected to see your standard, run-of-the-mill handyman type of a person standing outside. Instead I found myself staring straigt at the latest issue of The Watchtower. An overly cheery woman with a strangely far-away look in her eyes was peeking out from behind it. “Would you like to learn the path to true joy?” the lady asked.

“No, not really,” I said and closed the door in her face. I know the path to true joy already. It’s for me to get my internet connection back and waste some time surfing.

Let the Pooch soar!

I took Pooch with me to the woods the other day. Pooch likes the woods. It’s very high up on her lists of favourite things, along with tin foil, mice and the colour blue. At one point, she decided to climb onto a pile of wood and soar like an eagle down to the forest floor. As it turns out, Pooch is big on the falling, not so much on the soaring.

After her crash landing, which was promptly followed by the
running around like a maniac, I wasn’t very surprised to discover that she’d
managed to tear parts of a claw off. On our way home, she became increasingly
whiny, so I decided to distract her by slipping on the ice and smashing the back
of my head on the concrete. Then I stumbled around like a drunk. It worked like
a charm. Pooch forgot all about her toe. It was brilliant. Afterwards I felt
pretty damn dizzy, but true genius has always been described as rather dizzying,
so I suppose that was just to be expected.

In further news, my body and my head are having an ongoing debate about olives. The body tries to convince Bergerac (my mind) that olives are good, but Bergerac won’t hear of it. Since Bergerac is the one in charge of the mouth, Body needs to be sneaky in getting its point across. Body has the advantage of controlling the arms and hands, and those are always ready to stick olives into the mouth whenever Bergerac isn’t paying proper attention. Nothing has been settled yet, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Meet Dr. Smiley!

Years and years ago, I went to see a doctor. I can’t really remember why, just that I wasn’t feeling well and the visit to the local clinic was my mother’s idea.

The doctor was a young woman, very smiley, with big, curly hair. I sat in a blue chair with brown stains, prepared for the usual how-are-we-feeling-today-questions, which seems to be the first thin they teach you in medical school. The question was delivered and I went on to list my symptoms - whatever the were - like a good little patient, while I tried no to wonder whether or not those brown stains were left behind by other good, little patients.

Dr. Giggles smile didn’t fade for a second. Every so often she would nod her head and the curls would hop up and down around her face, trying to poke her eyes out.

“So what do you think is wrong with you?” asked Smiley.

That threw me for a bit of a loop. Granted, I did walk past one of those medical schools places once, but I don’t really think that qualifies me for giving diagnoses. Not even to myself. Had I by accident (or divine intervention) wandered into a psychiatrist’s office?

“Uhm… Aren’t you supposed to figure that out?” I asked.

“Usually patients have a great feel for these things.”

I thought to myself that Dr. Smiley had clearly never met my great aunt, who was convinced she had cancer every time she stubbed her toe, and who eventually died of a stroke (possibly brought on by all the worrying about cancer). Neither had Old Man Henry, who was convinced that his haemorrhoids were caused by alien probes, crossed the threshold into her office. But I didn’t say any of these things.

“Could it be… the flu?” I suggested.

“Sounds okay,” said Giggles, and gave me a prescription for something to bring down my temperature, which she’d never checked.

It’s a good thing I didn’t mention cancer. My great aunt sure would have.



By the way, I won an award, and now I'm going to spread the joy - and the award - to some deserving people. It's that big E up in the corner, there. I'm pointing right at it. I'm supposed to name ten nominees, but it seems most people that I stalk online already have one. Although that doesn't make ME any less special.

And the award goes to.......*drumroll*

SWINE http://swine.wordpress.com/
JAY http://saintvodkaofthemartini.blogspot.com/
Miss Doxie http://www.missdoxie.com/
TOM http://tomshideaway.blogspot.com/
TICKNART http://ticknart.blogspot.com/index.html

Cheer up, cocoa!

Every year I have the same New Years resolution. It’s a fairly common one, as far as New Years resolutions go: to start a better, healthier lifestyle. This year was no different from any other year, resolution-wise. And it did start fairly well.

Then classes started up again. Yawning, I moseyed off early every single morning to class and I rambled home late every afternoon, head spinning with information and The Tiny Voice inside insisting that everything would go so much easier with just a tiiiiny sugarkick, but I mostly resisted the urge.

Today I was determined not to give in to my sugar craving demons, who were extra insistent. I’d stopped by the store on my way to Hellhole U to pick up a bag of fruit for my oh so healthy lunch. I was going past the cafeteria, when I heard a small voice calling me.

It was the cocoa-machine wondering if I didn’t want a nice cup of hot goodness this morning. It sounded kinda sad. Rejected, sort of. I hate making people – and cocoa-machines, apparently – sad, so I indulged it. Just to make sure it wouldn’t be upset anymore, I helped myself to a double.

But tomorrow is going to be different. It is. Isn’t it?

ARGH!

Today I have been lucky enough to spend loads of time with someone who makes me want to commit murder. The kind involving axes and/or bathtubs filled with toasters.

Murder is the slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of murder: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether they fell by one kind or another – the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers. If I kill this person, I’m sure it’ll be either excusable or justifiable. If someone else does it for me, it’ll be praiseworthy. It will be to me, anyways. There’s a hint in there somewhere, you know.

I’d even get you a lawyer. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Satan's.... Uhm... SANTA's little helpers

I love when the Christmas decorations all come up around town. Especially the ones in the mall. They’re all shiny, soo shiiiiiiny. After having been awoken by the sounds of loud screechy sex from upstairs, I figured I’d go check it out. The decorations that is, not the screechy sex. The less I know about that, the better, really.

The first thing that you notice is the enormous Santa hanging on the wall right next to the escalators. First you see his boots and his gigantic…uhm…pelvic area, then comes the belly, arms and when you start to near the top of the stairs, you're always relieve to see that he's got a head. As I was staring up at Chris Cringle’s private bits, I could hear the merry music of the season pouring out from the record store.

Every year the record companies spew out CD’s with various A- and B celebrities singing Christmas songs. If you play them backwards you’ll probably hear the voice of Satan commanding you to stock up on Coca Cola products, or something.

This time of the year, I become extremely partial to everything with the word “Christmas” written on it. I buy Christmas soda, Christmas cookies, Christmas notebooks and the list goes on and on. I have a Christmas calendar, of course. Normally, when there’s chocolate in the house, I attack it all with such feverish glee you’d think I’d just been released from a work camp in Siberia. Are there still work camps in Siberia, by the way? Probably not.

Hey, did you know what I just noticed? SANTA is and acronym for SATAN. I wonder what that means? Probably that I have too much time on my hands.

Stinky munchkins of doom

Every so often, I put on my new boots and totter off to the grocery store to purchase all those things that keep me from starving to death. I say totter, not because I in any way resemble an infant in the way I walk, but because it is hard to move like a graceful adult on roads which consist mainly of ice.

When I woke up on this morning, stomach growling and Bergerac (my mind) telling me that there was nothing particularly tempting in the fridge, I knew it was tottering-time once more, so off I went.

I like walking to the store – not that I, in my drivers-licence-free state, have any choice – because then I get to philosophise over what sort of foodstuff I would like to buy. It’s strange how much of the time is spent thinking about cookies. Things such as carrots and beats never come up. Go figure.

Very pleased with having made it to the mall without getting my luvely footwear wet, I pulled one of those little blue plastic baskets out of its stack with a graceful swish. Rather, it would have been graceful if I hadn’t almost knocked over a display of Christmassy nuts.

I quickly pulled out my shopping list from my coat pocket, pretending that the Christmas-display- murder-by-plastic-basket had never taken place. I always write a list. If I don’t, I always forget something and end up buying soap in stead. The process of how that happens is a mystery probably best not dwelt upon. Let’s just say that if you’re ever out of soap, I’m your gal.

Right on top of my list, scribbled with a bright red pen, was the word “Milk”, and so I started the exciting journey towards the dairy isle. After having picked out a fine looking carton specimen, I reached out my hand to grab it. At that very moment someone shouted something which sounded like “Gerfuch vivong!” The next thing I knew, two tiny women hopped past me, placed themselves in between myself and my chosen carton of milk, and then proceeded to ravage the poor dairy isle. Yoghurt, milk and butter was literally thrown from their comfortable homes and into the tiny women’s cart. Any objections on my account were effectively muffled by the thick fog of cheap perfume which hung around them, leaving poor Bergerac unable to function properly.

Then they disappeared as soon as they had appeared. Somewhat disoriented, I placed the milk carton into my basket and moved towards the second item on my list: bread.

Once again, I carefully considered my options before I selected a plump looking bread, reached out my little arm towards it, and…. “Yoshyou schepflunk!”

Then there were little, blonde heads in front of me for a second time, accompanied by groceries flying through the air and the overwhelming haze of Eau De Brothel.

I eventually escaped the store with all my groceries and my life intact, but I’m not entirely sure whether or not the clown that I saw on my way home was real, or some hallucination brought on by perfume poisoning.



Photo by Ryker Beck for www.Flickr.com

To go deaf or not to go deaf

Since I am going down the coast for a couple of weeks, this will be the last fascinating and terribly intelligent thing I'm going to share with you until I get back. Enjoy!

That's an order.

People can be divided into many categories. Two such categories are mumblers and non-mumblers. For some inexplicable reason, a great deal of the people that I hang out with here in Bigger Hellhole, are members of the first category. Over the past three weeks, this fact had me seriously wondering whether or not my hearing might be going.

I had started to become a bit worried, actually, always asking people to repeat what they’d just said. I thought I might need to get myself a hearing aid. I would cringe when I thought of the ones the old folks at the home, where I worked last summer, would wear. The kind that would slither around the back of their ears like some waxy leech. Half the time, the apparatus would make a high-pitched noise that everyone but the owner would hear. I pictured myself wearing one of those, and I didn’t like the idea. Besides, they’re all either grey or beige, both of which are colours that make my complexion look like death warmed over. Which is so not the look I usually go for.

Then luck intervened, and threw a couple of non-mumbler in my path last week. Rarely have I felt so relieved. In the future I am going to have to become friends with more typical non-mumblers, so that I can seek them out if I ever start to doubt my abilities to hear properly again.

How does a mumbler become a mumbler, though? Hasn’t anyone ever told these people to speak up? And shouldn’t it be a hint to maybe turn up the volume just a little, when the most common reply you get whenever you speak to someone is “huh?” I have noticed something interesting, though – A mumbler never seems to have any trouble deciphering what another of his/her kind is saying. This leads me to think that these creatures have hearing like bats, and might not be entirely human.

This time of the year, people also start wearing gigantic scarves, which aggravate an already difficult situation. Trendy, fun and colourful as a scarf may be, the already miniscule voice of a mumbler finds it very hard to fight its way through such a large, woolly barrier. This leaves perfectly normal people, such as myself, to wonder if they’re going deaf.

There should be a law against these things. And violators should be forced to take a course in how to speak so that non-batpeople can hear stuff that comes out of your mouth. All in favour, say AI!

Funny as **i*

Laboratories and a guinea pig named Crust

Oh, how the days are snailing themselves along. This is the last week of classes before Christmas. That means that if you don’t count exams and papers that need writing and all that crap, the x-mas holidays have almost begun. My only problem at the moment, is that some evil troll has apparently come up from below and magiced every hour to be twice as long as it’s supposed to. That’s just not right. I should be the only evil troll in this storybook, dammit.

At the moment we’re doing our very last intensive lab course in microbiology. They let us mess around with DNA. I have come to the conclusion that I’ve really got the makings of a mad/evil scientist, seeing how I would luuuuve to muck around with my own DNA. That’s the first sign: willingness to be your own guinea pig.

I used to have a guinea pig when I was a kid. I named it Skorpa, which is Hellholish for Crust. Crust was…well…psychotic, to be completely hones. She had her own outdoor area, from which she would try to launch attacks on the neighbour’s cat. It’s a good thing Crusty spent most of her time behind bars.

Memory lane is an interesting place. Jupp-jupp.

To poop or not to poop

There’s an understanding between myself and The Pooch: I walk her and she might just choose to take a nap when we get home, rather than try to sit on my lap while I’m working. Other times she’ll forego on the nap, run to fetch her ball and proceed to throw it at me, convinced that this will make the thought of playing with it completely irresistible. After all, it usually works when I do it to her.

We were halfway through our Sunday walk, when all of a sudden, an elderly woman comes running towards us. Her arms were waving in the air, determined to get my attention.

“You know, it’s perfectly alright for you to walk your dog,” she says when she catches up to us. “But it’s very, very important that you pick up its poop after it.”

I thought that she could not have noticed the big, black, shit-stuffed doggie bag in my hand, nor the seven empty bags sticking out of my pocket, so I held the warm, swelling back up in the air and informed her, in a slightly cool tone of voice, that I always picked up after Pooch.

I assumed that she would back the hell off. No such luck.

In stead she goes on and on about how important it is to pick up those previously mentioned poops because people stepped in them, and so on and so forth. There was a small river running along the road where we stood. I studied the river, and then I looked at the lady while I contemplated whether or not I had the energy to throw her in. Probably not. Sick of listening to the sad tale of innocent shoes being thrust into piles of dung left behind by other dogs and their irresponsible owners, I pulled a fistful of empty bags out of my pocket and held them in front of the meddlesome woman’s face.

It had a rather peculiar effect. Granted, she turned around and started back towards her house, but she kept on talking about poops and shoes and whatnot, while looking back at me. Perhaps she’d been inhaling them, or something.

I looked at Pooch. Pooch was looking at her ass, as if it was a foreign object that she’d only just discovered.

Next time I’ll throw that woman in the river. Definitely.

Pooch in the mood for love

I am currently living in a hell of screaming and howling and the constant sound of IIIIIII and pitter-patter of claws scurrying from the door to the window. Back and forth, back and forth.

The Pooch is in heat…

Granted, the pooch has been in heat before and she’s always been a little whiny during that period, but this is the first time that she’s ever had a hunky man-thing sitting right outside her bedroom window. And if Pooch had been given more experience with hunky man-things over the years, she would have learned to separate them from the sickly boys with dickey tickers, like the one sitting right outside said window.

Last night she became ready for the making of the pups. On that very day, I decided to let her come with me to take out the trash. Pooch loves taking out the trash. She’s also a big fan of fetching the mail and raking leaves. Not that she helps any, she just likes to watch.

Anyway, our trip to the trash bins took us right past where Hunky Man-Thing sits on his lead. Pooch looked at him. Hunky Man-Thing looked at pooch. Then Pooch realized that I we were heading back to the house – the complete opposite direction of where her heart (and other bits, obviously, that I won’t bring up here) told her to go. In protest, she planted her bottom firmly on the wet lawn.

Great.

So I pulled.

Pooch resisted as best she could. If she’d had those big, bulgy buttocks that some creatures have, I’m sure she would have clenched onto every little piece of grass.

Eventually I dragged her onto her feet, and she walked all of two paces before dropping down on her side and immediately beginning to screech. It was like watching a two-years old throw a tantrum in a store.

I ended up having to drag her along like a carcass. The only thing which separated her from any piece of roadkill, were the high-pitched squeals emanating from her.

Two more weeks of this. I’m going to lose my tiny mind.

Buttmunching

Today I am completely exhausted, and I'm not quite sure why. I could probably figure it out if I gave it some thought, but I'm too damn tired. Still, I did read something in the news the other day that I thought I might share with you all, knowing that you enjoy twisted things almost as much as I do.

There is a man in Sweden who has eaten parts of his ass on tv.

That's right. I did not make this up. Just to make sure that you're all paying attention, I'll repeat it.

There is a man in Sweden who has eaten parts of his ass on tv.

Another man cut of two small slices, which the swede ate and concluded that they tasted exactly like sellery. Later a spokesperson for a religious community went out into the media and said that he finds the whole stunt tasteless and that he sincerely hopes that it won't become a trend among the young.

Imagine that... Just when the cops were getting good at stopping underaged drinking.

Kiss, slap, kissy-kiss

I've started classes in genetics yesterday and learned about loads of syndromes that I think I have half the symptoms for. Interesting. Also, just like most of the world, I was dragged onto facebook a while back. And just like everyone else, I added a lot of application in order to do strange and peculiar things to my friends and relatives. One of them was X Me. X Me seemed like a funny sort of a go-between, offering a wide range of actions. It did everything from hugging to kicking your buds in the groin. Neither does it discriminate. X Me was more than willing to deliver any action to your pals, even to the really weird ones that I might not have been really tempted to get too close to in real life. Yes, X Me was a handy little thing - until it turned on me.

One fine morning - okay, so it was a chilly and rainy morning - I logged onto facebook, only to find that X Me had been hugging everyone on my contact list in my absence. I found this to be a little odd, but at the same time a hug is a rather innocent sort of a thing, isn't it?

But it didn't stop there.

24 hours later I discovered that X Me had now started slapping people left and right, only to turn right around to kiss them all and then slap them again. It was clearly having some emotional issues. In the end I could see no other option than to put it down. Poor thing...

Emerging from the plastic wrap: I'm a frikkin butterfly.

Guess what, folks! The plastic wrap around in front of all my windows is almost gone. The landlord covered them with plastic a while back in order to spray paint the house. At first it was just foggy, then the painting started, and it got pretty damn dark. Combined with the fumes it could have easily put me into a paranoid state where I’d convince myself that I was being buried alive. That would have given us all something to laugh about later.

I have a final exam on Friday, so I’m hoping that my brain - also known as Bergerac – will return from its trip soon. It went away pretty much the moment the plastic came up. I need Bergerac in order to do my pre-exam hibernation routine. That’s when I lock myself up in my apartment and studystudystudy until those little grey cells start to seep out of my ears and nostrils just to get away from it all. I’d leave a light on in the window for it if I didn’t think that would set the blinds on fire.

Bergerac isn't home

There is plastic in front of all my windows. This must be what it feels like to live inside a soapbubble. The house is about to be spraypainted, so I’d imagine that it’ll smell anything but soapy. Where I used to live, back before I moved to Hellhole, farmers used to spray pee from unsuspecting cattle on their fields. That didn’t smell soapy either.

And I’m off to a wonderful start.

The thing is, I have absolutely nothing to say.

My brain, otherwise known as Bergerac, has gone away for a couple of days. It felt that it had earned a break after I put it through and intensive lab course all last week and an exam on Friday, not to mention loads of analysis I had to finish over the weekend. Analysis… Analysisis… See? Bergerac isn’t here.

Momma's got a brand new bag! Or something...

Guess what I’m doing! No, that’s not it. You’re sick in the head, you are. Guess again! That’s it, you ought to be publicly flogged, you demented weirdo.

I’ll just tell you, shall I?

I’m surfing the world wide web with by brand new computer. It’s got a widescreen and everything. Even smells like new plastic, it does. I luves my new baby, and have decided to name it muffin. I like muffins. Wish I had one.

Moving right along…

I have an assignment do, and the work process has become complicated by the fact that I can now play The Sims on a big screen. Very distracting, it is. I mean, who has time to ponder the principal thoughts behind statistical differences in the means between two samples when you’ve got a little man giving birth to the alien-baby he got stuck with after being kidnapped by a UFO in another window? It’s hopeless.

But I’m trying my very best. Apart from right now, of course. Right now I’m doing this.

Poor lucky number two

Last night the Pooch woke me up at two am by crawling into my bed and sitting there, staring at me in the darkness like some furry totem pole. I was very tired and didn’t particulary feel like crawling out of my soft, comfortable bed, but I could see from the way her enormous ears were pricking up that she’d already heard me blink and knew that I was awake. She does that, you see. She sticks her face right up in your face and listens intensely for the slightest little flutter of the eyelids.

As much as I disliked the idea of dragging my carcass out of bed in the middle of the night, experience has taught me that the Pooch usually only has two reasons for waking me up at ungodly hours:

1) She’s about to do her impersonation of a busted fire hydrant and projectile vomit everywhere.
2) She’d like to demonstrate her explosive diarrhoea.

Both of these things are better done outside.

So I slithered out of my sheets, into my pants, got the pooch’s collar and outside we went. It was windy. And cold. And windy. Did I mention that it was cold?

The first thing the pooch did was sniff a variety of bushes and trees in the yard. Then she sniffed them again, before she finally decided to pee on lucky number two. After that followed ten minutes of staring blankly into space, before turning around and heading back inside. No projectile anything and absolutely no explosions in sight.

It turns out that Pooch now has a third reason for waking me up in the middle of the night.

3) The Upstairspeople are being noisy and my bedroom is pretty soundproof.

Who missed me?

I’m sitting at my new kitchen table in my new apartment in an old house on an ex-farm in a far bigger hellhole than the one I lived in a few weeks ago. It’s nowhere near big enough to justify fear of terrorism or those little signs warning you to beware of pickpockets and thieves, but it is big enough to have more than one mall.

I can theoretically go shopping whenever I feel like it. That can’t be good for me, considering that when it comes to shopping, I have the self restraint of a psychotic monkey.

There are people living on my roof. Four of them. Well, they’re not actually on my roof, but on the floor above mine. I can hear every little noise they make. I know that one of them whinnies like an overexcited horse on regular intervals, and I wonder if he’s the same one who sounds like a cow with some horrible disease when he’s having sex. I suppose I shouldn’t ask.

Classes on scientific research methods have started, and it turns out that I’m a geek. I shudder at the thought of how my courses in microbiology and genetics might leave my social life in ruing once they begin, seeing how I’m utterly engrossed by models of dispersions and project design. Not to mention completely riveted, wrapped up, fascinated, captivated and engaged.

I have a thesaurus, I do.

And Pooch has a boyfriend. He lives across the yard, and she goes to play with him three times a day. Morning, afternoon and night. They’ve become quite close, but not yet to the point where she’ll let him sniff her bottom. But now he’s made the mistake of going camping with his family. Pooch looked for him every day for the first week and then she noticed that golden retriever next door…

So I guess Pooch has two boyfriends. But I have a thesaurus, I do.

Please leave a message after the bip

I have gone away. Not forever, though, mind you. First I will leave for a short vacation to the coast, where I will yell at seaguls and stare at water, then I'll start the much talked about moving process. This means that you will have to do without me until I get set up in my new place.

I realize that this will be hard on you all.

Some of you might want to curl up into a ball and cry. That's okay. Just let it all out. I understand, although passers-by and other random people might not. They're not important.

I'll be back. Eventually. Jupp.

*Biiip*

To deep fry or not to deep fry.

My head is empty. I don’t know where my brain went, but I think I might have packed it in one of my boxes. I’m sure I can do without it for a few weeks.

Yesterday I tried my hand at deep frying bananas in batter. They didn’t turn out quite like I’d imagined, I have to say. The inside was completely mushy and on the outside they looked like poops. Still, they were good, though. Especially with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. And all the while The Pooch regarded me with her I-can’t-believe-you’re-eating-that-look. I had no idea she had one of those. And then came the overwhelming desire to throw up like that kid on the Exorcist.

Today I have a bag of frozen French fries in the freezer, and I am ready to deep fry once again. Sometimes my memory is more selective than that of Pooch.

Reasons to hate moving

I hate moving. I don’t know if I ever mentioned that, but I truly, honestly do. It makes me tired and cranky and generally induces a state of blah. More importantly, I barely have time to blog.

I’ve spent the past few days ransacking every nook and cranny of my house, stuffing crap into boxes. All of it in preparation for tomorrow and that critical moment, judgement day, the arrival of….the realtor. I’ve discovered a bunch of junk that I didn’t even know that I had, stuff that I can’t believe that I have and stuff that I sincerely hope I never paid money for.

Memory is a strange thing. Take Pooch, for example. Once, when she was a tiny pup, many years ago, my mum squirted her while watering the flowers. Now she keeps at arms-length whenever I water them. That she remembers, but every summer she eats a bee.

Other than stirring up philosophies on memory, moving makes my brain stop working at crucial times. Last night I tried calling a friend of mine several times, only to get a busy-signal every time. Eventually I discovered that I’d been calling my own cell phone number. Seriously, if you actually use your cell phone to call your own cell phone, you shouldn’t just get a busy signal. There should be some sort of machine to make fun of you for that.

Treadmills and fried bears

Yesterday was the fifth day of rain in a row. Six days ago there was almost sun. Almost. And before that there was more rain. With other words, there wasn’t much to do other than shopping for stuff I don’t need online.

I considered buying a treadmill. Then I remembered that I don’t really like running. I’d run if I was being chased by something. Like a bear or Tony Blair. Luckily that hasn’t happened yet. So I ordered one of those machines that deep-fry things. ‘Cause that’s almost the same thing, right? Yay.

I’m wondering what sort of things I can deep-fry. You have the standard choices like pork, chickens or a nice banana, but I enjoy trying out new things. Maybe chocolates. Or my stuffed bear. The little, ugly one that I won at a carnival, not the one that actually like. Or maybe the guy in the booth where I won the little ugly bear. Hey, if I fry an actuall bear, that’ll piss it off and it’ll chase me. Then it’ll be as if I did buy a treadmill.

See? I’m brilliant.

Bigger hellholes

Wohoo, I’ve found a new flat in town. This means that next month I’m moving to a much bigger hellhole. Yay and hurrah and yippee all rolled into one.

So now I’m puttering around, thinking about moving. I’ll pack all my stuff into boxes, which I will forget to label, even though I bought a special marker for the occasion. This will lead to chaos. My kitchen stuff will be confused with bathroom stuff, what I think will be livingroom stuff will, in fact, turn out to be bedroom stuff and the knickknacks will be MIA. Still, it’s kinda fun figuring out where all your crap should go.
Also, since it will probably be raining, everyone’ll drag mud into my apartment and then I’ll need to hose it down, or something. But what the hell.

And you know what? I just made a smoothie. It turned out really weird and I made lots of it, for some reason. Now I feel obligated to drink it. Or eat it. It’s pretty thick.

Ka-squish!

I’m a slow blogger these days. I blame life. Having up to recently spent most of mine with my (very cute) nose stuck in a science book, I haven’t quite adjusted to this whole vacation-thing. In short; I’m somewhat unprepared for actually having a life and it now takes up a lot of time, because once classes start up again, I’m going to have to get rid of it again. Enjoy it while it’s there, as some old woman on TV said the other day.

One thing I have learned is that life has its ups and downs. Last week, for example, it had a definite down.

You see, I have a freezer in my storage room. Having a freezer isn’t a bad thing, in and by itself, it can actually be mighty handy, but in my case it turned into a nightmare. In a Freddie Krüger kinda way.

To the extent of my knowledge the content of my freezer limited itself to some old plums and a bunch of berries, neither of which held much interest to me. Therefore the freezer was pretty much ignored, poor thing. However, it turned out that my mum had been putting stuff in there. Stuff that had once been alive, such as hams and bits of an elk that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Had I known that there was actual FOOD in there, I would have stopped by to visit it every once in a while and the whole, hideous disaster might have been avoided…

But I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

It started last week, when I noticed a faint, but strange odour when I walked by the big, red door that the storage room likes to hide behind. My mum, who had come to visit, noticed it to. We stuck our little heads into the room and sniffed some more. More smell. We inspected every nook and cranny, and eventually decided that the smell seemed to be coming from the freezer-area. And then we saw… the electrical outlet. It was empty, but it was supposed to be filled with the plug from the freezer. The very same plug which was now lying on the floor, stretched towards the door, as if it had been trying to get away.

We opened the freezer and became acquainted with the little odours big, fat Momma. The previously mentioned ham lay on top of a mountain of plums.

We touched it.

It exploded.

Ka-squish.

Clean-up was a bitch.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Mucho mojo

I wasn’t much of a fashionista when I was in junior high. Not even close, really. To tell you the truth, I was a bit of a dork. A big bit. That didn’t stop me from trying to look hot, mind you.

All the cool girls in my class had really big hair of the kind that went straight up and then straight down, like a plane crash, and I did my very best to imitate them. Not well, but still. Hairspray was of course an important part of the process. I remember using the kind that turned into a greyish sticky dust after a while. I looked as if I had the worst case of dandruff since… well, since ever, really. Either that or an attack of lice to rival those of a person from the Middle Ages who bathed in cold water only for Christmas and slept on hay alongside of livestock.

One day I’d run out of the stuff. If I had taken the time to develop a sense of style, I would probably have considered that to be a blessing.

But I hadn’t.

So I started searching high and low for a replacement. Anything would do. I tried out every cream and sticky concoction I could find until I discovered one that worked somewhat. It didn’t make my hair stand up much, but it did make it paste nicely to my head, which made it a satisfactory replacement. After applying it, I took a moment to read the tube.

Self tanning lotion.

You know how your scalp, underneath the hair is usually paler than the rest of your face? Mine wasn’t. My face was quite pale – the kinda pale that teenage nerds who spend all summer inside with a book wind up sporting – and my scalp was a dark coconut brown.

Fancy.

Another funny

I heard a story a while back and thought it was funny, mostly because I’m a morbid sort of a person. You might have heard it, but…oh well. I’m going to tell it anyway because my tummy hurts today. Every now and then whatever evil, little genie I accidentally swallowed recently gives my innards (Can you have innards if you’re not a pirate?) a good SQUEEEEZE.

You see, there was this woman who came back from work early one day only to find her beloved hubby serving the woman from next door, if you know what I mean.

SQUEEEEZE.

The other woman jumped out the window and ran home, stark nekked and probably showing the other neighbours a whole new side of herself that they’d never seen before.

The wife was furious and her rage gave her almost superhuman strength. She grabbed her husband and pulled him with her out into the shed, which was home to tons of tools and a very large toolbench, fully equipped with one of those what-you-might-call’em screw-thingies where you fasten pieces of wood or whatnot to work on them (we had those in school, and I hated them. I somehow managed to spend the entire year pretending to make a candy box when I really wasn’t doing anything at all). The wife now fastened a whole other kinda wood in there, if you know what I mean. And then she removed the handle, so that he wouldn’t be able to get free.

SQUEEEEZE.

Then she got a saw down from a nail on the wall.

“Jesus, you’re not gonna cut my dick off, are you?” said the husband.

“No, of course not,” said the wife and handed him the saw. “I’m going to burn this shed down. Then you can do whatever you consider necessary.”

Hehehe.





SQUEEEEZE.

Tag!

I was recently tagged by Tom, but then I forgot about it. Then I remembered, and then I forgot again. Yesterday I remembered, but I got distracted by shoe shopping and a barbeque. There’s nothing to sidetrack me now (yet), so…

First I have to post the rules. Here they are:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1) I’ve never seen an alien: except in movies, of course. There used to be lots of enormous slugs outside of my apartment in the city, and they looked as if they might have come down from a spaceship somewhere, but they probably didn’t. I’ve had some bizarre neighbours over the years, and I have some bizarre family members, but they’re most likely home-grown.

2) I live with a semi-anorexic dog: She eats like a bird. And I mean that in the she-eats-very-little-way rather than the she-eats-several-times-her-own-weight-way. It doesn’t seem to be doing her any harm, though, and it’s very friendly on my student budget.

3) I hate gardening: If gardening was a person, I would stab them with scissors, set them on fire and dance around them like an Indian warrior.

4) I have a recurring dream that I’m being chased by bears. Brown bears, polar bears, grizzlies, any kind of bear that my imagination can come up with. I once dreamt that I was chased by a moose, but that also turned into a bear eventually.

5) I’m incapable of tanning. My summer skin tone varies between ‘colourless of the crypt’ and ‘livid lobster’. If I were a vampire I would either do very well or very poorly, indeed.

6) I love shoeboxes. Whenever I was bought new shoes as a kid, my mum would always throw the boxes away. Now I’m a grown-up and I get to keep them. Except for when my mum visits and throws one out in a fit of tidy helpfulness.

7) I have no sense of direction. There was one particular mall where I used to shop once a week while I lived in the city, and I would always get lost. I never had any idea where I was or where I was going once I got past the first escalators. My first purchase once I get a real job, will be something to do with GPS.

8) I turn my water boiler on out of habit in summer. It’s not that I want boiled water it’s just something that I do without even thinking about it much. I develop this habit of flipping the on-switch whenever I walk past it during the winter months, when I drink enough tea to drown a camel, and I just keep doing it all summer long. It’s boiling right now, as a matter of fact.


I don't think I'll tag anyone today. Unless someone wants to be tagged, in which case they may consider themselves to be so.

A lovely day for the wiggling of the toes

I’m starting to get that vacation-feeling deep inside my tummy, right underneath the ice cream, watermelons and fizzy drinks. In a couple of days it’ll probably have spread to my brain, from which it will have to be surgically removed once classes start up again, like some malignant tumour.

I’m going to grad school in the fall, you see. To Hellhole U, to be specific. The thing is that I didn’t really want to go there. I wanted to move back to the city, to where you can have food brought to you and where there is a big enough population to form a good-sized cult. But the universe had different ideas. It always does. First, I started thinking about all the stuff I’d have to haul halfway across the country, which put me off a little bit. This goes back to the lazy-thing I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m lazy. I’m also lethargic, sluggish and slothful, and I don’t like moving furniture over large distances.

Then I received my letter from Hellhole U, offering me a spot which I would have to accept by the 16th. Which is two whole days before the other schools I’ve applied to send out their letters. The thing is that I’m a sissy. The universe knows this, and tends to use it against me. The universe is very well aware that if I were to turn down Hellhole U, then not get accepted anywhere else, and have to postpone my masters for another year, I’d be forced to have a mental meltdown. I’ve seen meltdowns on movies and have always thought that they look like a lot of work. Which brings us back to me being lazy. I mentioned that, yes? So I’m going to Hellhole U.

But until then, I’m sitting outside in my garden chair with my laptop, wiggling my little toes in the air. I left the TV on inside and the sound is a bit annoying, but I’m too lazy to get off my ass to turn it off.

Some guy sounds waaay too happy as he says: “Before, we had to go to the doctor in order to remove my warts. Now we can do it at home with just one treatment.”

Idjit.

Time off and the evil of ants

For a very, very long time I’ve been very, very excited about today. You see, yesterday I had my last exam this semester, and that means that today is the very first day of my vacation. It’s a day I’ve dreamed about and planned in a hundred different ways many, many times. There is only one tiny, little problem.

Today is boring!

For one, it’s rainy. The first day of your summer vacation isn’t supposed to be rainy, dammit. I’m pretty sure that’s a rule. I know that I wrote it down on a piece of paper when I was a kid and gave it to my mum so that she could mail it to the king. That was ages ago, so it should have made its way into the lawbooks by now. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also windy, which means that if you venture outside with something resembling an umbrella, you’re going to take off, Mary Poppins-style. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy flying, but I’d rather do it sitting down and with a stewardess serving me snacks, drinks and offering to fluff my pillow.

Just a little while ago, Pooch and I spent 20 minutes staring at an ant, just to see what it would get up to. Everybody knows that ants, although seemingly boring, are all psychotic maniacs. I know this for a fact, because I live in a very old house which is full of these delinquents. Only last summer I caught the little bastards trying to chew their way through the walls.
Even Pooch - who might not care much for the deeper philosophical conundrums in life – has insight enough to understand the evil of ants.

This particular ant, though, went on to crawling up the toilet bowl and falling in.

I flushed it.

I feel a little bad about that.

A very, very little.

Chasing that pink dragon

I had an appointment to go get my hair all pretty and shiny on Monday. It was about time, as tall people were now able to see my natural haircolor. Filled with joy and excitement, I skipped across the bridge and down the hill to where the salon is.

“Closed every Monday,” said the sign on the door.

Still, the hair dresser had clearly told me Monday on the 21st. I waited. And I waited, and waited and waited, but no one came. I even peeked through the windows, into the darkness beyond the L’OREAL posters, to see if maybe she was hiding under the desk.

It seemed clear that nobody would be making my hair all pretty and shiny, so I started to walk home. As I passed by the store, my stomach grumbled a bit, and I decided to go inside to buy a sandwich, or something. I spotted them quickly, stuffed full of chicken and lettuce and sitting on a shelf. And between them and me, behind the glass doors of the refrigerator, stood my old demon – strawberry milk.

Someone had come up with the clever idea, that you could fill plastic straws with strawberry milk powder which would then flavour the milk. I was just going to look at them, I thought, as I walked over. As I came closer, I could spot my own reflection in the glass. My hair looking distinctly un-pretty and un-shiny. Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d opened the door and placed a box of the straws in my little plastic basket.

“This is wrong,” I thought, but didn’t put them back.

So now I’m dealing with my strawberry milk addiction again. I know how it’s going to play out. The way it always does. I will gulp down the stuff until I can’t even look at anything pink without feeling violently sick. After I reach that point, it will continue for about a week. Then it’ll be over.

For now…

Pic by sindrityr for www.flickr.com

Meet Mr. Green!

For those of you who have been paying attention, you might recall that last year I mentioned that my lawn mower was the devil. Whenever you turned it on, thick clouds of smoke would well from it, oil would spatter everywhere and it would make a sound like a hundred mice being slowly squeezed to death. For this reason, I was now ready to mow my lawn for the first time this season with a brand new, hopefully non-demonic, and very orange mower, which I decided to name Mr. Green.

So there I was, in the middle of my garden with Mr. Green, surrounded by far too tall grass. I pulled the starter-thingy and the engine roared to life. Or…well…“roared” might be an overstatement, it was more like an enthusiastic fart. Still, it was a nice change from the usual 20min battle it had been with the old devil spawn.

Thus far everything was terrific, but there was one itty, bitty little detail for which I was completely unprepared – the back wheels that moved all by themselves.

So the engine came to life with a loud fart and all of a sudden, Mr. Green blasted forwards, clumps of grass flying in all directions. I hung on for dear life, while the little voice in my head (Toots) yelled “GHOST! It’s a GHOST!”

Luckily the rational part of my brain, which is called Bergerac, decided to join us. “Perhaps you should let go of the handle,” it suggested. I did, and the mower's enraged attack of the garden seized immediately.

Now I have a freshly mowed lawn, although it is a bit funny looking, seeing how I haven’t quite worked out the aim just yet.


In further news, I had an exam on Friday. There are two things in this world that make me incredibly grumpy, if not straight out malevolent, and those two things are 1) gardening and 2) exams. This means that this past weekend I was so grouchy, I just wanted to rip someone’s head off and then make my way through town and beat people to death with it.

I didn’t, though… I wasn’t me, and you can’t prove it.

I'm a grown-up, I am!

I’m waiting impatiently to hear back from the universities where I’ve applied to my masters’ degree, including Hellhole U.

Year ago, long before I wanted to be a brilliant scientist, I had a dream of becoming a lawyer. This dream was formed inside my tiny head way back when I was only a little horror, based on one very simple thing: the hit television show known as “LA Law”. More specifically, the power suits and briefcases worn by the women in that show. I liked the hairdos, as well.

For year and years, the idea remained there, until the time came to start applying to colleges. That was the first time I ever really asked myself why I wanted to study law. After careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that power suits and briefcases (even really, really fancy ones) probably weren’t the right foundation for a career choice.

As a kid, I had all sorts of ideas in my head about what it was to be “grown up”. Once, for example, I found a 100kr bill (a fortune for a nine year old kid like me) abandoned at the side of the road, just outside my school. I decided to be mature, so I instantly picked it up and ran back to school, where I handed it in to the principal, in case it’s owner would come looking for it, all the while hoping that nobody would so that I might get it back. Now I’m a grown-up. It says so on my birth certificate. Sort of. If I found money on the street now, I’d pick it up, put it in my pocket and be on my merry way, because that is the grown-up thing to do.

Also, when I was little, I dreamt about the day that prince charming would come climbing in through my bedroom window at night and… well, I dunno… sing me a song, or something, I guess. I was a kid, after all.
The grown-up thing to do if someone comes crawling through your window in the dark, however, is to scream, hit them on the head with something hard and call the cops.

All in all, I’m glad I’m not a kid anymore.

The doggie cloud prophecy

The other day, when I was out walking the dog through the farmlands of Hellhole, I saw something interesting. This was unusual, because Hellhole isn’t exactly crammed full of interesting stuff. It was a cloud, to be specific. Now, you might be thinking that clouds aren’t all that exciting, but this one was different – it looked like a dog with enormous ears chasing a cat.

“Hey,” I thought. “I have a dog with enormous ears, and she likes to chase things.”

At that very moment, the pooch’s ears pricked up as she spotted something on the other side of the field. “Mjau,” said the thing. That was pretty much the only invitation the pooch needed, and it shot across the field like a white arrow with lots of hear on it and huge ears. It as if the cloud was some sort of prophecy.

I drew a deep sigh and waited for the unavoidable: the part where the pooch starts to catch up to the kitty and realizes that she just might get her ass kicked. At that point, her brain starts to doubt the wisdom of her decision. However, it uses several seconds to transport this hesitation to the rest of her body. This is probably because said brain is very small. Very, very, very small.

This is the part where I call the pooch back. She is then so relieved that I stopped her from doing what she was about to do, I’m immediately elevated to hero-status.

But you know, in movies and such, prophecies always give you more than 30 seconds warning. I’m writing a letter of complaint.

A funny

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's SUPER-JOKE!

Pete and Eric were twins. Pete owned a run-down boat and accident would have it that the dingy, old thing sank on the very same day that Eric’s wife died.

Some time later, Pete ran into an old aunt who, mistaking him for his brother, told him how sorry she was for his terrible loss.

“Oh, I don’t know…” answered Pete. “Quite frankly, I’m glad to be rid of her. She was rotten from day one. The lower half was completely wrecked and she smelled of old fish. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she leaked constantly and had a huge crack in the back, not to mention a fairly sizeable hole in the front. Every time I used her, the hole got bigger. I suppose that what broke her in the end, was that I rented her out to four guys who wanted to have fun. The idiots all tried to get in at once, so she cracked in the middle. But it’s no big deal. I’ll just have to start searching the ads for a new one.”

Spring springing and sumo gymnastics

Spring has sprung. I know this for two reasons:

1) The other day I picked a gigantic tick off from behind the pooch’s ear, where it had settled quite comfortably in the soft, downy fur with its enormous, blood swollen ass in the air, like some sumo gymnast. Now that ought to be an Olympic event, if you ask me. I’d watch a sport like that.

2) Yesterday I gave the pooch a bath out on the porch. There’s not a creature on earth who hates bathing as much as the pooch does. She’ll take cover under the couch as soon as she sees the shampoo bottle. The trick is to wait until she’s not paying attention – which isn’t as easy as it might seem, since the pooch thinks I’m the most fascinating thing ever created – and then take care of the bath preparations (bucket with water, sponge, rubber gloves and shampoo. Not very complicated).

When it comes to the actually bathing process, she is somewhat conflicted. She hates the getting-wet-part but she quite enjoys the getting-the-shampoo-massaged-into-her-fur-part. After all, who wouldn’t? That’s my favourite part whenever I go to get my fur… uhm… hair done.

Anyway, her conflicted emotions keep her from running away, even though I’m sure she entertains the idea, long enough for me to bathe her properly. Once the bath is over, however, she storms around in a fit of joy so overpowering that it’s difficult for me to dry her off properly.

So you see, it’s spring. Although I suppose you might have noticed that yourself by now.

My empty head

I’ve got nothing. Less than nothing, even. My brain is an empty space full of boxes and spiderwebs. Yes, things can still be empty even though they’re full of boxes and spiderwebs. Those things clearly don’t count.

And I'm grumpy. Kinda like this:

My little alien-sister

As I may or may not have mentioned – probably didn’t – I have a little sister. A little sister who is doing that whole Scandinavian tall thing that I never got the hang of. We’ll call her V.

When we were kids, V developed a somewhat unusual interest: zits. She was fascinated by the whole pimple-popping-process. As soon as one appeared on her face, she’d kill it off and emerge from the bathroom with fresh claw marks on her skin. So far she wasn’t so very much unlike most teens, myself included, but the thing that set her apart, was the fact that once she had squeezed her own zits into oblivion, she started looking around for other people’s.

There was this one summer where her somewhat unusual hobby peaked. And at that particular time, I was lucky enough to have a tiny pimple on my forehead. To regular people like you (possibly) and me, it would be barely noticeable, but to someone like V, it stuck out on my face like a howling, red siren.

After a great deal of begging and pleading, she still hadn’t succeeded in getting her hands on it. V, the zit serial killer was getting desperate for her next casualty.

One rainy day, while I was sitting in the couch watching some mundane teen show, she decided to make her move. Without a sound she slipped down behind the sofa, where she waited quietly for a moment before pouncing.

Have you ever seen Alien? You know that part where the squid-hand-monster-thingy comes out of the egg and latches itself to some screaming victims face? It was like that. I did, however, manage to fight her off before she could lay her eggs inside my chest.

These days she claims to limit the hobby to her husband. Poor bastard.

Why I'm not a superhero

Every once in a while, I can’t for the life of me figure out what to blog about. Most of the time, it’s not something that an internal rant won’t fix –I’m very good at ranting – but, believe it or not, my life isn’t really all that remarkable. As far as lives go, it’s pretty run of the mill. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly fine with that. I never harboured any dreams of being some spandex-wearing, cape-sporting superhero with my underpants on the outside of my outfit and a secret identity. When I take off my glasses, people still recognise me, and that has its advantages.

Really, it’s just as well that I’m not a superhero. First of all, a superhero has to drive a really cool car or plane, or something. I have a bike. Granted, it’s red and shiny with a handy basket, but it’s not quite the same thing, is it? I can’t quite see myself instilling fear into the heart of evil-doers while pedalling down the street on my trusty bicycle, cape flapping in the wind.

Also, superheroes have some sort of secret hideout. I don’t really have one of those, unless you count Hellhole itself.

Another thing that I don’t have to deal with, since I’m not a superhero, is saving the lives of that moron who always gets himself/herself kidnapped and strapped to a rocket aimed at the moon or slowly lowered into a volcano, or something equally ridiculous. I like to think that most, if maybe not all, of my friends have more sense than that.

Maybe it’s the tight material of their oh so clever disguises cutting off blood circulation to their heads that makes the average super more likely to befriend the dumbest, least observant people on earth. I’m not a psychologist or a tailor, so I have no way of knowing.

No, I would much rather be a supervillain. Sure, their dresscode is pretty preposterous, but the good guy bodycondom doesn’t seem to be mandatory. Also, I kinda like the thought of strapping someone stupid to a rocket.

Besides, I have a really fabulous evil laughter that I developed and at the moment I can’t really share it with people without them staring at me funny. When you’re a villain, these things are appreciated and will only increase people’s respect and fear of you.

Wanna find bliss? Come to Helllhole!

Tom recently suggested to me that I’d write something about why people should move to Hellhole. After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that this is a very good idea. As a matter of fact, the house I’m currently renting is being sold in the fall, so if anyone, after reading this article, should begin to feel overwhelmed with the need to spend time in this fascinating town, they’re welcome to buy this humble abode.

First of all, Hellhole isn’t really called Hellhole in real life. As a matter of fact, it has a name which means bent. It lies in a larger geographical area which roughly translates into “place with sheep”. And indeed it is. This is the place to come if you want to knit your own sweaters, people.

But that’s not the only advantages, of course. Our brilliant politicians have come up with inexpensive ways to fill our lives with thrills and excitements. Who needs to go to amusement parks? Not us. Perhaps you want an example? Well, you know those nifty lines that they paint on roads so that you can cross safely without being smeared all over the concrete by passing vehicles? Well, here in Hellhole, those haven’t been repainted since I was a kid. Over the years, they have become more invisible than Britney Spear’s underpants. All of the locals know that they’re there and will gladly step on the breaks if you feel like crossing the street. Should the car racing towards you be from out of town, however, you are about to have a very exciting day, indeed.

Do you harbour a dream of joining a sect? Well, then this is the place for you. We have them all. And if you can’t find one that meets your fancy, you could just start your own. Since pretty much the whole town swims in the same gene pool, they’re not very complicated, and are easily recruited into these sorts of things. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that our family moved in from out of town.

Or perhaps you’re just one of those people who have difficulty keeping track of what you’re meant to be doing in the coming days or perhaps of what you have done in the past? That’s certainly not a problem around here. Just ask anyone and they’ll gladly inform you. Even if it’s someone you’ve never laid eyes on in your life. It’s like being famous without ever having lifted a finger. Fame without the hassle, with other words. For example: only very rarely will someone follow you home.

And where else would you get the golden opportunity to step outside your door in the morning, perhaps in search of a newspaper, only to step on some inhabitant of the surrounding woods with sharp teeth. Yes, folks, we have things living in the woods with teeth. Most of them are badgers. But there are also bunnies and deer. You don’t think those last two sound very exciting? Well, think again. The deer bring ticks with them, and that always makes life more interesting, especially if you have pets of your own. The bunnies tend to sneak into your house, hide beneath furniture and then jump out really fast, which can be quite a thrill. Just make sure your pacemaker is on, folks.
Speaking of mail – the mailmen enjoy spicing up our lives by placing your mail in other people’s mailboxes all around town. Every day is a treasure hunt and what could possible be more fun? Not much, I say.

With other words – come to Hellhole! It’s a wonderful place to settle down and your kids’ll love it.

Pic by Billypalooza for www.flickr.com

Yawn!

Hello, my name is Choochoo and I’m an insomniac. (You go: Hi Choochoo!)

These past few days it’s been particularly bad. I go to bed early and spend the next few hours trying spinning like a top, swearing and taking my growing frustration out on my pillow. It’s a good thing pillows don’t bruise, or I’d have been put away for abusing the poor thing. I would have forever been known as a pillowbeater. In a small town like this, word gets around quickly. All the while, the pooch stares at me and no doubt wishes that I would just shut up, already.

A few years ago, I went to see a sleep specialist who gave me a long list of what not to do and a tiny little list of what I ought to do. That’s what it’s always like, ain’t it?

One such advice was to leave my bed once I’d been awake for about twenty minutes or so, to read a boring book or go to the bathroom. I wasn't allowed to look at my watch, though, to see how long I'd been trying to sleep, so I had to guess. And since five minutes feels like an hour when you're basically just staring at the ceiling in the dark, well... Let's just say I got plenty of exercise. Who the hell needs a stairmaster when you have a sleeping-disorder? Not me.

After one quick look at my bookshelf, I decided that my boring books were much to boring, and I would rather knock myself unconscious with a mallet, thank you very much. So off to the bathroom I went. Again and again and again. By morning I had been to the little insomniac’s room so many times, I was starting to feel dehydrated. I was also exhausted from running up and down the stairs. However, I was wide awake.

Better luck again tonight, I suppose. Maybe…

Moon pic by Nadar for www.flickr.com

A use for an angry wolverine

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that about 95% of everyone I meet are either completely uninteresting or just plain dumb. Come to think of it, the phrase “dumb” isn’t really accurate. Being stupid is a character trade. And idiot simply can’t help it, and therefore he or she can’t really be held responsible for their idiocy. I suppose you’d have to blame the parents, or something. Ignorant is a much better word.

I count the people wise enough to read this blog among the upper 5%, of course.

With those who are just uninteresting, there’s no major problem. All I have to do is ignore them until they go away. The ones that are dumb/ignorant, however, aren’t that simple. They don’t have the intellectual insight to go away. Not only that, they insist on giving you their shockingly uninformed opinions on every little thing, regardless of whether you want them or not. Most of these belief they probably just invented themselves, most likely just after waking from a nap before their brains were fully conscious of what was going on. But the issue of whether or not such a person’s brain is ever fully conscious, is another matter.

Sometimes I come up with ways to hurt them. I have previously fantasized about probing them with sharp sticks. Then I advanced to burning sharp sticks.

My resent idea, however, is my all time favourite: live wolverines.
How cool wouldn’t it be if you could find a way to smack such a person with one of those? The only problem is, that picking a wolverine up by its tail and flinging it at people, might be somewhat tricky. There’s the whole issue of getting your head bitten off.

The seemingly best solution would then be to throw it at them from somewhere above. However, I don’t want to be too high up so that I’ll miss the sights and sounds of my little experiment. Perhaps a small crane or a fire truck would be best.

I’ll give it some more thought and get back to you.

The Pooch's great adventure

I had big plans for my Easter vacation this year. I was going to do absolutely nothing that had anything to do with work or school or anything like that. I figured I’d read scary books, watch the idiot box and definitely eat my chocolate bunny that I’ve been saving in the fridge for the past two weeks.

It’s a rather large bunny, wrapped in shiny bunny-paper. I’ve picked it up a few times, studied it intently – I even weighed it once on the kitchen scale, just because I wanted to do something with it and the time wasn’t right to eat it just yet.

But in stead I got to take the pooch to the emergency room. On Friday she clearly didn’t feel well and on Saturday morning a friend of mine drove us to the veterinarian, who stuck thermometers up her ass (the dog’s ass, not my friends), x-rayed her (still the dog), said something about a stomach/intestine infection and trapped gas and proceeded to pump her full of medication before sending us home with enough drugs to turn my kitchen table into a full-blown pharmacy. Or at the very least a small drug lab, like the ones you see on NYPD Blue.

That day, my head was full of philosophical questions. Should I change the water in the doggie bowl again? Was the bowl close enough to the pooch’s bed? Did the pooch need to go out? If the pooch didn’t want to go out, should I worry about that? What should I do if she didn’t want to poop? What if she did poop, and had horrible diarrhoea? What if she started throwing up? Etc, etc.

Then the pooch farted. I immediately picked up my cell to inform everyone of the good news. Everyone was thrilled, of course. For the rest of the day, and then through the night, the pooch did her very best to gas me to death. That didn’t matter, though, as I stayed awake most of the night, anyways, to ponder my philosophical questions and see if she needed to poop.

She’s feeling a bit better today, and all of a sudden I remembered that not only do I have a blog in need of updating, but I also have a chocolate bunny which must be getting mighty cold and lonely by now.

Thermometer pic by http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ali%40gwc.org.uk&action=edit for www.Flickr.com

The cookie ambush

You know what? I almost forgot to post anything today. I was distracted by a bag of chocolate chip cookies. There I was, going through the cupboards – in search of carrot sticks, of course – and I heard a tiny, little voice coming from the top shelf.

“We’re lonesome,” it said.

I looked around, but couldn’t see anyone, so I grabbed my healthy snack and just as I was going to close the doors, the voice came again. “Please don’t leave us,” it said.

At that very moment, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and sent a shiny ray of light in through my kitchen window. With an almost magical sparkle, it crept over my shoulder, into the cupboard and very gently touched the bag of cookies. I had almost forgotten that they were there.

Yes, I had. No, I hadn’t been nibbling on them for days. Oh, shut up!

“Take us with you,” said the cookies, and the bag stretched slightly in the sun.

“I can’t take you. You’re not healthy,” I objected.

“But we just want to sit on the table and watch TV, so that we won’t be lonely anymore.”

The cookies sounded very sad, indeed, and I couldn’t really see any harm in them just sitting next to me while watching reruns of Friends, so I brought them.

We watched in silence for a few minutes. Once again, I had almost forgotten that the cookies were there. Joey was sitting at the central Perk with Ross. He leaned forwards, about to say tell him something in confidence, looked around to make sure nobody would hear, opened his mouth and…

“Eat me” The voice came from the table, where a small cookie had somehow made its way out of the bag.

“I can’t eat you. You’ll make me fat.” I tried to explain why it and my waist line were natural enemies, and had just gotten past that part about how white sugar is bad, when I realised that the little cookie was sobbing.

“Please eat me,” it said. “Pretty please.”

I suppose one wouldn’t hurt, I thought, and put it in my mouth. It giggled as I chewed and swallowed.

Another ten minutes into the show, a tiny little voice sounded from my stomach. “I miss my mummy.”

And since I didn’t know which one of the other cookies were its mummy… Well, what else could I do? I had to eat them all. Anything else would have been cruel.

Cookie pic by Procsilas for www.flickr.com