Second Best Halloween Costume Ever

For Halloween this year I dressed as the 2nd amendment.  Sort of.

I defend my right to bear arms.

Let's All Just Agree It's the Worst Thing Ever

Fall is my favorite time of year, but it has one major flaw.  Every October a metric shit load of candy corn crawls forth from the bowels of Hell to infect every desk, counter, and coffee table like an evil, high fructose plague.  Have you ever heard somebody say, "Candy corn is my favorite!"?  No.  Because candy corn is disgusting.  It is an embarrassment to both candy and corn.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

If I Ever Have a Child, You Should Probably Contact the State

A lot of my friends have babies.  This amazes me.  I am so not ready to be responsible for keeping another human being alive.

Proof:

--     I recently found an unexplained shard of glass in my underwear drawer.
--     I've lived in my home for three years.  The front door is currently on its fourth lock.
--     I had a key to the mailbox for exactly one week after we bought the place.  Then I lost it forever.
--     I often can't remember if I actually already fed the dog or just thought about doing it.
--     The last time I cleaned my car, I found a champagne glass, an unidentified pill, and a kitchen knife.

I will not be offended if you never ask me to babysit.

I'm a Pro at First Impressions

I once got to meet Joshua James.  He's the lead singer of a band I like, which is also called - wait for it - Joshua James.  (You might have heard of them if you watch Sons of Anarchy.)  Given the redundant nomenclature, you would think there is no way I could have messed it up.  Well, you'd be wrong, my friend.  You would be wrong.

I stuck my hand out with all sorts of confidence (you know, to show how cool I was with the situation) and said, "Hi.  I'm Marie.  What's your name?"  And then immediately wished I didn't have the ability to speak.

He replied with a very awkward, "Um...  Joshua...  Joshua James...  You know, the guy you came and paid money to watch tonight.  My name's on your ticket.  And my face is on the last album cover.  Oh, and those posters by the door.  And I think someone has a table set up with some fliers, and t-shirts, and stuff."

Thankfully, he is very kind and didn't say any of that last part out loud.  But it was fairly obvious I wasn't the only one who thought it and judged me a little bit.

No Means No

I hate Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.  I think it's sending the wrong message to our youth.

Hey, do you like green eggs and ham?
Nope.

Are you sure you don't like them?
Yeah, I've just never really cared for them.

What if you ate them while you were inside a house?
Well, I think I was inside a house the last time I tried them.  

What if the lights were off?
I don't think that would matter much.  I just don't like that meal.  It might be a texture thing.

What if you were in a car, or a tree, or a box for some reason?
Again, the setting is irrelevant.  It's the food itself that I don't like.  Why are you pushing the issue?

What if you were with a goat?
Wait, a goat?  Why would there be a goat?  And why would the presence of a farm animal have an effect on my brakfast preferences?

My body, my choice.

What if you were--
Listen, Seuss.  Your behavior here today has been inappropriate, and some might even say bordering on harassment.

A Plague On Both Your Houses!

My sister, Amy, is f-ing hilarious.  And it's usually not even on purpose.  Which only makes her funnier.  Perfect example:  She moved out of my parents' house because she was convinced it was haunted.  Seriously.

At nineteen, she started hearing a ghost at night - a howling noise that she said echoed all through the house.  She was dead serious and totally terrified.  Because we're family, the rest of us mostly just teased her about it mercilessly.

She lasted about two weeks.  Then one morning our dad heard the noise, exactly as Amy had described it.  And he couldn't really think of an explanation either.  (Though he did not immediately make the leap to ghost.)  And that was enough for Amy.  She packed her things and left.

A few weeks later, Mom heard the ghost.  Only she saw it, too.  And of course it wasn't a ghost at all.  It was our twelve pound Pomeranian howling in his sleep.  That's right, my sister was driven out of her home by scary little puppy dreams.

A few months into life at her new house, she also heard a ghost play the guitar.  For real.  Ask her about it sometime.

Curiosity Made the Cat Flash Her Boobs to the Class; Updated

When I was a senior in college, I took a class called Wilderness Survival Skills with my roommate, John.  The first day of class was held at a lake outside of town where we spent the day tipping over canoes to practice rescues.  After class I needed to change out of my soaking wet clothes, but the only bathroom was a cinder block shack with no door and no roof.  I decided not to set foot inside for fear of tripping over a dead hooker and falling onto a pile of used syringes.  Instead, I waited for everyone else to leave so I could just change outside of John's truck, where I was far less likely to contract hepatitis.

I got my jeans changed and everything was going according to plan as I peeled off my wet shirt and bra.  And then it happened.  John, standing watch at the back of his truck, shouted "Oh, shit!"  Naturally, I turned around to see just what John was "oh shitting" about.   The shuttle van that was carrying about 70% of the class was pulling back into the parking lot.

For a second or two, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights.  A deer who was butt-ass naked from the waist up.  I finally snapped out of it and scrambled to cover myself.  I grabbed my dry t-shirt from the truck and threw it over my head.  But because I was both wet and stupid with panic, I got stuck.  In my t-shirt.  So there I was bending and lurching as I tried to wriggle my shirt over my face.  It was not at all graceful, and I'm sure my boobs were flopping around in the least attractive flesh ballet of all time.

On the drive back to town, I tried to convince myself that this was not grounds for suicide.  "There's a chance they didn't even notice me, right?"

John, who is always terribly honest, told me the truth.  "No, they stopped to watch."

Moral of the story?  Flashing a large group of people won't always make you as popular as you might expect.


*Update:  Apparently it's necessary to confirm that this is, unfortunately, a true story.

Maybe Too Much Dexter?

There's an exhibit at the Science Museum of MN that shows you how much blood is in your body.  You step on a scale and enter some information like height and gender and what not.  Then a glass cylinder in front of you fills up with the estimated amount of blood in your body.

I tried it out when I was there last year.

My first thought:  Huh.  That's less than I would have thought.  I could totally clean that up by myself if I had to.

My second thought:  Shit.  Does that make me a serial killer?

Look, Mommy. There's a Murder Up in the Sky.

Words are weird and I love them.  Like how a group of crows is called a murder.  As in, "A murder of crows just crapped all over my car."

A murder!  And it's just because an old lady said so.

In the 15th century, Dame Juliana Bernes ran an English nunnery called St. Albans.  While there, she wrote a book called The Book of Saint Albans.  (I know.  Clever girl, right?)  Anyway, in this book Ms. Bernes published a list of what she deemed the "proper" collective nouns for referring to any group of animals.

Because this was, like, 600 years ago, most of her suggestions have disappeared from our language.  But some of them have stuck around.  And that's why we have prides of lions, gaggles of geese, strings of ponies, and murders of crows.


And I already know what you're thinking.  Yes, I was totally popular in high school.

Kirby the Kidnapper

When my sister, Amy, and I were seven or eight, we went through a phase where we were convinced that we were going to be kidnapped.  Our parents tried to talk us out of it, but we knew it was just a matter of time before a stranger came to abduct one or both of us.

One day the two of us were walking to the grocery store down the street.  On the way, a car pulled to the curb a few feet ahead of us.  A man stepped out and walked toward us.  This was it.  Standing before us was the man who was going to take us away from our parents, our home, and our sweet scrunchy-making machine.

We screamed, and cried, and dashed to the front door of the nearest house.  We threw our fists against the door.  "Help!  Someone help us!" we pleaded.  There was no need to look back, I could feel our abductor advancing upon us.  We kept pounding against the door, but it was becoming clear that no adult was going to swoop in to save us this time.

We ducked around the corner to the alley behind the house.  I'm not sure if or how long the man chased us, but we ran for our lives back home, into our bedroom, and threw the covers over our heads.  We couldn't believe that we had looked into the face of evil and managed to survive.

Later that evening, we heard the doorbell ring.  People coming to the front door and ringing the doorbell was rare at our house.  We're from a small town and we knew everyone who came to our house.  And they came in through the side door in the kitchen.  And usually without knocking.

We crept down to investigate.  And there he stood.  The kidnapper was at our door, talking to our parents.  Jesus Christ, it wasn't over.  We thought we had escaped, but our abductor had managed find us and was back to take us away.

Somehow our parents were able to drive him away.  "Who was he?  What did he say to you?" we asked when he was gone.

"The Kirby Vacuum salesman."

Amy and me.  Lucky to have lived into adulthood.

"Fuuuuuck," we groaned (or whatever the childhood equivalent of that word is).  Turns out our evil kidnapper was just a door-to-door salesman, probably trying to ask us for directions.  And our natural reaction was to cry and scream in his face, then run away as fast as we could.  And that shit is embarrassing, even when you're seven.

Dos Equis Does Not Have the Market Cornered

Here are some additional contenders for the most interesting person in the world:

--Abraham Lincoln
Freed the slaves, devastatingly handsome

--The blind girl from college
Walked around campus with blind people accessories (stick, sunglasses, messy hair), but shopped alone at the mall; clearly up to something 

--My dad
Used to be a commercial crab fisherman in Alaska, accidentally lived in Hawaii one summer, buried the same dead dog twice

--Vincent van Gogh
Good with a paintbrush, amputated own ear as gift to a prostitute, obvious romantic

I'm Dead in Dog Years

When I am walking my dog, people often stop to ask me if they can pet him.  I like to get a really serious look on my face and say, "I wouldn't."

Sometimes it's fun to lie to strangers.

You don't want to fuck with this.