brent angry!

and, we're in. tuesday was the moving day from hell, although i guess i don't have much to complain about because the lifting and carrying i did was minimal. the boys take a couch, jackie takes a box of socks. the boys haul in an entertainment center, jackie drags a single bedside lamp, first unscrewing the light bulb as to make it weigh less. the boys say, "it's not so bad," and jackie cries, "my fingers, they're a-fallin' off!" she trades in the boxes of socks for something lighter, like a bag of milk duds, half empty.

the place is great, so far. i thought i smelled leaking gas one night, but when i lit a match, nothing happened, so i suppose it's fine. the cable guy came this morning with his big spool of wire. the apartment people dropped off a newsletter the other day. wednesdays are yoga classes. saturday is tennis. sunday is the giganto yard sale. thursday, there's a cooking class. i feel like i'm in a retirement complex. now, i like the idea of these activities that they plan, but i really can't see myself jaunting down to the clubhouse with a bath towel, proclaiming myself ready to do some yoga with my neighbors. as for the yard sale, though, i am completely prepared to purchase some of my neighbor's junk. maybe one of them has an atari system. or a pizza cutter. or an ancient artifact worth millions. and i'll pay them only a dime for it and then end up having enough money to buy illinois so i can sell it to, like, oregon or something.

definitely cannot see myself going to the cooking class. i liken it to an armless man showing up for a clapping contest. there are basic skills you have to acquire first. if you get confused making a hot dog, you can't go to learn how to make texas chili. if constructing a sandwich takes up your entire afternoon, you're not ready to prepare linguine with clam sauce.

all in all, everything seems too good to be true. my mother is also fine; they're still not sure if what they removed was cancerous or not, but even if it was, she may have to go through a little chemo, but otherwise she'll be fine. it's amazing how going through chemo these days is kind of casual. i've known so many people who've done chemo treatments, meeting most of them this past half year. they say, "i'm going for chemo" like i would say "i'm going for a poop."

which i do say fairly often.

moving day. won't update for a few days; don't worry, i'm probably not dead.

we're moving tomorrow. we're putting all of our stuff into boxes and then taking all of our stuff out of boxes. we're pulling drawers out of dressers only to put them back into dressers. we're taking food out of one freezer and putting it into another. this seems really silly to me; when are they going to perfect teletransportation?

i get stressed easily. it's in my genes, like my unheard of metabolism and penchant for steely dan albums. i lay awake last night thinking, "how am i going to move my jar of pennies without losing a few pennies or breaking the whole jar? what if my hand falls off while i'm carrying something heavy? what t-shirt should i wear?" i started breathing erratically. my heart banged like a toyota speeding through a series of gongs. i grew upset about the prospect of buying a microwave. i wondered how i would survive for four days without cable or the internet. i thought, what if i forget my alarm clock and then have to buy a rooster or something?

nighttime is not my most sensible time.

today i'm going to most likely get a promotion. this would be a sizely promotion, taking me from a decent hourly wage to a hefty salary. they don't just hand out these salaries like condoms at a health fair, though. they expect you to take on more responsibility. they expect you to produce certain numbers and goals, shitting these accomplishments out as if you've just had a combination platter of coffee, bran, and ex-lax. oh, my. with all these new expectations, will i get any sleep at all?

so we've got the moving that i'm stressed about, my job, and last, but certainly not least, my mother. she's having a biopsy today, surgery on her boobs. there's a chance it's breast cancer, the doctors say, and my mother is scared witless. on the phone, she talked like she was already gone. "i know you and i have never been close, but..."

but what? you'll be fine. you'll have to be. i couldn't handle it if you weren't.

and that's all i can say about that.

since i began my quest to recieve an honorary degree, i have, as of late, not recieved an honorary degree. jon stewart got an honorary degree. alice cooper just got an honorary degree. bill cosby, ditto. even the president of costco got an honorary degree. they're handing these suckers out like american flags after 9-11, and yet here i am, empty-handed and heavy of heart.

i must be more diligent about achieving my honorary degree. the key, i know, is to first get nominated. while doing some research in between cheesey puffs tonight, i discovered a list of guidelines given by the university of manitoba, located in beautiful winnipeg where the people are cold and the weather is friendly. so, if anybody does want to submit me for this prestigious non-accomplishment, allow me to direct you to that webpage.

here it is.

don't dilly-dally over this; i'm getting antsy. i don't have a speech prepared yet, but the words "i just flew in from illinois, and boy are my arms tired!" keeps creeping into my mind. also, "but seriously, folks, what, exactly, is a doctorate anyways?" they're probably going to want me to discuss my "field" while i'm up there. "having the expertise in the expert field that i consider myself an expert in, i find that the grocery store lines are still just as long as ever."

anyhow, if the president of costco can get one, so can i. has anybody ever shopped at costco? it's a nightmare. we've been through this, folks. i just don't find a 15 gallon jug of laundry detergent very practical.

sigh. an honorary degree just seems so ideal. than i can go from being overly educated for my job to being way overly educated for my job- and a tad big-headed as well.

yes, jackie, for the millionth time, we know about your honorary degree from manitoba. you can stop wearing that sandwich board now.

so i took half a sick day today due to being half sick. i'm going to work later on to close up the store, but the rest of the day is mine, all mine. now that i've got the vomiting out of my system, i'm wondering what to do with myself next. it's amazing how invigorating a good session of vomiting can feel.

we're moving in five days. i step outside to get the mail after dabbing the puke from the chin and notice there's a man poking around outside the apartment next to ours. i say hello, and he says, "how do you like living here?"

"why?" i ask. "are you thinking of renting out this apartment?"

he affirms my suspicions, and i immediately launch into the diatribe that i have been saving for a situation such as this, after i calm down from hearing that, for the same apartment, his rent would be a full five hundred dollars a month less than mine. five hundred dollars less!! what kind of bullshit is that? i tell him how living on the first floor makes you feel like the ceilings above are going to crash down on your head whenever you hear the thunder of the people upstairs walking around. i tell him how the promises that management makes are lies, all lies! i tell him about if your neighbors get roaches, you're guaranteed to get roaches. i tell him the furnace breaks fortnightly, how the leasing agent has a large quantity of screws loose, how they won't clean your carpets before you move in, and did i mention how the ceilings might as well be made of paper? they say you can move in one day, and then they call you the night before to say, "yeah, the apartment's not ready yet." i go on about how horrible it is to do your laundry in a separate laundry facility, stressing how much it sucks in the winter, and i tell him how you get two guest parking passes, and that's it, and how if you have more than two visitors, those extra visitors are getting their asses towed, no two ways about it.

he looks upset. he asks, "how's the neighborhood? are the cops out here a lot?"

and i answer, honestly, "well, they were here last night. and monday, too."

this man, this father of two, is visibly shaken. "i don't think i'm going to be renting here," he says, clasping my hand. "thank you so much for your input."

"all in a day's work," i tell him, proud of myself for helping to bring down this complex. then i come inside and watch as this broken man slumps back to his car, head hanging sadly like a sack of potatoes strung from a twig.

anyhow, i'm sick. can't figure out what it is. maybe watching some daytime tv will help me put it all in perspective.

on 2/8/2004, i wrote:

i met my back twin. from the back, she looked exactly like me with her curly, chin length hair, her thin frame, and her clothes that mirrored something i would wear- an orange hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and funky running shoes. val noticed her first, asking chris, "you do remember where we're sitting right?" for fear that he'd go join my back twin's table on his way back from the restroom. we decided that i needed a picture with my back twin; i scooted my chair a little closer to her table and tried to sit near her without her noticing as chris snapped a picture of our backsides. i walked around her table a few times, real casual-like, to get a look at her face, but she was definitely not my front twin with her pale, birdlike face and emerald-colored eyes. i got jen and nikki to walk with me, jen snapping another picture as we passed her backside, and all of us staring at her front side rather obviously as to continue the comparing.

"you have to approach her," everyone agreed, and finally i got val to go with and do the talking. we headed over to my back twin's table and val leaned in and said, "i'm sorry to bother you, but from the back, you look like my friend jackie." as she said that, i turned around to reveal my backside as if to say, "yeah? yeah? you see it, right? isn't this great?" i turned around again. my back twin was giving us a look as if to say, "alright, you creepy assholes, go back to wherever you came from." we quickly excused ourselves. i was a little sad that our conversation didn't last longer; i wanted to ask, all wide-eyed and hopeful, "is your name jackie, too?"

but seeing my back twin was one of my happiest moments ever, period.

tonight, i saw my back twin again. i was at a restaurant with gail, who had arrived at the restaurant first. she had told a waitress, "i'm meeting my friend. she looks a lot like you, actually- same hair and height and stuff." i ended up finding the table without the help of this particular waitress, but gail mentioned this girl to me as we sat and ate. later, my head nearly fell off its neck as i caught glimpse of the waitress that gail had spoken to. it was the same girl from february, my back twin! i had found her again!

i started to concoct a plan. i fluffed my hair and tried to make eye contact with my elusive back twin, who appeared to be avoiding us. "i need to talk to her," i told gail, desperation ringing in my voice. gail strongly discouraged such action. finally, after following my back twin around the restaurant under the guise of looking for the bathroom, i gave up... for the time being. but the main point of this story?

i now know where my back twin works. soon, i will know where she lives, what her hobbies are, and whether or not she wants to start hanging out.

how to make babies.

you have to read odd news stories in order to make small talk with virtual strangers. otherwise, you're stuck in that elevator attempting to discuss the weather. and while the weather can be interesting and wacky, such as when it doesn't rain water but chocolate milk and raisinettes, most of the time, it's rather dull. so what do you have to talk about without exposing the risk of having to bare personal details about your very private, boring life? that screwball world out there!

"hey, speaking of being stuck in an elevator, have you heard about that thousand dollar omelet?"

"no, but did you hear about the vaseline guy?"

i suppose after a while it would be okay to discuss your personal life, like after a couple of days have gone by and the two of you are trying to subsist on the cloth of your jackets. but even then, you have to exaggerate a little, for showmanship, for the art of fine fiction. instead of saying, "my husband works in real estate," you say, "my husband owns all of colorado, and he's going to turn the whole dang state into a giganto farm where he can crossbreed chickens and cows, as to create the perfect meat."

really, the important thing is to not put your elevator partner to sleep, unless of course you're planning to attack and eat him out of desperation. remember: no one wants to hear about your pets, unless they've maimed something. nobody cares what you think about congress or why you don't wear fur- unless, of course, you've slept with a congressperson or are wearing the fur of some famous cartoon animal, like scooby. so- well, i would just stick to the wacky news stories.

and it's best to check them daily.

while looking in the mirror, i made a startling discovery. it's not so much a "discovery" as a "re-enlightenment of something that i've always known but tend not to think about." i have a crooked smile; when i grin, one side of my mouth slants upwards more than the other half. which is fine, that i can deal with. that, my friends, is endearing. but what i can't deal with is that even when my mouth is closed, it's still crooked. it's like my maker just pasted on my lips without paying attention to the rest of my face. i have a permanent sneer. i am asymmetrical. which i always knew, of course. one boob is slightly bigger. i think one leg is slightly longer (i could be making that up). one eyebrow arches higher. one side of my hair curls more than the other. god, i'm a freakin' mess over here.

but the crooked mouth. i stood in front of the mirror and tried to rearrange my face using only my hands. no vices were available at the time. i tugged upwards at one side of my face and pushed down the other side. it looked okay, but then i had to let go. bam, it sprang back into crookedsville. this is when i started to hyperventilate.

it's okay now. it's livable. upsetting, but, hey, it's not like people stare at me like i have a third arm, right? nobody even notices, i'm sure! but- and here's where i have to lay down- what if it get worse with age? what if my face twists and turns a little bit more every year until one day i'm 43, and my mouth is completely parallel to my nose?

gak!

then, when i try to physically- without using my hands- maneuver my mouth muscles to tip up the side of my mouth that doesn't go up, it's impossible. i feel like a stroke victim- moreso than usual- and i'm not happy about it.

but, like i said, right now, it's okay. but, god help me, what does the future hold for slanty mcslants-a-lot and her crooked mouth?

i hope it's cheesecake.

we did a surprisingly good job at painting the new apartment, with the help of baby boy berger. we have a purple wall. we have a greyish blue wall. we have a yellow wall. and while it may sound to you like i'm describing the inside of a kindergarten, please note that we did not paste the alphabet on the wall. we did not glue on numbers or popular animals. and, yes, it looks extremely awesome.

makes me want to throw a dinner party.

i had qualms about painting. major concerns included: paint spills, tired arms, ruined clothing, sloppy trim jobs, death by accidentally drinking from the paint can instead of a pepsi can, sitting in a tray of paint and then proceeding to sit down on the carpet (which would leave a butt-print on the floor, or a series of butt-prints if we kept moving), and opening the paint cans and finding out that they're filled with rattlesnakes, not paint.

but, alas, all went well.

we're very excited about this new place. upon leaving, chris said, "grab my gatorade. it's by the bar."

i responded, "which bar?" which made us both giddy since we now have a plural amount of bars. you got your wet bar, you got your breakfast bar.... and, yeah, well, that's it. but two bars is pretty good, for a baby.

in other news, i bought the sunday chicago tribune. such a massive paper, it is. you need a wheelbarrel just to get it home. so after i returned the wheelbarrel to my neighbor, linda, i started to weed out the sections i'm not going to read. and then i realized: it ain't such a big paper after all.

ah, that mother goose and grimm gets me every time.

yesterday as i was leaving work, it was raining so hard that i thought i'd have to swim to my car. i was going to resign myself to getting soaked and just make a mad dash out to the old girl when erica, another old girl, says to me, "let's make a poncho for you out of a garbage bag." what a fantastic idea! so i get an oversized garbage bag and put it on over my head. it's so huge that it covers my entire body, just leaving my feet exposed at the bottom. i look like casper the friendly ghost, only more retarded. erica rips holes out for my eyes. she asks, "do you want holes for your arms?"

i say, "no, because then my arms will get wet." what's the point of wearing a garbage bag only to have your arms get soaked?

i can barely see out of the holes; they keep shifting. i'm eager to get home, though, so i hurry out the front door into the rain. i'm a human garbage bag, without arms, racing through a storm. a car beeps at me. i go to raise my hands to it, but then since i have no holes for my arms, the whole garbage bag moves, and suddenly the eye holes are nowhere near close to my actual eyes. i can feel my ear getting wet. undaunted, i keep moving. i can kind of see out through the opaque-ish plastic, and i keep spinning the bag around my body until finally the holes are lined up again. by this time, i am at my car. i manage to open the door despite having rendered myself armless, and when i am in the car, i note that, except for that one ear, i am completely dry. the bag, however, is slick with water, and my car seats are soon drenched.

i sit there for a moment, then make arm holes in the bag and proceed to drive home, still wearing the bag.

well, i'm kidding about that last part. i slipped out of the bag and pulled out of my parking spot. this, however, is true: ten seconds later, it stopped raining completely. here i was wearing a trash bag when all i had to do was wait 1/6 of a minute.

hey, how was i to know?

we're at the karaoke bar when we see this big black man enter the room with a group of about seven old, white ladies in tow. the man looks like a tele-evangelist leading his wrinkly flock through an ever parting red sea. he's wearing a jacket and tie, and his smile is wide enough and bright enough to light up the entire metropolitan area. he calls himself 'the bear,' and while he looks nothing like bedtime bear or the berenstein bears or yogi bear or even yogi berra, there's something kind of cuddly, yet frighteningly mammalian about him. the old ladies are a sad group, shuffling after 'the bear' with somewhat bewildered looks marking their dried up faces. they're dressed up, too. one woman wears a big flowery dress topped off with a pink blazer.

they all order soft drinks, some of the women discreetly swallowing horse pills with their soda pops. the bear is a happy man with all these followers. "we're here to have fun," he heartily reminds them, and a few weakly clap their hands together. i turn to chris and ask, "what the hell is going on here?"

he's gotta be an evangelist; there's no other way. my eyes are locked on this group; i know it's impolite to stare, but that's what i'm doing until i get some answers. the bear goes up to sing. he works the crowd, saying, "this song is for you... and you... and you... and you... and how could i forget agnes?"

he sings manilow's "copacabana (at the copa)." he has the song looped a few times so that he can sing the verses over and over again while adding different names. chris foresees the next verse our evangelist might sing:

"her name was agnes, she had a simple life,
but now she gives me all her money
so one day she'll see her honey
up in heaven, oh up in heaven..."

and the women are dancing, and we're a table away laughing, and i keep looking for the collection plate, because, damn, this is really something.

today i got a call from gail, who is an old friend that stopped talking to me for no good reason. i should be upset about her lack of communicado. instead, i am thrilled to bits. gail is the kind of friend you can drink with during the day. two martinis for lunch, that's gail. she likes buying hats. she smokes and gambles and owes mastercard about 60,000 dollars. she always orders a steak. she has a purse for every pair of shoes, and a pair of shoes for every purse. her bedroom is like a warzone; the piles of toys and clothes and hamburger wrappers and wax statues of robin williams are like little foothills you can hide behind during periods of rapid gunfire. or, you know, whatever. she loses things easily. she knows about sales ahead of time. she's passionate about tv shows, could care less about politics. she likes cheese and monkeys. she buys things off of the home shopping network. she likes going to baseball games, but only for the food. she doesn't get pissy about paying for parking. she'll go to vegas on a whim with a bunch of lesbians. no, really. she likes things really big or really small. she has no concept of time. she gets passionately angry when friends miss her birthday, which is what i did when i said "for no good reason." i had a good excuse, though. anyhow, she'll stop talking to you for months at a time, and then call you out of the blue. that's gail.

oh, how i've missed her.

so our roommate took the laundry room key to las vegas. this is what i'm assuming, because i can't find it anywhere, and he was the last one to use it before shipping out westward, ho. this upsets me. most things upset me, really, but this especially upsets me. even more so than the fact that i'm sitting here in wet pants (different story for a different time).

i'm about to trudge off to the laundry mat yesterday with a pocket full of quarters when i notice one of our neighbors outside getting her mail. i've never talked to this particular neighbor before, but i ask, "can i use your laundry key? mine is in nevada." she looks at me oddly for a moment, and at first i think she's going to say no. i'd probably say no to me; who's stupid enough to trust a girl with dead plants all over her porch with their very sacred, lose-it-and-pay-seventy-bucks-to-replace-it laundry key? apparently, this chick would fall into that category. "sure," she replied. "i'll go get it."

i do my laundry- whites, colors, towels, jeans, delicates all in one load. time spent separating is often better spent eating a candy bar or singing along with a billy joel album. i go to return the key, and my neighbor asks if there's anything else i need. she turns out to be extremely friendly, this woman that i've mostly avoided these past 11 months. she tells me her name, the hours that she's normally home, and briefly outlines a list of things she could potentially do for me. lend me the laundry key. watch for packages being delivered. resurrect any dead dogs i might have lying around.

she was ultra nice, and i'm glad i met her. i wouldn't have met her if my laundry key hadn't been in las vegas. but, let's face it, i really wish my laundry key hadn't been in las vegas. what a ridiculous place to take a laundry key, wouldn't you say?

a british couple approached us in memphis, asking if we were from around there and knew how to get to beale street. this was while we were sitting by the mississippi, contemplating the lyrics to "proud mary," in which a young tina turner confesses to never having seen the good side of the city- until she hitched a ride on a riverboat queen.

"how much tane do you think she actually pumped in new orleans?" i was pondering aloud as the brits posed their questions.

no, we're not from around here, but yes we do know where beale is. they thanked us with a "cheers!" and then hurried on their way. i love the word "cheers!" as a good-bye, a thank-you, or a much more sophisticated "aloha!" watching their british backsides scurry away, i got to thinking that i might want to start saying "cheers!" more often. when i say "more often," what i really mean is "at all." the thing is, i can't say "cheers!" without fearing that i'm sounding like a stupid, yankee wank. a wankee, if you will. it's like when white people say "damn bitch, you supa fly. lemme pull up dat bumper and smack dat monkey." people just don't look kindly upon it.

maybe if i could do a british accent, i could carry the whole thing off. as it is, i'm from the midwest, the place where accents come to die. this is unless you're counting that sometimes exaggerated chicago accent, where the letter "a" comes out sounding like a drunken whine. the only people i've ever heard with that accent are the irish cops on the south side. and even they sound like they're faking it a little.

anyhow, i think i'm going to start trying it. test the waters, if you will. first, it will begin at work, with customers i'm unlikely to see again. then, i will use it at the grocery store, with the produce boy. the next phase will include incorporating my local postal officers. then i work it in with acquaintances and cousins twice removed. finally, loved ones and friends.

who will say, "has anyone told you yet that you sound like an asshole?"

and then i will shuffle off to the loo, to cry.

how does a three horse town in tennessee and an ancient city in egypt end up with the same name? was memphis, tennessee settled by egyptians? is one memphis a portal to the other? or is it just a strange coincidence, like accidentally wearing velvet pants to the liberace museum?

we just got back from memphis, one time home of kathy bates. yes, the kathy bates. unfortunately, there were no kathy bates sightings. also not sighted: elvis, gas stations, book stores, or waldo.

here are some highlights from our little weekend south of the (illinois) border:

1. when dan jumped the rope at graceland, ran upstairs, and took a dump in elvis' famed toilet.

2. when chris mocked that cop's accent and consequently got us arrested, which resulted in a phone call to chris' mom, who promptly mailed us a cake with a knife baked in. actually, it was a bowl of pudding with a spoon buried in it, but i'll tell you- it did the trick.

3. when rachel stood in the middle of beale street and demonstrated all the new bird calls she had learned earlier that day from that lady who stood by the post office, completely covered with pigeons. i think they exchanged email addresses, rachel and that bird lady.

4. when the mayor of memphis called me at the motel 6 and asked if i'd ride in a float in the annual memphis parade. i said, "sure, i love a good parade," but then forgot to show up due to getting sidetracked by a plate of roast beef sandwiches. i read later that they had to cancel the parade. i feel a little bad, but, hey, it's not my town.

graceland makes me sad, for many reasons. i feel a link with elvis; maybe i used to be elvis. it is possible. are females always females in past lives? yet another thing to ask my psychic friend.

thanks, dan, for driving all the way down and back. the only thing i want to mention is that sitting behind dan- tall, lanky dan who needs his car seat pushed all the way back- is one of those rare situations that makes me wish i had prosthetic limbs. like, ones that would detach. legs i could just toss in the trunk, maybe stick into a box and mail. it's rough sitting cramped up in a car for eight plus hours, both ways. but worth it. good friends, good times, good roast beef sandwiches. no parade.

chapter 26

the three girls- kitty, alice, and joni- met the three guys- max, adam, and todd- near the entrance of the cave. "this is where the bloody murder of my twin sister kimmy happened," kitty nervously stated for purposes of exposition. "you see how the rocks and soil are still stained with her blood?"

todd was near tears; kimmy had been his date for the prom, and now he'd have to settle for either alice or joni, both of whom were significantly flatter chested than the very vivacious, no-bra-wearing kimmy. "i'll rip apart the bastard the slayed her," he said in a throaty voice. "if only i could find out who it was."

"that's what we're here to do," joni reminded him pointedly, crouching in the dirt. "oh my. do you see what i see?"

a hush fell over the group. finally, adam responded, "um, no. unless you mean all those empty pop cans and frito-lay bags. somebody should call the 4-h club."

"we are the 4-h club," todd spat, getting even more upset. "or at least we were before the department of agriculture revoked our last 'h.' who wants to be in a 3-h club?"

"it's probably less work," max reasoned.

joni was getting impatient. she shook her hair in such a fashion that her pretty, sun-kissed, heavily moisturized curls bounced daintily about her pretty, sun-kissed, heavily moisturized face. "i'm talking about that piece of twine right there in the cave."

the six of them gave a collective gasp, alice adding an "oh my," for effect. joni, voted most likely to make it into chapter 27, squinted up her eyes and did some quick calculations in her head. "the killer must have used that twine to tie up kimmy. then he or she dragged kimmy here and that's where her intestines were ripped out like a subscription card in a teen magazine. now who has access to twine?"

all eyes landed on kitty, who had been employed at the twine and duct tape store in the mall since page two of the prologue. todd choked out, "you. you monster. you killed kimmy."

kitty's lips curved into a mysteriously mysterious smile. then they curved wider until they became amusingly amused. "took you guys long enough," she said. "but the question is why i did it."

"yes, kitty, tell us why," alice cried, and the group settled into a semi-circle in the grass, eagerly awaiting to hear the details of the murder. max offered to start a fire. joni contemplated aloud whether or not they should get a pizza.

"extra pepperoni," kitty requested. "anyhow, it all started when todd asked kimmy to the dance instead of me. we are identical twins, you know. our chest sizes are identical. so why her, and not me?"

"because," todd began, introducing the twist. "i know you're not actually her twin. you hatched out of an alien egg seventeen years ago and just took kimmy's form. you're not human. you don't even like bill murray."

"not true," kitty protested. "i love jim belushi."

"but...." max was confused. "oh well. go on."

"so i lured her here under the premise of saving a starving squirrel. then, when her back was turned, i deftly tied her up with some twine, dragged her out here, and spooned out her guts with a ladle."

everyone looked at adam, who worked at the ladle and shovel store in the mall. he pretended to be engrossed in a hangnail.

"and now that you've found me out," kitty said slowly, savoring the moment like one would savor a day at the novelty sock store, "i have to kill you all. adam, my spoon please?"

"not so fast," roared todd, who leapt to his feet wielding a gun.

"where'd you get that gun from?" joni gasped.

"i work at the gun store," todd declared. "just started yesterday. my manager said i could keep this one as long as i didn't shoot anyone."

"what's the point of having a gun if you're not going to shoot anybody?" max questioned. "and i still don't understand what jim belushi has to do with anything."

"i'll show you the point." todd grinned as he began to club kitty to death with the barrel of his new toy. he stopped when he got to adam, though. "i need a deal on spoons," he muttered. adam scampered away.

alice jumped up. "another exciting mystery solved by the 3-h club," she cheered.

that's when joni pulled off her mask. it wasn't joni at all. todd narrated, "and now it's getting complicated. i wonder what chapter 27 holds."

things i've learned from christopher pike books:

how to figure out when you're dead.

how to spot vampires.

how to juggle both a full-time serial killer job while still being a full-time high school student.

your best friend probably wants to kill you, while utilizing a very elaborate plot. extraordinarily elaborate especially when you realize that she's only a high school student.

when something's written in italics, you'd better believe it's a major clue as to what the hell's happening.

just because you're out there chasing demons and killers doesn't mean that you can't have a very fulfilling love life as well.

when you come back in time to warn yourself of future events, you're definitely not going to notice yourself.

guns are surprisingly easy for sixteen year olds to obtain.

residue from your past lives is even harder to get rid of than residue off that 30 year old, never cleaned shower curtain.

a vacation is never just a vacation. a vacation is just a prelude to a funeral or an arraignment.

they're not brother and sister after all. they're wolves taking the form of humans and they're also lovers.

if somebody eats ten big macs and drinks 4 gallons of milk in chapter six, the only way to kill them in chapter seven is with an exorcism.

aliens are usually helpful. and they're always smarter than us.

usually, we find out that the aliens are us, only fifty decades into the future. they've come back with a warning. are you listening or are you listening?

the seventeen year old girl is smarter than the chief of police, the captain of the space shuttle, and all the seasoned detectives in the tri-state area.

how to foil the bad guy by using only one piece of twine, a flashlight, and two milk duds. mix ingenuity and stir.

rest assured: before you foil him/ her, he/she will tell you exactly how he/she did it and why.

can't figure out who somebody really is? think anagram!

what to do when you come across a witch.

what to do when you come across a ghost. what to do when that ghost is yourself.

a lot of this could have been avoided if you just didn't sleep with my boyfriend.

nothing exciting occurs east of the mississippi.

isn't it funny how all this goes down only days before graduation?



tobecontinued...

ragtime: the musical that i star in every 28 days. i know that so many of you out there are interested in my menstrual cycle, and that's why i choose to talk about it. part of the beauty of being female is that you can give birth. because birth is so beautiful. having your period is all part of that glorious cycle, the cycle of LIFE, and we, as females (and some of you more sensitive males), are supposed to celebrate it. the only reason i celebrate it is because it means that, for another month at least, i'm not CONTRIBUTING to the cycle of life, if you catch my drift.

now, i'm not a regular girl. when i say i star in ragtime every 28 days, it's 28 days give or take, like, ten, and of course i'm never prepared for it. i try to carry tampons around regularly in my purse, but inevitably they fall out of their wrappers and then i'm at the jewel-osco extracting my credit card when suddenly this totally exposed tampon, usually with some gum stuck to it, just topples onto the counter. and then i have to say something to the usually older-gentleman type cashier. "oops, isn't this embarrassing?" i remark, paying for my cheese wheel. "hey, you got a trash can back there?" so i throw out all my naked, wrapperless tampons, and then a day later, bam, it's like the floodgates have not only been opened but thoroughly doused and destroyed by a substance i find not beautiful or celebratory but instead rather bothersome and disgusting. like creamed corn. without the chunks of corn. and there i am without a tampon, wearing light pants. or no pants, depending.

of course, it happens at work, when i'm in the middle of a forty-five minute ordeal with problem patient #298. "listen," i say, trying to speed things up because the situation below my waist is turning disasterous. "you'll have to excuse me-"

"no, you listen to me NOW," problem patient #298 bellows, the volume of her voice knocking her new wig slightly askew. "i can't SEE out of these glasses."

"that's because you've got them on upside down. now if you'll just-"

"and is your doctor even licensed? he wasn't very professional. i want to know why he was playing 'wario world' back there...."

"wario world's a great game," i attempt to explain as i pale from substantial loss of blood. "but if you'll just give me about ten minutes to run to the drug store, i promise i'll listen to what you think about wario world...."

"listen, little girl," #298 spits, "is that an italian last name? where's your family from? we're sicilian ourselves."

this is where i get angry. "we're NOT sicilian. now i'm thirty seconds away from ruining my SOCKS on top of everything else, so EXCUSE ME PLEASE!"

so, what do we have here? unneccessarily disgusting stories, cramps, bloating, frequent bathroom trips, the rising cost of absorbent cotton, and people who don't think that wordplay on the musical "ragtime" is all that funny. plus, i'm sick of people bashing wario world. enough is ENOUGH.

i apologize in advance for this entry. i mean... ah, never mind.

"action movie: the play." we saw this movie-play in honor of jason's 24th birthday. god, i can't even imagine turning 24. it sounds so old. i think i'll just stay 23 for another couple... months.

anyhow, it was a great night out down at ye olde chopin theater. my only beef was with the ludicrous amounts of gunshots. i'm a very jumpy person. i can't sit still and relax during loud, ear-popping gunshots. i'm forced to cringe and burrow myself deeper into my seat cushions. hell, i can't play "perfection" without flying out of my pants every time that stupid tray pops out- how am i supposed to deal with gunshots? yeah, i'm asking YOU.


caption: i always thought i'd lose an eye playing this game.

anyhow, blanks. they can kill. then there are wad cutters, which look like blanks, but aren't. they are deadly mo-fo's, these wad cutters. see, there's the possibility that, in a situation like a play, somebody can goof and put wad cutters instead of blanks. or, if they're especially vengeful and crafty, not goof. i learned this from a christopher pike book. it's this possibility, coupled with the skull-knocking *blast* and *boom* from the gun, that contribute to one rattled set of nerves: mine.

i'm the daughter of a man who belongs to the nra, and i can't stand the sight or sound of a gun. which doesn't make sense, because i'm also the daughter of an italian man, and still i love me my pasta.