Don't Freeze Up Girl

You know who I miss? Adam Ant.

I know he went bald and crazy but damn he made gay piracy look good. I've always had a thing for boys in eyeliner. Oh Simon Le Bon, you lined-eye god, you have ruined me for all other men. One of the funnest times of my life was going to see Duran Duran last year for my birthday with the girls. It's fun to scream like a teen-aged girl.

I also thought Spike was hotter than Angel.

I'm sad that I missed the cocaine and champagne frenzy of the rock star/model days of the eighties. I bet I would have had fun right up until I died in my London hotel suite. I had to make do with Miller Genuine Draft and hanging out at Swantner Park. I never even got an MIP. It was hard to be bad in Corpus Christi. They made Susanna Somebody take out her nose ring at Hamlin Junior High. It was a pearl stud. It's hard to bad when you're a debutante.

They did however film one of the greatest movies of all time in Corpus in the eighties - "The Legend of Billie Jean." I like to watch it and point out all the stuff that's fake. Christian Slater and Helen Slater were in it and so was the voice of Lisa Simpson whose name I can never remember although I know exactly who she is.

The house with the slide was real; the miniature golf course was fake. They built it under the JFK Causeway bridge where Snoopy's is. (Three drink maximum. Don't feed the seagulls.)

Summer Summer Summer It's Like A Merry-Go-Round

Some knucklehead DJ on the radio this morning suggested we move the summer solstice to Friday.

I declare that the sun no longer is our anchorman in the solar system. I declare that it is Uranus, the planet that rules the sign of Aquarius. By this arbitrary whim I render the centuries-long study of the sky completely useless and render Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon null and void. All this I decree by my omnipotent hand! Bow before me, you groveling nothings!

Anyway.

What's new? What's new? Ah, yes. The parking lot attendant of the lot I park in everyday for school is the nicest person I have ever met. He is always cheerful and wants to know how my class is going. I swear if I let him, he's put my grades on his fridge. He always says "How you doing my friend?" I miss him on Fridays, but I'm glad he goes home early. I like the idea of him knocking off early for the weekend from hanging out in that tiny booth all day.

There's a guy in my class called Big Sam and I always think of "Gone With the Wind" when I hear that. Big Sam saved Scarlett from some ruffians when she was out making business calls in her carriage all alone, which caused her second husband that she stole from her sister to go after them and he died, and Ashley got shot, and Rhett saved them all from jail by telling the Yankees that they were all at Belle Watling's cat house.

It's time to watch GWTW again I think. I still cry at the end when Scarlett is so delusional and thinks she'll get Rhett back. Fat chance.

Which reminds me, I saw "The Break Up" with Stefanie and we interpreted the ending in polar opposite ways. She says they get back together and I say they have nothing left to talk about and will never see each other ever again and that meeting on the street was closure. What do you say? Are Brooke and Gary meant to be?

As Long As People Are Calling Me Trashy...

I might as well tell you about how I had dinner at the car wash last Thursday.

I highly recommend Tacos and More for your dining pleasure. You've driven by it a hundred time if you live in Dallas. It's at the intersection of Ross and Greenville and it's that little red-and-white-striped walk-up window at the car wash next to CVS. Practice your high-school Spanish before you go to facilitate ordering. Excellent tacos that are served the right way with cilantro, onion, lime wedges and that neon-green hot sauce that sets your tongue on fire in a good way. Sure, you can get it to go, but I suggest staying right there less than 10 feet from the cars careening past and dining al fresco like I did. Someone suggested if you are that close to the traffic you should be wearing a fluorescent vest and a hard hat. Not a bad idea. They sell Mexican cokes if you need a cane sugar rush, but regular U.S. ones are cheaper.

I might marry a man who took me to Tacos and More in his bitchin' Camaro. We could share a 40.

Also, there is a girl in my class who has worn a different article of terry cloth-material clothing every single day. I'm sure it's all Juicy Couture, but damn, how much terry cloth can a girl own? I also counted how many people's butts were bigger than the desks the other night. Pretty much all of them.

Hey, I hear The Portlanders are playing at Gypsy Tea next weekend. Who's in?

Matt Has Not Seen A Yeti.

Matt the Miller Man is away in the mountains, but in his weekly check-in call, he mentioned no yeti sightings. I say, what's the point in going to the wilderness and being out of cell phone range for a week if there are no yetis to report? Matt's cat, the infamous Peggy Sue, is fine. I have not damaged anything in Matt's house either. I broke his dining room ceiling fan once when I was house sitting, so breaking more stuff is not an option.

Matt says I ought to know the anatomy part of Anatomy and Physiology pretty well. Bwah ha har! So far, it's going swimmingly. A's on the first test and lab quiz. We shall see. I am going to miss the discussion of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" at book club and I'm sad. I liked that book, and this month's gathering is very near my place, at Heather's new house that I haven't seen yet. Dang.

You remember last summer when I broke my foot and was in a cast for two months? Yeah, me too. Good times.

You know what the longest song ever is? The ones that don't rock when you want to hear a song that rocks. And hitting scan instead of the presets is dangerous because you are for sure going to hear snippets of country and death metal, which are equally heinous in my book. I go through this every morning. I love you, Mesquite Schools Radio, but the sweet sounds of the seventies sometimes ain't what I'm about.

So I flip through the presets and hear the end of The Killers, which I thought was Franz Ferdinand but who can tell and as far as I know neither band is from Serbia, and the end of a Shakira song (my hips don't lie either), and part of "Rocket Man" and the beginning of a Van Halen number that wasn't "Running with the Devil," and ELO I think. I could not find a Thursday anthem and yeah, I have a CD player but I like to be musically surprised like that time last summer when I was totally rocking out to "Rhinestone Cowboy" and then a car hit me at the intersection of Skillman and Southwestern on the afternoon of the night I fell down and broke my foot at the rehearsal dinner of the wedding I was officiating the next day at the arboretum.

Glen Campbell gave me PTSD.

Hey, What Are You Doing?

I'm not doing anything even remotely related to copy editing, I can tell you that much. I'm helping the programmer guy build the new website here at the freelancing gig.

Yes, your fear is the correct reaction. Mine is anger, but what's new?

How is it that I am constantly doing things I have no idea how to do? I mean, I figured out that I like foreign countries because my constant feeling of being somewhere I don't belong is normal there, because I don't belong. But here on the home turf, why in the hell would I want to reinforce that feeling? How am I always in a place that isn't where I originally thought I was going? And why don't I ever see it coming?

Someone once told me I was like algebra, that he could predict exactly what I was going to do in any situation and he didn't need to know why, he just knew the answer. Maybe I'm continually blindsided by people and situations because I suck at math.

Maybe it's like standing in shallow water at the beach. You're just standing there, looking out at the Gulf of Mexico, counting the seventh wave or whatever, and you look up after God knows how long, and, even though you haven't taken a step, you are half a mile down the coastline and you can't see your mom's gold Ford Elite anymore.

That happens to me all the freakin' time.

Sesquicentennial Post: I Been Busy.

Hell School Is. (School is teachers who don't know teaching facts that aren't true to kids who don't care.)

I have been carrying around this Matt Groening comic since 1989 that shows the emotional state at varying points in life. It is hilarious and accurate.

I have never had a job and went to school simultaneously before and it is difficult. I think it's more difficult because I am old.

I pulled an all-nighter to finish a project and let me tell you, I wanted to die. I was walking around downtown talking to myself before class and stepped in front of two separate moving cars when crossing two different streets. Then the damn thing wouldn't print. I was muttering in class because I was too tired to keep my thoughts in my head where they belong.

But not only did I get the A I set out to get, I got the highest average in the class, which again makes me King of the Dipshits due to the whole Lyndon Johnson thing.

I'm learning Anatomy and Physiology now and I am D-U-M-B. Last night I was identifying the stages of cell mitosis (I don't know what that means) and got five out of ten questions wrong. I looked at the answer key, went back to try again, and - even knowing the answer - I got a couple wrong twice.

I failed Chemistry in high school. Mr. Y gave me a passing grade anyway because he said even though I tried as hard as I could, I had no aptitude for it and he thought I would never pass and couldn't graduate without it.

I cheated in Geometry (I just had to ask my officemate which math had triangles in it) because I knew I'd fail if I didn't.

I failed Zoology in college, but that was because I went out with Larry Salerno every Wednesday night and didn't ever make it to class at eight Thursday morning.

I got a D in Meterology. Cumulonimbus!

I think I passed Geology, but I never could tell the difference between rocks and minerals. It's also the only class I was ever encouraged to lick something to identify it, and I took The Psychology of Human Sexual Behavior.

To sum up, I am not science-smart and I have to get an A in this thing if I ever want to get into a nursing program. (I don't need no stinkin' science to deliver babies!) Would you all like to start wagering on the likelihood of a passing grade? It's about 100 to 1 I'll get it on the first try, so I probably won't sell my books back since I'll need them again. (What a racket, the bookstore.)

I like to learn stuff, but man I hate feeling stupid. Why do all the models in the lab look EXACTLY the same to me?