9.22.03

Yesterday I started a new file in OoT and decided for the hell of it to do Crooked Cartridge. By now everyone should know what CC is but in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past four or five years, it’s where you pull up the left side of the cartridge and then Link can go literally through people and rocks and stuff if you do it fast enough so your game doesn’t crash. Anyway, I did it last night so I could get past the little Kokiri bastard that blocks my way out of the forest (another person I hate in that game, btw) and get a bunch of heart pieces and crap BEFORE I visited the Deku Tree. I decided for the hell of it to go meet Zelda and when I got back to Kokiri Forest after getting all the crap I wanted (and btw, I didn’t have a sword, because I wanted to make it through the part where you’re Kid Link without one), things were a little … messed up, shall we say. For example, because I had not yet visited the Deku Tree, Saria was still by Link’s house, but because I HAD visited Zelda, she was also in the Lost Woods—AT THE SAME TIME. So Saria has a clone. I was half-expecting Mido to still be blocking the path to the Deku Tree, but no, he was in his house, and he didn’t have a clone. So I had—I think both Deku Stick upgrades by this time, so I just used Deku Sticks in place of my sword, which was actually easier, because the sticks are stronger (why, I have no idea). So I managed to get past all three kid dungeons without a sword and in fact I actually thought it was easier. It was certainly easier to beat Barinade, as I only needed five sticks to whack him (is it a him?) into oblivion.

And something else. Last night, I decided that since I’d already beaten all the kid dungeons, I’d just get the sword, also because I wanted to fish and you can’t cast the line if you don’t have a sword. I don’t know why. Anyway, I paid the guy, went to that log that the lunker is nearby, because I wanted to catch him. I DID NOT HAVE THE SINKING LURE. I cast the line out and IMMEDIATELY heard that “thap” sound that the loach makes when it comes up for air. And then I saw something tugging at my line. Something long and thin and black. I had caught the loach, for the second time in ONE WEEK, and this time it was WITHOUT the sinking lure. I will have screenshots of it tomorrow. Catching the loach twice in one week is, I think, nearly impossible. Catching it without the sinking lure is—well, I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing it.

Oh, and I also taught myself how to play “People are Strange” by Echo and the Bunnymen on the Ocarina. I have it about 99% perfected. Here’s as far as I can go (I’m not putting the notes down, as they’re a little confusing):

People are strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone

Women seem wicked
When you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you’re down (those last two lines are the hardest, as they involve finger acrobatics like you wouldn’t believe)

When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No-one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange…

9.18.03

Stiiiiiill playing OoT. Just finished the Spirit Temple but, since I’m doing the dungeons out of order, I have yet to do the Shadow Temple. I’ve decided to comprise a list of everyone (non-enemy) whom I hate in that game. The obvious choices, of course, are Navi (or “Shut the fuck up, insect”) and Kaepora Gaebora, (or as I call him, “Fuck Off, Bastard”). But there are some more minor characters whom I can’t stand as well:
The Little Yellow-Haired Kokiri Bitch: Dear lord, I hate this chick. When you’re a kid she’s on top of that one pillar you get to via the bridges accessible from the top of Saria’s house, and when you’re an adult she’s in the Lost Woods when you do the Biggoron’s Sword trading sequence. She’s a little bitch. “That medicine is made of forest mushrooms. Give it back!” Demanding little asswipe, isn’t she?
Ruto: I call her “Fish Bitch.” IS SHE INCAPABLE OF WALKING?? Why do I have to carry her stupid little fish-bitch ass all over the goddamn dungeon?? I mean yeah, she’s good for holding a switch down, but seriously, couldn’t they have programmed one of those little crates into that section?
Mido: Or, “Get Out of My Fucking Way, You Little Punk-Ass Bastard.”

Hmmm… I’m too hungry to think of any others right now, so I’ll do that tomorrow.

9.16.03

*long, drawn out, exasperated sigh*

Dear lord. That VCR sucks ass. I can play videos fine, although it took a lot of fucking around (“Oooh, what does THIS button do?”) and I figured out ON MY OWN, no instruction manual consulted, how to set the timer record. “Now all I need to do,” I thought, “is set the VCR to channel 51 … wait. Why is it skipping from channel 36 to channel 95? Hello!! There’s about twenty channels you’re missing!” So I STILL can’t record Inuyasha at night. Pleh. And I went to sleep at around 11:45 last night so I missed last night’s episode. But I’ve seen the Japanese version so I know what happens; I just watch the dub version so I can see how badly they fuck it up. So if anyone who’s reading this knows how the hell to make the channels on a VCR go higher than 36, please, I’m begging you, email me and tell me.

I’ve been singing Elvis Costello’s “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea” over and over and over again this morning. I don’t know why, other than the fact that it’s my favorite EC song.

"Thoughts From Looking Through My Parents' Music Collection":

--Good lord, my parents' music sucks. There isn't even anything good in h-- what? What's this? Do my eyes deceive me? Is that the Pretenders?

--Holy crap. It IS the Pretenders. *take*

--You know, it's really sad when Dan Fogleberg and Styx are in the exact same cassette drawer right next to each other.

--Oh, so THAT'S what an 8-track cassette looks like.

"Thoughts From Watching Old Home Videos":

--What in God's name is wrong with my hair?

--My brother, five years old and already a comedian.

--Why are we focusing on my godawful piano playing?

--Seriously, I think it should be law that 11-year-old girls should not get perms. Any violation of said law is punishable by death.

--[from Christmas] Hm. I seem to have ... *counts* four thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two cousins.

“She gave a little flirt, gave herself a little cuddle ~ But there’s no place here for the miniskirt waddle ~ Capital punishment, she’s last year’s model ~ They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie ~ I don’t want to go to Chelsea,” –Elvis Costello, “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea”

9.14.03

I’m so, so, so happy and excited right now. I’m getting my VERY OWN VCR for my room. Now I can record any shows I watch late at night *coughinuyashacoughcough* so I don’t have to go to bed at fucking 12:30 am… Ahh! Yay! And I can watch all my videos again, too. This is so, so sweet. My very own VCR. In my ROOM. This is too, too awesome.

I’m still playing “Ocarina of Time.” I’m an adult now, and I decided that, for a challenge, I would try to beat the game without using the Biggoron’s Sword, i.e. with only the Master Sword. I HAVE the Biggoron’s Sword, because I just automatically go through the process of getting it, but I was bound and determined that I would NOT use it—until last night, when I was at the Water Temple. I haven’t, at the time of typing this, done the Fire Temple yet. Normally, you’re supposed to do the Fire Temple BEFORE you do the Water Temple, but I decided that since you don’t need the item you get in the Fire Temple—the Megaton Hammer—to do anything in the Water Temple, I would do the Water Temple first, so that I could get the Longshot out of the WT—that way I won’t have to go back to the FT a second time to get those goddamn Gold Skultullas. Anyway, my point is, I was fighting Dark Link in the WT. Dark Link mirrors Regular Link’s moves exactly and it’s extremely difficult to beat him without the Megaton Hammer—or the Biggoron’s Sword. I didn’t use the BS right away. I was trying so fucking hard to beat DL with the MS, but I failed. I died. I fucking DIED. I can’t remember the last time I’d died. I’d forgotten what the Game Over screen looked like … Ah, well, I guess it’s my fault for not having a fairy in a bottle. So I saved and continued and made my way back to the DL room, and finally I just was like, “You know what, fuck it. I’m just gonna wail on him with the Biggoron’s Sword.” So I finally beat him that way … but, damn, I haven’t died in that game for years. I think the Biggoron’s Sword spoiled me.

“There was a checkpoint Charlie ~ He didn’t crack a smile ~ But it’s no laughing party ~ When you’ve been on the murder mile,” –Elvis Costello, “Oliver’s Army”

9.12.03

Last night my brother Nick and I were having a conversation about the TV shows we used to watch as children. My brother is about five and a half years younger than me, btw. Anywhoozle, I was laughing so hard at this. I was downstairs in the living room and he came down from his room and I don’t remember what exactly I was doing, but he said to me, “What shows were on Snick?” Snick, if you don’t know, was Saturday Night Nickelodeon, which was on when I was about twelve, thirteen years old, in the early ‘90s.

“Um. ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark,’” I said.

“Oh my god! Yes! That show was the bomb!” he shouted.

“Remember that one episode where there was the dollhouse and the chick was turning into a doll?” I said.

“And there was the one episode with the girl who was visiting … like, her grandmother or something, and in the attic was a chest with a riding jacket--”

“I remember that!” I squealed. “It was a red riding jacket.”

“—yeah, it was a red riding jacket. And when she put it on there was a secret passage out of her grandmother’s attic window and then she was all like ‘I have to feed the hooouuuunds!’”

“And there was that little fox in that episode,” I remembered.

“Yeah, and I think the hounds chased the fox or something … Wasn’t that the show where they were all around the campfire…?” Nick wondered. “And they’d throw something on the fire to make it go like ‘foomph.’”

“Yeah, they’d throw this powder on the fire, and the fire would get brighter,” I said.

“What other shows were there?” he wondered. He thought for a moment. “What was that one that was on the ranch?” he asked.

“’Hey Dude,’” I answered.

“Yeah!” he said. “I remember almost everyone on that show … there was Brad, and Melanie, and Danny… who else was there?”

“There was that one brown-haired tomboy chick … what was her name?” I wondered. “And I think the chick who played Melanie is married to Ben Stiller now.”

“She was Marcia Brady,” said my brother (meaning in the movies from the ‘90s, not the show).

My mom was also downstairs. “What was that one that had Seth Green… Pete and Pete,” she said.

“Seth Green was never in Pete and Pete,” Nick said.

“Older Pete was played by … Michael somebody-er-nother,” I said. “I can’t remember who played Younger Pete.”

“Younger Pete had the tattoo,” said Nick. He stretched out his arm and turned it. “’Dance, Petunia, dance!’”

I squealed with delight. “I remember that!” I said. “Man.” (Oh! I just remembered something else about that show just now. “You’re a girl, and you’re my friend … but are you my girlfriend?”)

“’Wild and Crazy Kids,’” said my brother, suddenly, with reverence. “Oh, man, that was great.”

“That was the one that had Cuba Gooding Jr’s little brother,” I said.

“There were two guys and a girl,” he said.

“There were two girls,” I said.

“No, there were two guys and one girl.”

“No,” I insisted. “There was that dark-haired chick and then she left and then there was that red-haired chick. I liked the red-haired chick.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” said my brother. “I thought you meant at the same time. Yeah, you’re right. And they had like … fifty kids on each team, they were like colored teams… the green team, the fuchsia team … “

“The aquamarine team,” I laughed.

“Yeah, the aquamarine team. ‘Good job there, Green Team! Way to go there, Fuchsia Team! Keep at it, Aquamarine Team!’ Oh, god dammit. That was like the best show. There was this one time where everyone was chewing gum and they were putting it on piles to see who could make the biggest pile of chewed gum, and you could see the spit dripping off of it. It was totally gross. …Omar Gooding!” he said, remembering the name of Cuba Jr’s little brother. “… Hey, what was that show that was at, like, the summer camp…?”

“’Salute Your Shorts,’” I said.

Nick’s tone changed to one of reverence. “Oh, THAT was the best goddamn show on the whole goddamn station.” He proceeded to sing part of the theme song and I joined in on the second line.

“’Camp Anawana
We hold you in our hearts
And when we think about you
It makes me wanna fart!’”

“’It’s “I hope we never part!” Now get it right or pay the price!’” we both quoted in unison.

“What was the counselor’s name?” my brother tried to remember.

“Ug Lee,” I said.

“Ug!” he said. “And there was that fat kid, what was his name?”

“Donkeylips,” I said.

“Yeah, Donkeylips! Donkeylips always wanted to run amok. ‘Can we run amok? I wanna run amok. Can we run amok?’”

There was more of the conversation, but my fingers are getting tired, but we also talked about You Can’t Do That on Television, Double Dare (with Marc Summers), What Would You Do (also with Marc Summers), and The Secret World of Alex Mack. (I never really got into Alex Mack.)

9.11.03

God dammit. I am SO FUCKING SLEEPY. I feel like my head is all floaty and shit. It’s weird. Damn Adult Swim for having Inuyasha on at midnight when I get up at 6 am to listen to Gustav and Daria!!!! And I can’t record Inuyasha because the VCR doesn’t work. Pleh. Five and a half hours of sleep a night can really wreak havoc on your internal clock. Luckily there’s only a week of new Inuyasha episodes left, so I can go back to going to sleep at around 11-ish. Precious, precious sleep, how I miss thee…

Lewis Black and Dave Attell are coming to the Crystal Ballroom here in Portland on November 15th. I am going to do everything in my power* to get tickets to that show. I absolutely LOVE Lewis Black. Dave Attell I can take or leave, but when I’ve seen him on Comedy Central he was pretty funny. But oh, my god. Lewis Black is a GOD. Plain and simple. I’ve seen both his Comedy Central Presents dealies about five million times each. Ironically, I don’t watch the Daily Show, though, mostly because I’m usually doing something else at that time.

*Now, if I only had some power…

Oh! Oh! This is so cool!! I was playing “Zelda: Ocarina of Time” this morning, and I was fishing. I am still a child in this file (just named Link) and I haven’t gotten the third spiritual stone yet. Anyway, like I said, I was fishing (for like three hours, real time, JUST fishing) and I FINALLY CAUGHT THE HYLIAN LOACH!!!!!! Ha ha ha!! I’ve had this game for four years and I’ve attempted to catch the loach many times but never succeeded. But today, I cast the line in (I had the sinking lure) and the loach bit it and I reeled it in. It weighed 18 lbs. Now that I’ve caught it as a kid, I’m going to try to catch it as an adult, too. Hopefully it won’t take ANOTHER four years…

*goes to sleep on keyboard* *wakes up with little squares indented into forehead*

9.08.03

I got completely, totally, 100% freaked out yesterday morning. I was upgrading KazaaLite to the new K++, which if you didn’t know prevents the RIAA and all other big music corporations from peeking into your computer by blocking their IP addresses, and I got it all upgraded, and I uninstalled the old KazaaLite. What I failed to realize was that if you don’t move the My Shared Folder into the new K++ folder, it won’t “find” those files. So I got all connected and it said “Connected as [my username]@klite.tk, sharing 0 files” and I’m like “WHAT??? WHAT?? Where did all my files go?? Oh, god, did I delete them accidentally?” And I was like totally panicking because my brother has a lot of files he’s downloaded and if they were gone he would have absolutely killed me. I swear to god I was panicking so hard that I was hyperventilating and shaking and my heart was beating about a zillion miles an hour. But to make a long story short, I posted my problem on the Kazaa boards, and got it all situated out, so no, my files, thankfully, were not deleted.

Yesterday, it rained. Good Lord did it rain. We hadn’t had rain for months, and then all of a sudden yesterday it just came down in torrents. Which is really, really good, because there’s a lot of wildfires going on right now. And it seems like it’s going to rain today, as well.

Last night I was taking the dog out and happened to look up, and under the awning over the front porch, there were probably literally a hundred or more mosquitoes having Evil Mosquito Sex. I swear to god it was like Discovery Channel Live. I think it was because with the rain, there were a lot of puddles in which the female mosquitoes could lay their eggs, so they were going fucking CRAZY with the Evil Mosquito Sex. It was kind of freaky.

9.03.03 (yet again)

I revised my hell to make it more personal—I didn’t notice at first that you could put your own eternally damned souls in there.

9.03.03 (again)

Found a cool link via someone else’s blog: make your own Hell!

9.03.03

So the other day I was looking in the Drawer O’ Shit (everyone has one of these) for a Sharpie marker with which to mark the date on a freshly opened jar of pasta sauce; and I came across a roll of Life Savers. Upon closer inspection I noticed the word “musk” underneath the name of the candy. “What the hell?” I thought. I smelled them, and they smelled kind of like a cross between roses and baby powder. Later that day my mom said I could have one and so I did, and HO. LY. CRAP. It’s like the best candy EVAR! They taste like how a rose smells. I’m not kidding. They are awesome. Apparently my mom ordered them from Australia. If she orders more stuff from Australia, I’m going to ask her to get me like, ten, twelve rolls of these puppies. However, I did a search on Google for “life savers musk,” and apparently they’re either a “love ‘em or hate ‘em” thing. Most people, for reasons I can’t comprehend, hate them. There are about fifty (probably not an exaggeration) websites that I found on Google that had the exact same thing on them (and I mean verbatim, like someone wrote it and the others copied and pasted it): that Life Savers Musk tasted like “raw meat.” What the fucking hell? Dude! Since when does raw meat taste and smell like roses?! And who goes around eating raw meat anyway?? They most certainly do NOT taste like raw meat and anyone who says so is either a. insane or b. has not actually had one.

Two nights ago I was walking my dog at about 8:45 or so and happened to look in the northeast sky and saw something strange. I would say it was a meteor but it was too slow, plus it didn’t leave a trail. It wasn’t an airplane, because there were no blinking lights, and it wasn’t a satellite, because it was too low in the sky. It was a blue star-sized point of light that was flying across the sky and suddenly started dropping down and then disappeared. It was totally freaky.

I’m currently playing “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” for about the billionth time. Does anyone realize how much crap you can get BEFORE reaching Woodfall Dungeon, the first level? I have not set foot in that dungeon and I have the Postman’s Hat, Blast Mask, Bunny Hood, Keaton’s Mask, Bremen Mask, Kamaro’s Mask, Kafei’s Mask, plus one or two more that I can’t think of right off hand, plus of course the Deku Mask, nineteen pieces of heart (working on getting number 20—it’s the Clock Town Bank 5000 rupee one), bombs (I forgot to buy the big bomb bag on Day 2 after saving the old lady, so I have to do that again), Deku Nuts, Deku Sticks, Ocarina, one bottle (I would have two, but I messed up on the Kafei-Anju sidequest) and some other crap. I was playing pretty much all day yesterday getting all that crap. But does anyone besides me not trust the Owl Statues to save your game? I’ll use them if I need to turn the N64 off quickly but if I get something important, and save at an Owl Statue, and play later, and, say, the power goes out, the game goes back to Dawn of the First Day, and I lose whatever I got since then and have to do it all over again. I wish there was a better way to save.

8.30.03

Thursday morning, on Gustav and Daria, at the end of the show Daria told about how her husband had gone fishing and threw the fish heads in the garbage can, and they sat there in 85-90 degree weather for like a week, and then Daria opened up the garbage can and saw a bunch of maggots in the garbage can and she said it smelled absolutely horrible. (Admittedly, I wasn’t really paying too much attention at that time as I was playing a game or something, but I did catch a few key words, including but not limited to “fish heads,” “garbage can,” and “maggots.”) So I emailed Daria and told her about the time that we had some meat in the fridge that had gone bad, so I had to throw it away in the outside garbage, but I’d neglected to put it in a plastic bag first. So naturally, what with the hot weather, it’s pretty much gonna be an open invitation for flies to procreate. And boy, they certainly did. A week after I’d thrown the meat away, the garbage man had already come to pick up the garbage and so the garbage can was empty, or so I THOUGHT. I was taking the kitchen garbage out and I opened up the outside garbage can, and was greeted with a delightful smell, saw this brownish liquid on the bottom (about the color of coffee if you added like one spoonful of milk to make it slightly opaque), and these little white things that looked like—and that I thought were—grains of rice UNTIL THEY MOVED. I believe the brown liquid was probably rotten meat-blood or something. Anyway, the “grains of rice” were, in fact, maggots. Lovely little bastards. And they were just crawling around, swimming in this brown liquid. You’d think they would probably drown or something if they’re completely covered in foul-smelling brown liquid, but no, it was like freakin’ heaven to them. It was like Club Med for maggots. I feel pretty sure that if I’d waited long enough, they would have built themselves a miniature little waterslide and/or log ride. So anyway, my point to this whole story is that like I said, I emailed Daria about that, and she read my email over the air on Friday morning. Which was incredibly awesome. She’s read one of my emails on the air once before but I missed most of that one.

8.27.03

I got TOTALLY freaked out last night. I was playing “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask,” and I was doing the Kafei-Anju sidequest (but only up to the part where I get the bottle from Madame Aroma—I’d already gotten the postman’s hat. I haven’t even done the first dungeon yet). I hadn’t played this particular file in a while so I couldn’t remember if I’d gotten the heart piece from that guy who lives in the toilet. So I went to the astral observatory to get the Moon’s Tear, and while I was coming back, I was climbing out of the sewer, and suddenly Link started blinking in and out of sight. “What the hell?” I thought. Then, all of a sudden, Link appeared in front of the Stock Pot Inn door, and the game froze. “Oh, crap,” I thought, “I’ll have to reset and do everything all over again,” (which truthfully wasn’t all that much because in the K-A quest I’d only gotten the room key and hadn’t talked to Anju in the kitchen at 11:30 [or rather, midnight, because Anju walks too fucking slowly, and if she’s going to come at midnight she should SAY fucking midnight and not fucking 11:30!]) Anyway, I went to check to see if maybe a cord had come loose or something, when suddenly the N64 just shut off by itself. The power button was still in the ON position, but the little red light wasn’t on. I checked every cord, and every cord was plugged in properly, but sometimes the main power cord comes loose a little bit and if it does then the system won’t work. So I pushed it back in as far as it would go and turned the system back on, and it came on for about two seconds and went off again. So then I thought “Oh, shit, my Nintendo’s broken.” I pulled the plug—I didn’t see anything wrong with it—and pushed it back into its socket to try again. This time I made sure that it was really plugged in as far as it would go. And when I turned it on again, it worked this time, but by that time I didn’t feel like playing anymore. This morning when I woke up and was listening to Gustav and Daria, I decided to do the Kafei-Anju quest again (with the TV on mute, and has anyone noticed how much cooler playing video games is when your bedroom is dark?), but this time I unplugged the main power cord and stuck it in the socket below the one I had been using. It seems to stay in that one better and I had no trouble this morning (although I did get a little freaked out when I thought Link was glitching up again, but it was only my imagination).

8.26.03

Happy birthday to Shirley Manson. Now if I could just remember how old she is…

Advice of the Day: If the cat has pooped underneath your computer desk, after cleaning it up, DO NOT spray citrus air-freshener on the spot. Contrary to what you may be thinking, it makes it smell that much worse.

I was watching this thing yesterday on the History Channel on saloons and how they kept beer fresh in those barrel-things … what are they called again … oh yeah, “kegs.” Anyway, on one of the old kegs there was a hole on the top which was called—and I’m not kidding—a “bunghole.” (“Huh huh huh. Bunghole. Huh huh.”) This was your Juvenile Humor Moment of the Day.

My coffee was especially strong and bitter today. I hate bitter coffee.

8.25.03

More “I Love the 70’s” crap for you. Hooray for obscure technology! Anywhoozle, let’s see. I’ve now seen all the ILT70’s shows except for 1978. I’m not sure why I missed that one… oh, I think I was taking a nap. Anyway. When they showed clips from “Little House on the Prairie,” I literally squealed with delight. That was my absolute favorite show as a child (when it was shown in reruns in the early to mid-80s). I was like, four years old, and when LHOTP would come on I would park myself in front of the TV and I would not MOVE for an hour. I wanted to be friends with Laura so badly. And I would have backhanded Nellie. Little bitch.

My back hurts. I’m not sure why.

I also used to have a Magic 8 Ball. A few years ago, I found it again, and I think it was leaking or something, so my mom was like “Why don’t we break it to see what’s inside?” I was all up for this as I’d always wanted to break the damn thing anyway for that very reason. So we took it outside and SLAMMED it down onto the ground and wouldn’t you know—the little dodecahedron-thing (or whatever it is) that has all the answers flew out and landed in the gutter. So I still don’t know what’s inside that thing.

Now my back hurts, AND I have the hiccups. Life is beautiful.

8.21.03

Has anyone been watching VH1’s “I Love the 70’s”? This is, without a doubt, the single greatest thing VH1 has ever done. It is absolutely hilarious. People who lived back in the ‘70s were insane. In a good way. Some of the stuff from the ‘70s crossed over into the ‘80s, and I had some of the stuff. I had an Easy-Bake Oven, only it wasn’t Easy-Bake, it was Tasty-Bake, and I think “tasty” was spelled in some sort of fucked-up way, like “Taystiee” or something like that. Anywhoozle, Tasty-Bake is sort of Easy-Bake’s cheaper, inbred cousin. I remember making many an underdone cookie in that thing. You had to preheat the oven for an hour and a half and you baked the damn thing for like six hours and you’d take it out and it would be burnt around the edges and still raw in the middle. It was the greatest invention ever. And the cake pans were like two millimeters high and like three inches around, so if you overbaked it, it would resemble a coaster. A coaster with frosting.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—I LOVED this movie. As a child I just wanted to go there and just, like, eat everything. Gnaw on large plastic lollipops … scoop frosting out of oversized colorful mushrooms … swim in a river of chocolate, despite the very real risk of being sucked up a giant transparent pipe WHICH was exactly as big around as a human. I do not know how they could not see that coming. And I’d be like worse than Veruca Salt. I wouldn’t demand things, I’d just take ‘em. “Everlasting Gobstoppers? Don’t mind if I do. Fizzy Lifting Drinks?” *take*

But there are two main reasons I watch VH1’s “I Love the ‘70s,” and coincidentally, “I Love the ‘80s.” Reason number one:

Reason number two:

*drool*

8.18.03

Something happened to me the other day. Something I never thought WOULD happen. I am no longer afraid of spiders. The other day I was walking my dog and saw a crab spider on a leaf. It was bright yellow and had red stripes on either side of its fat little abdomen. I wanted to see it better, and so I took the dog back inside and came back to it. I picked a long piece of grass and poked the spider with it to see if it would climb onto it, and it did. And I thought, “If I can hold that spider in my hand for ten minutes, and not freak out, I know I will have gotten over my fear of spiders.” So I put it on my hand, and it scuttled around, and I did NOT freak out. I even let it crawl up my arm. And it was a very pretty yellow color. I touched its abdomen with my finger and I thought it would be soft and squishy, but it was hard. Now I’m finding myself wondering why I was afraid of them in the first place! My goal now is to find one of those huge-assed yellow and black garden spiders and hold one of THOSE puppies. But I haven’t seen any of those kind around lately.

The other day my mom was rummaging around a drawer, looking for something, and came across a bunch of crap I did when I was in first and third grade (I don’t know about second). I found a spiral notebook with some (very) short stories and assignments in it. Keep in mind that I was about 8-9 years old when I did these.

I think this first one was like rules for the classroom. Oh, btw, spelling and grammatical errors are left intact because it’s funnier that way.

”September 9, 1987”
“Be quiet”
“Be responsinble” (sic)
“Be nice”
“Care”
“Don’t run”

I don’t know why I never finished this one:

”I Got Stung—September 28, 1987
“One day I was at my old schoo” (sic)

This one was about the Pilgrims. Another unfinished one:

”The Pilgrims wore hats, collars and had wepons. (sic) It was crowded on the Mayflower. The sailors helped out. The Mayflower boat sailed away. They came to Plymoth (sic) Rock, then they came to America for freedom. They had come from England, because the king”

This one is more like a diary entry:

”May 3, 1988
“On Sunday evening we went to my mom’s friend’s house. We brought some movies along, too. Erin [please note that I do not remember who Erin is] and I watched Rainbow Brite: The Beggining (sic) of Rainbow Land. We started to watch Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends, but I wanted to play in Erin’s room, and so did Erin. In there, we wached (sic) Cinderella. I showed Erin that it could play on the walls, because she didn’t believe it could. What I did was: I put it on WALL PROJECTOR. We made a ‘ghost’ with it. Then we had to go home after that. I went to bed. The end.”

This one is a testament to how odd I was as a child. All text in brackets was added, like, yesterday:

”May 24, 1988
“My Wings
“Have you ever knew (sic) how bad I want to fly? I’ve been thinking and thinking of how to fly. Finally I got an idea. On June 15, 1988, I’m going to make some wings. Oh, yes, with a little help. First, I’m going to make a diagram. Then, I’m going to get: sticks, elastic, scicors (sic), needle and thread, and paints. (I’m going to make colorful wings.) Mom thinks my idea isn’t that good. “My idea’s going to work just fine,” I told her. “Your’e (sic) weird,” said Mom. “Weirder than anybody in the world.” She always says that. Well, back to that wing story. The elastic is for keeping it on, sticks for the border, sicors (sic) for cutting the sheet, needle and thread are for sewing the elastic on, and paints are for coloring it to make it pretty. [I will change my name to Icarus and I will accidentally fly too close to the sun and die a horrible flaming death.] Then, when I finish, I’m going to try it out. If it works, I’m going to stay up in the sky.”

Yeah, I was a pretty fucked-up kid.