Rule 34 is no joke. (The tentacle rice bag)

Johnny Rotten has a neck that aches all the time. Whether it was from his time in the military or just because he’s built wrong, I don’t know. Fact is, it hurts. A lot. All the time.

I hate seeing him in so much pain, so I whipped out my trusty sewing machine and made him a reusable rice bag-you know, the ones you heat in the microwave for a few minutes for a hot pack or throw in the freezer for a few hours for a cold pack- to hopefully give him a little bit of relief from his achiness.

Clearly, I had the best and most innocent of intentions. I wouldn’t say I was being noble exactly, but if you want to say I was being noble, I probably won’t stop you. Probably-maybe-for sure won’t stop you.

I hmmmed over the design for a long time. It needed to be long and able to be wrapped around his neck easily….like a tentacle, kinda.

Oh my good lord, a tentacle was a great idea! I could make a long skinny heating and/or cooling pack, and I could be fancy and awesome wifey and paint a tentacle on it to make it even more badass for him. Old ladies have those floral rice bags. Who has tentacle rice bags? Only awesome people!

Only, y’all, I didn’t exactly know what a tentacle truly looked like. I knew they were the bottom half of my favorite sea creatures ever, but if you asked me to draw one, I’d probably have screwed my face up and drawn you a boob instead, because I’d be hoping to distract you from realizing that I don’t know what tentacles look like by showing proof that I do know what boobs look like. I’m sneaky like that, you know?

Anyway, I might not know what tentacles look like, but you know who does? Google does! I headed on over, and being the classy kind of lady that I am, I typed ‘cephalopod’ in to the search bar.

Lots of terribly scientific articles and images came up. They were good and all, but I wasn’t writing an academic paper on octopi and their bretheren, so I figured that maybe I ought to search for something a little less sciencey-sounding.

Very well. I, being the smart person I am, typed in ‘tentacle images’.  After all, that was exactly what I was looking for, and I expected hundreds of friendly octopi to flood my screen, showing me cheerfully what their legs look like so that I could paint a reasonable facsimile. *

I hit ‘enter’.

And then, I realized, milliseconds too late, that rule 34 of the internet — if it exists, a porn version exists on the net– existed. Milliseconds after that, I realized that I hadn’t bothered to ensure that safe search was on.

I was right in a sense. There were hundreds of octopi on my screen. Like any person who is naive on the net, I figured the thumbnails were giving me an unrealistic idea of what the actual image was.

Again, I was right in a sense. The thumbnails didn’t do the images justice. They were far, far worse than the thumbnails let on. These were no Beatles “Octopus’ Garden” octopi, they were straight up pervtacular. Bad octopus! And the squid were no better. Guys. You don’t even know.

I waded through the octoporn, as I was a woman on a mission. I would paint this thing if it killed me. And so, I spent that afternoon with crazyass porn and a paintbrush. Anything for Johnny Rotten, you know?

It actually turned out kinda well. I’m especially proud that I took the artistic license not to paint a phallus on the end of it. I guess I’m pretty good at this after all.

Still, I wonder…. would it have ultimately been cheaper to send him to a chiropractor, or is the therapy I now need cheaper in the end?

*-dont try this at home, kids. If youre a grown adult, do what you want. Just dont come crying to me when you feel that everything that you thought was good about marine critters turned iut to be very, very wrong.

I’m boring, but heres a banana wielding man in a zentai suit for you.

So hey, y’all! I hope you’re well and happy. I’m busy trying my very best to figure out this new bit of shiny internet wizardry and baking and hollering at the kids for making turkey noises at the dog, but I have all kinds of stories that I can’t wait to tell you. Please note the above photo has nothing to do with my life–that i know of– but it’s way more interesting than a photo of me pretending that I actually have this tablet figured out. Feel free to discuss and/or write fanfic in the comments!

Sunday short and shout: Wait, so Rick Springfield is actually just a straight guy creeper?

I found this awesome app called Songza. It’s free, no ads, and has truly great playlists. You should get it, if for no other reason than you can have misheard lyrics conversations with your significant other too.

Me, ironing, singing along to my 80’s playlist: Ooh I wish that I was Jesse’s girl….

Johnny Rotten: STOP. What did you just say?

Me: I said, “I wish that I was Jesse’s girl”. That is how the song goes, I’m just singing along.

Johnny Rotten, doing the I’m-being-serious-on-the-outside-but -I’m totally-laughing-on-the-inside face: Could you please explain what this song is about?

Me: It’s about a guy who has a crush on his friend, and wishes he was in a relationship with his friend, but he can’t do anything but wish and long from afar– afar, Johnny Rotten!– because of different sexual preferences. It’s kind of sad, but these things happen, I guess.

Johnny Rotten, with his I’m-laughing-on-the-inside-AND-the-outside face: Seriously?! That’s not what’s its about. That’s not even how it goes.

Me: Fine, so tell me, smartypants. Tell me your interpretation.

Johnny Rotten: It goes “I wish that I had Jesse’s girl”, not “I wish I was Jesses’s girl”. And it’s kind of creepy, because it’s just this guy wishing he could steal his best friend’s girlfriend. How do you not know these lyrics?

Me: You’re judging me right now, aren’t you?

Johnny Rotten: Yes. Yes I am.

FIrst Date: Well, at least I didn’t do *that*.

Where were we?  Ah yes. I was meeting Johnny Rotten for the Very! First! Time! My Munchkin had fallen off the bed, I was overcome with a fit of I-am-a-terrible-mother-and-person, I cried my eyes out, he knocked on the door, and the hot mess that was me was revealed like the worst episode of Extreme Makeover ever.

He hugged me, told me it was great to meet me, and then–AND THEN!– offered to hold the baby so that I could wipe my face off and put real pants on.

Before I get massive internet screaming about how I was a horrible mom who let her kid fall off the bed and then let a stranger– an Internet Person– hold her darling child, let me just say that he has two kids. I knew that he knew that babies have to be held the right side up, even though there is no little label with an arrow to tell him so. I was in the house, only a few feet away. The door wouldn’t be closed, except to put pants on (which, dudes? I am totally good at that. If I were a superhero, I’d probably be FastGarmentPuttingOnGirl or something) and my sister and her boyfriend were about eight seconds away, as they were coming to eyeball the new guy babysit.

It went smashingly well. I got out of the bathroom to find that Munchkin was cooing at Johnny Rotten and Johnny Rotten was cooing right back at Munchkin. D’awwww.  You know when you meet someone and they’re really good at everything, and it kind of makes you feel bad and like you can’t be friends with them because you have your own blooper reel from every single day and you coast from one embarrassment to another? Yeah. That.

Folks, I really liked him.  I mean, really liked him. Reallyreallyreally liked him. I chalked it up as a ‘sucks to be me’ situation, because it wasn’t a date-date, it was hanging out. A relationship wouldn’t have worked anyway, because we were not only from different countries which kind of makes dating a little tough, but we both had just ended long term relationships and rebound relationships never work, right? Right. Still, doing something on a Saturday night is better than doing nothing on a Saturday night, and if the person I’m doing things with is cute and smells good, all the better.

He easily dealt with The Sister’s interrogation polite conversation and small talk, and we headed out for dinner. All good. I wasn’t trainwrecky, and he loosened up a little. We were getting along great, and even if this didn’t work out into anything meaningful– which it wouldn’t, of course!– we both had fun. We were having such a good time, in fact, that we decided to spend some more time together and went out for a drink at the local pub.

Maybe he was finally getting comfortable around me, or maybe it was just the wine with dinner, but he had gone from ‘loosening up’ to a little flirty. I had figured that he was not into me like that, but I guess he was just shy and really polite. He seemed to like me. Like, like-like me. Yes, like THAT. I was stoked, and I figured that he’d make his move any second.

Two things happened at that very moment.

One: my jacket dropped from my chair onto the floor.

Two: he made the move he had been contemplating all evening.

I bent down to get my jacket, and he tried to execute some kind of suave contortion to put his arm around my shoulders. Had he swept his arm up around the back like a normal person, and not an Internet Person, everything would have gone according to plan and I wouldn’t be telling you this, because it would be boring.

Happily for the sake of stories told to strangers, he did not. He swept his arm up in front of me, like he was going to put it over my head, and then have it land on my shoulders. At that exact moment, i bent forward to grab my jacket. We collided.  Smooth.

For the second time that day, my mascara was ruined because of tears, but these weren’t anything emotional. It seems to be a pretty normal body response to being elbowed full force in the  face, you know? It wasn’t a little tap. My eyes watered. I tasted blood. I could feel my lip puffing up. I swore.

For him, the phrase ‘died a thousand deaths’ didn’t even begin to cover it. He apologized. He asked if I was okay.  He apologized more.

Johnny Rotten was so very, very upset by this. I started to laugh. Of course, most people don’t laugh right after they get hit in the teeth, and he mistook it for sobbing, which I found even funnier. He was ready to accept that this had been a complete failure, and started gathering my things so that he could take me home.  Once I caught my breath, I convinced him that I really didn’t hate him. I knew it was an accident, I wasn’t badly hurt, and I wanted to continue the evening.

It was more than that though, for me. Yes, I absolutely did want to continue the evening, but you know what? Him bashing me in the teeth took all the pressure off. Yeah, maybe I did end up answering the door in pj pants, with a yelling infant and a leaking face…. but at least I didn’t turn tentative affection into outright battery.

The pressure was off. We were now even-steven, and I knew I wanted to see him again.

And we play a dirge. Maybe.

Last night, my computer– not a beautiful beast, but a terribly hard working one– played a joke on me.

I had been looking at art, y’know, like I do, and after seeing Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, it was all, “Cool… not a pipe, I get it. You know what else isn’t real?”

I expected it to say ‘your face’.

(Oooh, buuuurn)

I expected it to say ‘your mom’.

(Oooh, double buuuuuurn)

It said ‘your keyboard’. Then I swear it made a beep-boop laughing noise and quit. Man, my computer is a jerk.

Anyway, this is all to say that I likely will be a little slow and sporadic for the next few days until I work out a solution.

The most Awkward Pickup Line Ever

A few years ago, I was standing in the frozen food aisle at the local supermarket, and this gentleman, to use the term extremely generously, moseyed on up to me.

“Hey”, he said to me quietly. Then, “HEY!”

I turned, thinking perhaps I had dropped my purse or that he had mistaken me for store staff. Believe it or not, it happens a lot, and since I tend to know where everything in a store is anyway, I’m usually pretty helpful. I smiled, but kept the cold-dead- “state your business!” type eyes.

“Can I help you?” I asked coolly.
“Yeah,” he grinned. ” I like your arm.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and waited for me to respond.

My forearm brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours.

Of course I said “thank you”. It’s not every day someone tries to pick you up by the frozen corn by telling you they admire one of your limbs.

Still, years later, I wonder: is there an appropriate response to “I like your arm” that I should have used? I’d like to know, in case it ever happens again.

First date: The one where I realize that he wasn’t the awkward internet person, I was.

Johnny Rotten and I met online and he had asked me if I’d like to meet him for realsies.

He lived a couple of hundred miles away–1.6 x a couple of hundred miles if you’re a Metric Molly–and I agreed to dinner and general buddy-debauchery. Who would drive that far, into another country no less,  to go out for dinner with someone they hadn’t met? I’m not sure I’d walk to the  end of the block for that, personally, because what if it’s all ewwww-y or axe-murderer-y or worse, just plain awkward? We’re not talking about Regular People here, folks. We are talking about Internet People. You guys know.

Anyway, I believe I told him the city I lived in, and to get a hotel room because Internet People do not stay with me, even if they have driven for hours just to go out for dinner which is totally ridiculous and time-wasting, and to call me when he got into town. Then, of course, I thought nothing more about it, because I figured it was one of those situations like when you run into a friend from high school and you discuss going out for a drink, not because either of you want to but because society demands that half-assed plan-making. And then you don’t end up going out, because duh, and then you run into each other six months down the road and you do it all over again.

The appointed day and time came, and the phone rang. Holy cow, it was Johnny Rotten, and the caller id showed that he was calling from a local number, which means that he was actually in my town, which what the hell, Johnny Rotten?? This was not how it was supposed to go. Something was supposed to come up, he was supposed to back out gracefully, I was supposed to act vaguely disappointed, and life would go on.  But him being in town? That meant I should probably see him, and that I should probably change out of pj pants and maybe put a bra on. Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it.

My bluff of sure-I’ll-meet-you had been called and raised to triple dog dare status. He had driven 1.6 x a gazillion miles to come see me, so I had to go. My friends, this was the flagpole scene from A Christmas Story. I couldn’t back out.  He was on his way over to pick me up for dinner.

I placed Munchkin, who couldn’t roll over yet, in the middle of a queen sized bed, with pillows all around her to keep her wiggly little butt from going anywhere. Better safe than sorry, right? I moved about three feet away, and started to do my makeup quickly so I could trick him into thinking that I don’t actually wander around free of makeup and  in pj pants all day. Oh, the lies you tell when putting your best foot forward, huh? No, I ALWAYS look great. I totally do not get pimples. I never yell “five second rule” when my favorite cookie drops on the kitchen floor, snatch it up, dust it off and eat it anyway. Never. Because I’m classy. All lies.

The getting ready part was intense. One coat of mascara, check the baby, eyeliner on one eye– looks great!– other eye– ooh, not matchy. Half cat eye, half Tammy Faye, ew– wipe off, try again, better. Check the baby. Bra. Where the hell is my bra? Why do I have to ask myself these things? Check the baby. Put shirt on. No, not that one, it has spit up on it. Yeah, that one. Looking good! Check the baby. Check the clock. Forget what time it is after five whole seconds and check the clock again. Check the baby. Concealer. Good. Powde–

This is an artist’s rendition of what I looked like when I realized what happened. You can tell it’s me because of the perfectly applied mascara.

And then everything was stopped by the bloodcurdlingest, most indignant shriek I had ever heard. Munchkin, who had never been able to roll over before, decided to be a child prodigy. She some how not only figured out how to roll, but also how to escape the Himalayaesque mountain range of pillows I had used. End result? Plop. Wee child fell off the bed.

Munchkin wasn’t hurt. She was, however, frightened and more pissed off that I had ever seen her before, and was letting the entire world know that she was not impressed by this situation with a pitch perfect High C held long enough to make Maria Callas green with envy.

I picked her up, and tried to soothe her as I contemplated what a Heinous Mothering Crime I had just committed. What’s a reasonable new mom to do? Burst in to tears, of course. Not in a beautiful dramatic actress way, either. I fully mean in the snotty, red faced, blotchy, gross way.  She mostly calmed down, but it took me a little longer.

I had her in one arm, and I trudged back to the bathroom to wipe my now-puddly makeup off because it was leaking into my eyes and causing a lot of pain and itching.  Mascara with fibers is great when it’s actually on your lashes– ooh, the lengthening! The thickening!– but when it actually gets into your eye, you’re kind of screwed. That shit hurts.Since it’s probably made of tar and fiberglass, this kind of makes sense.

I had gotten one eye done, and there was a knock at the door. Remember how I started this story talking about how Johnny Rotten had asked me out, then inexplicably changed over to a story about the Munchkin? Yes. This is where the stories converge. I was a snotty, red eyed mess, my kid was still semi-squalling, and my first ‘sort of, kind of date’ in years was standing on my doorstep, probably staring at the door and waiting for the vision of beauty that I had pretended to be to greet him. Excellent. Lucky this was a just-friends-date and not a date-date, right?

I quickly invented the acronym “FML”, then answered the door.

Holy Hannah. He was cute. And he smelled good. And he didn’t look like he had been crying. Because I’m shallow and because he was cute, I really wanted this to be a date-date and not a just-friends-date. The Head And Shoulders slogan ran through my head and was kind enough to remind me, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. His first impression was neatly pressed, lightly cologned and clean shaven. My first impression was that of a big smile through snot and tears, of makeup by Courtney Love and ratty pj pants.  He wasn’t the unstable, inappropriate Internet Person; I was.

Damn it. FML.

Election Predictions, and you KNOW it’s not over tomorrow, right?

I’m pretty vocal about being tired of this election nonsense, which makes me pretty awesome and also pretty unpopular. I really feel that with the lies and treachery and confrontations, I have been held hostage in front of a 24 hour Dynasty marathon for the last two years, only without the fancy hats, the exclamations of “you BITCH!” and slapfests.
All of these would have made it better. Seriously, think about it. There is nothing in the world that cannot be made more interesting by approaching it a Joan Collins kind of way.
A friend tried to cheer me up by telling me it’s almost over, and it’s true. This phase of it is. Unfortunately, we’re set to move into the next phase at 7 o’clock tomorrow evening.  Are you all ready for more analysis than you ever thought possible? I am not, but I know it’s coming, as is the “I knew it all along! I told you… remember? When I said this thing might happen? I AM AN EXPERT.” thing. Brace yourselves.

Just so I’m not poking you in the ribs tomorrow night with my “I told you so”s, here are my predictions:

1) Someone will win.

2) Millions of people will be thrilled.

3) Someone else will lose.

4)Millions of people (probably different millions than the first batch I mentioned) will be terribly upset. Some will even go so far as to threaten to move to different countries to protest this.

5) No one will be moving anywhere, because it’s a lot easier to say than do.

6) The words ‘fraud’ and ‘recount’ will be said so many times that they will stop sounding like words and start sounding like verbal typos and/or fungal infections that one catches from the tile floor at the local public pool.

7) There will be snark. Oh Lord, there will be snark. It won’t even be good, funny snark, unless MST3K is hosting election coverage and no one bothered to tell me.

8)I will realize that there are lots of things no one bothered to tell me. Not just about the elections, but probably about school forms that need signing and dog food that needs to be purchased too.

9) At some point, I will see a voter on tv who has so much bluster about his team winning that I will wonder if  he has confused this with a football game. I will say something about this, and Johnny Rotten will remind me that it’s a weird comment for me to make because I don’t actually know anything about football. He will then try to explain the rules to me, again. They wont sink in, again.

10) Manchild will vote for the very first time. He will be very excited and will chatter our ears off about it, which is awesome because hooray democracy! And hooray becoming an adult!

So. What are YOUR predictions? Lay ’em on me.

Sunday short and shout: And that’s why I named her “Munchkin”

Munchkin asked why I chose her given name for her.

I told her it was because “Butthead” was already taken. Uh-huh. Uh-huh-huh-huh.

I’d never name her Butthead. She’s much more like Beavis’ alter-ego, Cornholio. (via Fanpop)

Honesty: it’s what brings mothers and tween daughters closer together.

I just realized there will be people scandalized by this, and they shouldn’t be. It’s not like I was going to name her ‘Butthead ‘for real. ‘Beavis’ would have been way classier. Also, My Aunt Becky would probably approve of this, because she’s a  totally rad bloggerina, one of the CoolKids, and– keep in mind I am yelling this like an emokid–“she understands me, not like YOU!”

You should go visit her over at Mommy Wants Vodka .

If reading things aren’t your style (and who can blame you? You’ve already read, like, 100 words here!) and you want to look at pretties instead, you really ought to go check out this shirt by cubik, because, well,  you should. Winnie the Pooh plus Tardis equals more win than you are ready for. Brace yourself. Winter is coming (and you’ll probably want to cover your torso, no? I hear nipple frostbite is a bitch.)

Disclaimer: I’m not paid for recommending these links to you in anything other than warm fuzzy feelings. I just think they’re both awesome.

Grape Skittles can go straight back to the hell from whence they came.

When I was a little kid, I was probably what one could consider an opiate addict.

Wait.  One sentence in, and I already need to back this up to explain. When I was a little kid, I was really sick  with what is clinically known as ‘bronco-pneumatic lung funk”.. Basically, BPLF* is a condition in which your lungs freak the hell out over every single breath of air you take. You cough all day, you cough all night, you choke on your food and any words you try to say. It was pretty much the uncoolest thing to ever happen to me– well, at least one of the top five, maybe ten. Plenty of uncool crap has happened since then, but it was definitely the uncoolest thing that happened to me when I was six though, and that has to count for something.

My parents were good parents then, and they are good parents now. I’m pretty sure they are categorically against enabling 6 year olds to become addicts for absolutely no reason at all, so don’t hate on them in the comments, mmkay? There was need for this.

We lived in a tiny little town up north with no hospital– or even resident doctor– and I know my parents had been told by the visiting doctor that I was sick enough that I may have to get flown to the children’s hospital a thousand miles away so that I could recover properly. Until that point, he prescribed an anti-tussive cough syrup that would ensure that I would at least rest at night instead of hacking and wheezing and, uh, ‘tussing’.

Dudes, it totally worked. I did sleep. And I slept and I slept and I slept. And then I slept some more. While Drew Barrymore was smoking her first joint at the tender age of eight-or-whatever, I was six, and high as something that is higher than a kite (a weather balloon? A meteor? Charlie Sheen?) on some kind of narcotic cough syrup.  I’d like to think I was precocious in a True Hollywood Story kind of way, but the truth is, I was a really sick kiddo.

I don’t remember a whole lot of it, and most of what I remember is pretty fuzzy and hazy. I remember a lot of coughing until I threw up. I remember people being concerned that I had become really skinny. I remember sleeping all the time. I remember taking the cough syrup and my eyes feeling like they were rolling back in my head. I remember epic constipation. I remember it being dreadfully boring. While everyone else was outside playing, I remember lying in my bed and half-wishing I could join them– then going back to sleep because thinking was exhausting.

The one thing that I remember as strongly as if I just experienced it ten seconds ago was that the cough syrup was grape flavored. Pardon me: “grape” flavored. Even typing about it makes my lips curl up a little as  I’m trying to avoid the memory of a taste from nearly three decades ago.

It’s funny how artificial fruit flavor tastes like the complete opposite of the flavors of real fruit. Have you ever noticed that? The opposite of yes is no. The opposite of left is right. The opposite of grape is “grape”. The quotation marks make all the difference.

It’s nearly thirty years later, and I cannot shake my hatred of this medication and it’s pathetic flavor-efforts to try to trick me into thinking it wasn’t so bad. “Grape”, my ass. I was not fooled then and I am not fooled now.

Every Halloween, I think about this as I rip open bags of Skittles to round up and throw away the offensive “grape” ones.  I sequester the “grape” lollipops and put them to the side so I don’t put one anywhere near my delicate little tastebuds. “Grape” soda? Don’t even open it around me because I will get unrepentantly stabby. Don’t taint my world with the opposite-of-grape, people. It’s an abomination.

These ‘grape’ suckers know what they did, and that’s why they are in time-out forever.

I get laughed at by the fam for all of this.  I don’t really care,  because you know what? “Grape” doesn’t taste like grape. It will never taste like grape. To me, it just tastes like boredom, chest pain and not being able to poop for days.  They can laugh if they want, but I bet they wouldn’t be in a hurry to eat something that tastes like constipation and sadness either.

* Actually, BPLF was a nasty combination of bronchitis, tracheitis, pretty severe respiratory allergies, and strep throat that lasted for months, but I think “broncho-pneumatic lung funk” sums it up with a little more panache and zazz, which is super important if you eventually want someone to hold a charity telethon for you.