Today's Happenings

Walking to work is getting progressively more interesting. Here's what happened today:

I walked by the gas station near my house, and there was a guy standing by his car filling up his tank.

Guy: Hey sugar! What's shaking?

Me: Don't talk to me you vagrant filth. (he wasn't a vagrant)

Guy: Wuh...wha?

Me: You are ugly. (he wasn't)

Guy: Whuhf?



You may be saying "geez, why were you so rude?" I'll tell you why. Because cat calling women is disgusting and tactless. Men - do not cat call women. DON'T DO IT. Plus, any woman who responds positively to cat calling isn't worth having. I taught him a lesson, and I feel pretty proud of myself.

Second happening:

I was walking past an empty lot between two houses, and I saw a rogue quail! Usually quail wander around together, but this was a solitary. I had two reactions to seeing the quail.


And...


You see, quail are very tasty. It's also very rare to run into one in the city, so... should I take the opportunity to pounce? If he decides to run out into the middle of the street he will get smooshed, and then a lot of tasty quail meat will go to waste. But alas, I could not make myself attack the quail. Plus, I'd just eaten cereal.

And at last, we come to the final happening:

I'd like to say I remembered to bring a blow torch with me today for the silk worms, but I didn't. It's okay though, because I didn't have any run-ins with them today. Well.... sort of. I did see a silk worm, but he was dead and didn't end up in my hair.



All in all a pretty good morning!

My Nemesis, the Silk Worm

I walk to work most days because it's close to my house. Might as well, especially keeping in mind the desire for fast and severe weight loss (I'm a bridesmaid at a beach wedding in May). Though I doubt walking 3 miles will contribute much to that.

Anyway, if you know me, you know that my not-so-secret dream profession would be to become an Entomologist. What's that you say? Why, it is one who studies insects. My whole life I've been obsessed with bugs of all kinds. When I was little, I used to go to my back yard and collect them. My favorite insect to collect was the cicada.


This is a cicada in the nymph stage. They do not fly, they just toodle around with a hard exoskeleton until one day they decide to climb up a tree and hatch, much like a butterfly. Then they'll sit there on top of their shells waiting for their wings to dry, and then they look like this.



You don't have to tell me how amazing that is. I already know. I loved to watch this process growing up - it was absolutely fascinating to me. But one day, I was shocked out of my reverie when I witnessed something despicable.

A BIRD SWOOPED OUT OF THE SKY AND ATE A CICADA FRIEND OF MINE BEFORE HE WAS EVEN DONE DRYING HIS WINGS!!!



Abhorrent filth! At least give the cicada a fighting chance..... BAD FORM! As a child I was stricken at the thought of these cicadas, whose life span was so very short, being picked off before they even had a chance to explore the wondrous skies. So, in my lil brain, I formed a plan to ensure the proliferation of my insect friends.

The next morning I woke up with a start. I reached under my bed, and grabbed my caboodle. Yes. My caboodle. Remember those?



In an attempt to beat the birds, I ran around my back yard and then, once that was done, the neighborhood like the Tasmanian devil collecting hatching cicadas and putting them my caboodle, proclaiming "they will be safe, by GOD!"



Now...erm....all the cicadas in my caboodle died because I forgot about them. But hey, I tried.

Anyway, now you know of my love for bugs. But to get back on task about walking to work and such...

Naturally when one takes the time to walk, they tend to pay more close attention to their surroundings. But traffic is also a factor to contend with, and thus distraction by said surroundings must be kept to a moderate level. So every time I walk, I look around to make sure I'm not going to be squashed by cars... because that's what you should do when walking. But lately, I've been having run-ins with something else entirely. Worms.

Every time I look another way, while walking, they come out of nowhere and slap me right in the face. Let me illustrate how:



Tree worms. With their little silk lines, decide to just hang in mid air. And when your attention is captured by something else, there they are. Right in your face going "oh heyyyyy, y'all ran into my silk!"

Every five seconds. I swear. I'm looking at the ground...



"Oh heyyyyy! Y'all need to watch out cuz yew ruinin' my silk!!"

Looking at a car that just slammed on its breaks...



"Oh heyyyy, y'all really need to look where yew walk!"

Looking at some trees in bloom...



"Oh heyyyyy, I guess y'all didn't see me! Here I am in your hair now!"

Now as much as I love bugs, even worms, I'm about to take these little em-effers out. I swear, I'm one step away from bringing a blow torch with me. So if you live in Austin, or anywhere where these guys reside....watch out.....



"Ima getchuuu y'all!"

The Sheen OptiCorn

A few days ago, or a week perhaps, I posted "Pondering what Charlie Sheen and I are going to call our band" on facebook. I loved the responses I got on it, and they kept me entertained all day. But it didn't stop there - I actually had a dream about my band with Charlie Sheen, which I will elaborate on soon.

My whole love affair with Charlie Sheen just recently started. I periodically go through bouts of not wanting to look at or hear anything in the way of news. Let's face it, the news is depressing. The only reason we ever hear positive things in the media, in my opinion, is because they simply need fillers between the horrific and depressing stories. Fear sells. They just give us the filler stories so we all just don't put down our remotes and jump out of a window. Thus, every now and then I need to disconnect and a month ago I did just that. But that can only last so long you see. If you have facebook, you're bound to catch some bits of news even if you aren't looking to.

So about 2 weeks ago I see this "winning" thing trending. "What? What's going on here with this winning?" I said to myself. Finally after seeing eleventy billion posts of it, curiosity got the better of me. So I googled, and I came into the most amazing set of quotes ever. I wish my brain was exactly like Charlie's, because my blog would be SO much more interesting. Take this particular gem...


"I'm tired of pretending like I'm not bitching, a total fricking rock star from Mars, and people can't figure me out; they can't process me. I don't expect them to. You can't process me with a normal brain."

Freakin' YES Charlie Sheen!!!!!! I've been waking up every day for the past 27 years scratching my head thinking "why can't people just accept the fact that I'm a bitching rock star from Mars?" Thank you for finally speaking out against the oppression.

Here's where we get to the dream part. After posting that on facebook and going to sleep at night, all of the colors of the rainbow...even indigo...came together to form a magical awesomefest of music in my sleeping brain. In the dream, there were three key elements:

First - Charlie Sheen and I were a metal band called Charlie Cheen. Or at least, that's what we were announced as. But definitely not Sheen. It was Cheen.

Second - We only had one song that was comprised of one word.

You've heard metal bands, right? You can't ever tell what they're saying. They could be saying one word or multiple words, but it's impossible to tell. They could be saying "I love to take tea and eat biscuits and mini cucumber sandwiches on non-consecutive Tuesdays" and you'd never know. You'd just be sitting there thinking, "Mannnnn, that's some badass noise dewwwwwd." That is, if you like metal. I think it's horrid because of precisely what I just said in that quoted sentence back there. Only...take out badass. It's just noise. So...

Third - The one word in the song was, of course, WINNING.

Like I said though, you can't tell. Because we're a metal band. So we just say winning over and over again like this -

WINNINGGGGGGGGGGUH. Winningwinningwinningwinningwinningggggggggggggguh.

Really it just depends on the music and how erratic it is. So, it's a judgement call as to whether or not you say WINNING as one word just really drawn out, or you say WINNING many times in succession. I guess as the singer one can feel free to exercise some creative control.

Now, for my part in this band I - well - to be quite honest I have no idea what my part was. All I know is that I was on stage. Maybe I was like, pyrotechnics specialist or something. Charlie was, of course, the entire purpose of the band. The odd thing was, I knew it was Charlie Sheen but he, erm, didn't quite look like himself. Let me try and explain with some pictures...

Charlie Sheen was a combination of as follows...


Charlie Sheen head


Optimus Prime


A magicalll unicorrrrrn!

Here's how he was assembled: Actual head plus unicorn horn. Optimus Prime torso. Unicorn legs and tail.

Basically, he was like the most awesome centaur ever.


This guy ain't got nothin' on my Sheen OptiCorn!

In closing, not only am I irreparably strange, but my dreams are too.


Here's some of the best Charlie quotes, free of charge!

"Winning, anyone? Rhymes with winning. Anyone? Yeah, that would be us. Sorry, man, didn’t make the rules."

"I am battle-tested bayonets, bro."

"Look what I’m dealing with, man, I’m dealing with fools and trolls."

"It’s just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee, because I don’t have time for these clowns."

"You have the right to kill me, but you do not have the right to judge me. Boom. That’s the whole movie. That’s life.”

“I’m sorry man, I got magic and I’ve got poetry in my fingertips, you know, most of the time, and this includes naps. I’m an F-18, bro.”

“Oh wait, can’t process it. Losers. Winning. Buh bye.”

“There are parts of me that are Dennis Hopper.”

“I don’t live in the middle anymore. That’s where you get slaughtered. That’s where you get embarrassed. From the prom queen.”

“The only thing I’m addicted to right now is winning.”

“I’m not Thomas Jefferson. He was a pussy.”

“I have a disease? Bullshit. I cured it with my brain.”

“People are mystified by this odyssey that refuses to quit calling itself Charlie Sheen."


Well said, sir!