Smells Like Summer

Yes indeedy, my little cupcakes! Nothing puts a calm, serene grin on an Assassin’s face quite like summer. The feeling of the warm sun on your skin, making your hair shiny, burning your cheeks and your conk and making you look like an alcoholic for the first couple of weeks till it tans… And by “you” I totally, 100%, mean “me”.

And although it’s only May, it’s been around the 80 degrees mark all week with a nice breeze. It's like freaking San Diego here! Take that Red!

However, being almost summer makes a person start frowning and pulling at their fleshy bits in disgust and thinking about making those fleshy bits a bit smaller. You see, having just emerged from a cold winter spent mostly watching TV, painting and eating scads of cheese and chocolate and doing virtually nothing that involves breaking a sweat at all, spring means shedding the consequences of such sedentary behaviour, eating fruit again and doing something more energetic with your spare time.

So that means walking where possible. Which is fine. I made playlists for every occasion because Lord knows I cannot walk anywhere without a playlist because that would involve suffering my own company for an hour without entertainment. The horror!

And also? Zumba.

Yes, you heard me right. Zumba. As in Latiny-gyratey-dance aerobics.

You can stop laughing now. I appreciate your skepticism, I truly do, because I have about as much dancing talent as a drunk man with one leg and vertigo. I’m ok with this. I’d love to be a natural lithe, snaky-hipped, all abs and rubber bones, sexing-up-the-dancefloor type of mover, but clearly I’m not. So I just do the best I can and have fun with it. So what if I look like someone who’s in desperate need of a bathroom? So what if my expression is less, “Hey baby, I’m hot!” and more “Good God, hemorrhoids are a bitch!”, I have FUN damn it.

Besides, I only do it at home for now, not in public for heaven’s sakes. If I was doing actual classes I’m sure I’d be on YouTube by now under, “Hilarious Rhythm-challenged Halfwit, Dancing like cripple”.

Only, you know…with less grammar. Because it’s YouTube. It’d probably be more, “Yo Batshit Crazy Beeyatch Gitz Grooveh”.

It’s all Alyson's fault. I use her full name because that’s what people do when they want to let certain other people know that they’ve been a bad girl. She introduced me to Zumba, therefore, is fully responsible for me looking like a constipated ostrich. And also because I watched some demos and thought “That looks fun, how hard can it be?”

Yeah. Now I not only dance like I’m on drugs, I ache everywhere it’s possible to ache and so I now walk like it too. So thanks for that Aly. Truly.

So when I haven’t been Zumbaing my ass off in the mornings to wake me up, I’ve been painting in a nice, leisurely fashion, in a paint-covered, oversized t-shirt and cut off, drawstring sweat pants and flip flops (and that combo is as sexy as it sounds, people) so all in all, I think balance is achieved. For now at least. Between that and the fact I am hideously addicted to Kashi’s Fruit & Grain bars in Chocolate Raspberry, I am a contented little fucker.

Talking of painting, I finished another Airstream. I now have twelve Airstreams in my series. I’m a freaking Airstream maniac. I decided not to fret about this and just embrace it.

So yeah. Back to work. Have a lovely afternoon my little pumpernickel buns!

Stuff and Nonsense

Holy crap, people. I’m either getting lazier or busier, I can’t decide which it is. Either way, you’re all getting a well-deserved break from my ramblings lately, for which I expect a thank you compensation from each of you in the form of moist, delicious sponge cake. Just bake a fabulously decadent cake and overnight it to: Veg’s Belly, c/o Veg, Awesomeville.

You’ll be delighted to learn my cough is on the way out. It’s about time. My neighbours were getting annoyed with the walls rattling from my giant, heaving, phlegmy bosom. OK, my bosom’s not that giant but my cough sure was. It was quite pitiful. I actually coughed so hard at one point, that I managed to pull a muscle in my neck and lower head that I didn’t know existed! I might even have discovered it for science. I am that talented.

 Anyway, that hurt. Quite a bit. Especially if I tried to turn my head to the right at all. Ibuprofen was my best friend for a while there. That and pouting a lot.

What else have I done lately? Well, despite my legendary hermitty tendencies, I attended a little art party gathering in honour of my paintings (or as I call them “the precious”), where I did my once yearly social butterfly bit, talked a lot of nonsense about art, which I know eff all about outside of my own stuff, then once I reached maximum entertainment overload, went and locked myself in a tiny room with a lemon cake and rocked in the corner for half an hour till I felt pure again. Hallelujah! It’s hard being anti-social you know. It takes work. Cake helps.

Everything Is Wal*Mart’s Fault

Well hey there!

One day I’m actually going to have something to say instead of updates on my well being, which I know you’re all on the edge of your seats about at all times. I mean, who wouldn’t be? I’m obviously of primo importance. It won’t be today though. Sorry.

My stupid cold, which I thought had disintegrated more than a week ago, decided to just relocate to my chest, so now as well as sniffling and sounding like I am living in a tunnel, I now appear to have coughed up a lung. I can feel it rattling around in there, looser than Lindsay Lohan’s knicker elastic. Each rasping rumble sounds like an evil quake surging forth from the core of the Earth.

And my rib cage feels like Jenna Jameson after she’s been pounded by Tito Ortiz. Take that in whichever manner you like, they all work. Holy shit, this is the cold that never dies.

The best part of it is that people look at you in horror in public, like you’re carrying that plague that causes humans to turn into zombies, in movies. They gather their whiny offspring and herd them away from the danger zone, worried eyes never leaving your red, spluttering face, as though tracking a wild animal, lest you suddenly spring up and eat the heads off of their babies. There’s really no need, people. For a start, WalMart has a McDonald’s. I always choose tasty, salty fries over baby heads, when presented with the choice.

Well except that one time. But really, that was the baby’s fault for looking so delicious and meaty.

At least for once I could stand proudly in line at the cashier and know I, with my lung rumbling, red nose and big, wet sneezes that shook the roof, was every bit as annoying as that shrieking kid behind me who didn’t want to get out of the cart.

Hey lady, why are you whipping out a face mask? Do you not savour breathing in my asbestos-ridden cough breath?

I consider my annoyance a small but satisfying victory. That and the fact WalMart has a pitiful cheese selection so I am forced to buy the best cheese there is, Armstrong – in a big, fuck off block of strong cheddar. It’s that or that plastic shit toddlers eat or that they put on movie nachos.

It’s also WalMart’s fault that after two fringeless years, I now have bangs again. I happened to pass a mirror as I was cart-bashing random, hyperactive toddlers out of the way, in my haste to get from the skincare aisle to the chocolate department (don’t stand in the way of a chocolate run, brats, especially by a lady fueled by evil and PMS!) and thought “Fuck me, it’s that wookie dude from ‘Star Wars’!” then realized, with defeated resignation that no. That is most definitely ME. So I went home and had a hot date with some scissors.

It’s all better now. Nothing to see here.

Bulletproof

While I wait in rapt anticipation for the day I can breathe through my schnozola again without sounding like a dying whale, I can’t help but notice summer seems to be having a preview in the ‘hood. 70 degrees, buds on the trees, blinding flashes of luminescent, clammy, wobbly white flesh abundant on somewhat incredulous passing humans.

Winter is long in the northern states. Long, dark and cold. But now, where there was a multitude of never ending dark evenings, during which one did little more than sit on the couch eating cookies and feeling one’s pattoot expand outwards into a jelly cushion of flesh that could block out the sun at its lowest point in the sky, now it’s getting dark later and the sun’s out to warm your skin and you can walk to the parking lot without even thinking about a coat, an unattractive ear flap hat, a big, fuck-off pair of boots or saying a bad, bad blasphemous word. 

Now I only say those words when confronted with a lack of cheese or Diet Pepsi in the fridge, or an over-zealous Jehova’s Witness at the door, trying to save my soul.

I know right? Like I have a soul.

Anyway, I just came on to share a quick anecdote about how, when standing in line in the supermarket last week, this old lady with a walking cane shuffled past me, en route to the Depends aisle, or tuna aisle or wherever else single, mobility-challenged, polyester-slack-wearing octogenarians go in these places that are too sad to contemplate fully.

Just as I was starting to feel all depressed about this unfortunate lady and my brain is concocting a tear-jerking back story about her living alone with her seven cats, a hole in the roof and a fridge full of TV Dinners for one, she managed to turn my impending sadness into pure, unadulterated joy, by ripping a gigantic, resounding fart. Right there in the middle of the store. Yes, this frail looking, sweet old lady, just fired a colossal fanny-bullet (that’s “fanny” in the American sense, you Brits, don’t get excited) and kept on walking like nothing happened. Like she hadn’t even noticed that thunderous, vibrating behemoth exiting her back yard like a charging elephant.

SWEET! I was slack-jawed with amazement and delight and desperate to share it with my fellow man. I glanced around furtively, looking at other shoppers hoping to catch someone else who’d noticed, someone to snicker with and wink knowingly at, but not a single person was acknowledging the gargantuan butt-freight-train that had just blasted through town and was working its way down aisle five.

Some people have no sense of humour. But me, I smirked to myself the whole way through checkout and again when I passed the same lady in the parking lot, no doubt still crop-dusting the area with the fragrant remains of prune juice and green beans.

It’s the one thing I’m looking forward to about being 80. Emitting bodily eruptions as often and as publicly as possible and being not at all apologetic for it. Because when you’re 80, you’re bulletproof. You’ve earned it, baby. I mean everything else is going south, you might as well have a good time where you can, right? In fact, when I’M 80, I plan on deviously dishing out my bottom biscuits strategically, in areas likely to cause the most offense or hilarity.

Yes. I’m already planning my deviousness ahead.

Things of Great Importance

You know what? Swearing's a fine tool to have in your arsenal, and Lord knows it's my favourite power tool of all - even better than a giant, gleaming meat cleaver - but lately I've been noticing some severe gender bias when it comes to cursing. For example, why is everything about fucking one's mother? You never hear of anyone suggesting you have relations with someone's father right? "Hey fuck you, fatherfucker!" just doesn't have the same emphasis and loathing as "motherfucker", right? You just don't hear that.

Of course, that may be because the fucking of a father is less sacred somehow. Maybe fathers just enjoy being fucked by degenerates, rendering the insult null and void? I don't know. I 'm speculating here.

Plus have you noticed that people are happy to point an accusatory finger at someone's predilection for orally pleasuring the penile object, yet you never hear anyone yelling, "get out of here, vaginalicker!" possibly because vagina licking is considered tickety-boo, or a badge of honor or something. You might get the response, "Yeah, I lick vaginas, so what?" "Cocksucker" on the other hand, is an evil, evil word. You can take a man's home, you can bully his kids, you can mess up his car, but do not suggest he sucks another man's womb-tickler.

Swearing is a sexist realm, that's all I'm saying here, people. I demand equal rights for swearing!

Having gotten that off of my chest, hi! I'm sick. Today already, for example, I've sneezed about seven hundred times. And they're big, loud, wet sneezes filled with the pestilence. I could take out entire fire departments with one hearty sneeze. Yesterday I had that sort of sore throat that felt (and looked) like someone decided to sand down my throat with a stubbly chin. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to talk. It hurt to complain (but I did it anyway just to hear my own voice). It kept me awake the entire night being sore and icky, then today, I'm all headachey and fluffy headed and producing the big, wet sneezes of plague death. And my nose is like a beacon on a stormy night. You could keep ships off the rocks with my schnoz right now it's so red and inflamed. You know, if there were oceans in North Dakota. I'm hurting, people, please smother me with sympathy and ease my pathos.

To make matters worse, my computer's having some sort of meltdown, which may or may not be to do with a less than kosher Windows operating system it may or may not have had installed that has now imploded spectacularly, leaving my only access to the web available through hacking the Windows Narrator. Don't ask, it's complicated. Anyway, it should be fixed soon. Hopefully I will be too.

So yeah, I'm sick, my computer's sick and swearing is sexist. That's pretty much all you need to know.

How To Avoid Becoming A Serial Killer

In part one of my new, smash hit, informative series of short educational essays on how to be a non-suspicious, functioning human being, I tell you about one of the most important pointers of all – how to avoid becoming a serial killer.

You  see, I have noticed that you can tell a lot about a person by the vessels they use to consume their beverages.   For example, it’s a little known fact that anyone who drinks a cold beverage, like soda or milk or juice, from a coffee mug, has just unwittingly fulfilled the main marker criteria for a burgeoning serial killer.    It’s an alert that’s up there with disembowelling squirrels and firing rockets at the postman while he's delivering your monthly copy of "JUGGS".

See, every sane person knows that mugs are for coffee and even, on occasion, for tea or hot chocolate or even a warming beaker of steaming hot tomato soup while trying to snuff out an untimely bout of the influenza or other insistent, system-attacking pestilence.  Only a heinous, in-bred, red-eyed, mutant, who carries a meat cleaver and a diagram of the location of all the major human organs in their bag or man-purse, would think there was nothing wrong in sipping a cold refreshment from a coffee mug.  This is an etiquette no no, like wearing a scrunchy to a cocktail party, or Paris Hilton doing anything, anywhere, anytime that involves us having to hear about it. 

Cold drinks go in glasses or even plastic tumblers or bottles.   If you put them in a mug, you are basically declaring, “I am going to suck all of the blood out of a kitten and yank out the entrails of a kindergarten student with pliers before stuffing the entire bloody mix into your mama’s vagina.”

My other criteria for spotting a twisted serial killer are as follows:

Wears taped glasses
Blinks a lot
Has the names “Luther” or “Lucas” somewhere in their name
Uses three names (Wendy B. agrees!) 
Wears pants that are too short
Is obsessed with Tom Hanks
Can’t say the word “panties” without drooling on his shirt
Gets a boner from any of the following; power tools, butter, bile, armpits, cat food, covering nipples in Creosote, videos of amputations, the movie “Titanic”, Howie Mandel.

Basically, stay away from any of those and you should never have to keep dismembered bodies in the crawl space under your house.

Rosemary’s Boobies

Thanks to those of you who commented on my maintenance post, weirdos. I mean that affectionately.

Ok, things seem to be fairly finished now and working regarding the new spanky layout. It’s sort of “in your face” isn’t it? Just how I like it, baby. It works in Chrome and Firefox anyway. If it looks like a giant unicorn took a rainbow coloured dump on your screen, you’re probably using an old version of Internet Explorer, in which case, you should get a browser that doesn’t suck the joy out of the universe, loser.

I bet you use AOL too, you sick bastard.

Onto the meaty part (that’s what she said!)

I read something really alarming today. I read that Hollywood is thinking of remaking “Rosemary’s Baby”. At first, I couldn’t believe anyone thought it necessary to remake such a classic movie, but then I punched myself in the face for my blind stupidity, because of course someone was going to remake it. Someone always remakes classic movies and makes a mockery of them, because somewhere in Hollywood, sits some over-stuffed executive who thinks people can’t cope with any piece of film more than ten years old, therefore, sets about producing lame new versions full of special effects and pretty people who can’t act and destroying everything that actually made the original, work.

Plus I don’t get it – there are thousands of talented, starving screenwriters out there producing wonderfully creative material, so why do we have to continuously remake movies that already exist? Why people? It boils my giblets, it really does.

Also, I heard Michael Bay is going to be the one making it. I’ll let that sink in for a second. Michael Bay wants to remake “Rosemary’s Baby”. No, I’m not shitting you. I wish I was. I guess in this new version, Rosemary’s going to have enormous tits and explode at some point.

The exploding part might not be such a bad idea, since I also read that Lindsay Lohan is in talks to play the Mia Farrow character. Once I stopped laughing (because really, if you can you think of a less appropriate actress to portray an innocent, sympathetic and pure newlywed than la Lohan, I’d like to hear it) I figured they must be remaking it as a comedy or something. Unless I missed the part in the original where Rosemary pretended to be a lesbian, had a war with her crazy father, went to rehab, snorted coke off an anorexic himbo’s ribs, swigged vodka like water, shagged half of America and threw tantrums because she couldn’t get into clubs without waiting in line.

The only part I can buy about the idea of Lohan as Rosemary is, I can totally see her pregnant with Satan’s child.

Bottoms up!