The Roast Of Jessie Terwilliger

I started blogging four years ago to this day if any of you creeps even care. In fact you don't. I'm pretty sure. So instead of celebrating in the various different ways that I have celebrated my blogiversary in the past, this year I bring it in with a roast.

Not a delicious roast. But a mean spirited but well intentioned jab in a "we're all friends here" sort of manner led by a few folks who I asked to take me down several notches.

These pussies however were all "No Jessie, I LOVE you, I can't be mean to you!!!"

Sounds like David when I tell him to handcuff me or be rough at all. "But...but...it's not nice!"

But they tried and so I present to you tonight, The Roast of Jessie Terwilliger.

My first roaster sent their contribution in via a Word Document which sent me into panic mode about 20 minutes ago when I had burned a CD for a photography client and noticing that the little Word file was gone from my hard drive and I was nearly certain that I had included it with their lovely photos. Chubby cheeked cherub babies and heaven sent angel daughters next to all this talk of dildos and bitches. Which, in reality, sums up my blog pretty nicely. I didn't do that though, thank god. At least not as far as I can tell.

Take it away Miss Alexandra Bitchford...

About two years ago, The Doll made the first comment on my blog, The Bitches of Eastwick. She complimented the writing, and I kept thinking, “Well, what a nice little boy!” Then, I noticed The Doll’s giant, melon-like breasts. I realized that she was in fact not a little boy, but maybe a little emo? Time would tell.

I came to know The Doll as Jessie. I’ve grown to look forward to Jessie’s posts each day and to find out what her family and friends are up to. This hasn’t always been the case, though. Early on, we got into a bit of a throw down over the California wildfires v. Katrina. I pondered why the wildfire victims were getting stellar services, yet the Katrina victims got to sit in the Superdome in literal piles of shit. She made me totally see how providing yoga classes to the wildfire victims was super important to their well being. Stupid granola freak!

Seriously, folks, Jessie is awesome. She has nothing else to do but answer your emails and random phone calls throughout the day. I mean…she’s a “stay-at-home mom” and “domestic engineer.” Yeah, anyway. I leave you with a little ditty that I dedicate to my friend in cyberspace and in real-life.

The Doll is nimble
The Doll is quick
The Doll can be a fucking lunatic.

She knits
She writes
She poops out little tykes.

David is her side-kick
Some would say her bitch
He does what she says
And then beats her with his dick.

All in all, the family rocks
Ty and Wade, and a bunch of free dildos and cocks
Don’t forget Sally or the faithful Steppy
Without those two, the blog would not be peppy.

It’s been two years
And I’m still entertained
I look forward to two more
But please, don’t change.

Love you, Jessie!

Smooches,

Alexandra Bitchford

She does make a good point, regardless. I do have nothing better to do all day than wait for your phone calls and emails. Operators are standing by! And I will have you know that David is not my bitch just because he does whatever I say, it's just that I'm always right. Don't hate.

Next comes from Stacey the Geek Girl who has known me since the dawn of time...internettingly. She's been reading me since day one, which for some reason she says was 4 1/2 years ago even though this is clearly my 4th blogiversary. I'm pretty sure that she's into that wacky tobaccy as I recall a very very old post of hers where she explains that her husband ate "the special cookie" and then got all fucked up from it. Unless she was referring to her vag, which if that's the case, I don't know what to think.

I asked for Stacey's participation because she is my number one go-to guy. She's my editor, both in the written form and photography form, in fact she not only helped edit Bombshell but the pictures that I sent to the magazine not more than a few days ago. I like her because she's anal retentive and sort of mean, and she knows EVERYTHING. I'm always emailing her for help on random things, it's like a live Google. I'm sure if I emailed her and asked her what the best way to dispose of a body is, she'd have an answer and possibly help me to cover up my tracks. This is what she gave me:

Jessie sent me email last week asking for a roast. What the frickin frack is with that, cook your own damn roast. She must be a little short on brains but way long on balls, to ask me to do her a roast from 1000 miles away, what the hell? I'm supposed to fed-ex it too, I suppose, do you know how much that would cost? Do you think I'm made of money?

Next thing you know, she'll be asking me for a pony. Well guess what, sugarpop, I'M FRESH OUT OF PONIES, so you'll have to get your own damn pony too.

I started reading Jessie's blog about 4-1/2 years ago, and I can't believe I spent a portion of every single day for the last 4.5 years reading about her poo, her neighbor's vagina, HER vagina, and Nekkid David cooking whatever the hell it is he cooks. (I know fer damn sure it wasn't roast. She obviously can't do her own roast if she has to beg for one on the internet.) That's like over 1500 days of scatalogical drivel. I think I deserve a freakin' medal. As long as it's not made of roast.

So now she's putting up all these videos of ukeleles. Can you believe it? The ukulele! Next thing you know she'll be hanging leis on her vagina and calling it a luau. And you can bet she'll post a video of it too, because I'll bet you didn't know the ONLY place to share mucus membranes and their very private function is on the internet.

The ukulele. What is with that anyways? Well, I suppose it's job security for her, when her vagina gets tired, she can start hiring herself out at Bat Mitzvahs, playing 4-string Hava Nagilah and shaking her melons. "Look kids! This is what you have to look forward to! Soon you will be a WOMAN!" *shake*shake*twang*twang*tweedly*

Hmmm...

Well, I told Jess that I really don't want to be talking smack about people I like, but when I look back at over 1500 days of this blog, there's just so much material. Seriously, go read the archives. But in all of this, there's just one very important thing I have to say:

Jessie, you gave me two of the best words of my life: Fidiot, and fuckwit. I use them everyday. Thank you. And I'm sending a truckload of Watchtower G-men to your door for your blogiversary, use them gently. And post it on the internets.

Stacey you could have taken this in so many directions. You're my editor for christ sake! You know how terrible of a speller I am, and how I'll be writing something really good and then my brain goes all retarded and I stop making sense! You know that because you've seen my first drafts! But you just HAD to go for the ukulele, didn't you? And make cheap shot vagina jokes. Well let me remind you that there is no way to hang a lei from your vagina, okay? I've tried.

Last, and absolutely not least, or last, because there were several of you who did not get back to me and I expect you to fill the comments section with whatever you've got, I want to introduce you to my not really blogging anymore friend Cricky, or Peggy Bundy or whatever alias she's going by these days. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

Hell, if you do get anymore Brand New Tattoo's try not to get your internet handle done on your leg or anything, you know you'll just be covering it up with a stupid flower anyway in three months.

Cricky's contribution:

Warning – I really do love you in that “internet best-friend” kind of way….

When I was approached about participating in the “Roast of Jessie Terwilliger” I was…….ok, that sounded really formal and like it’s some big deal. Actually I was sitting with my friends eating dinner when I got an email that said something to the effect of “My 4 year blog-iversary is coming up and I’m asking my friends to roast me. Do you want to rip me a new one, yes or no?”

Instantly I thought “Wow, this chick’s got brass balls the size of grapefruits.” I’d never intentionally ask my friends to make fun of me. I know the kind of assholes I hang with, they’d tear me apart. Of course I said yes, because dear God who doesn’t live for the opportunity to be a total bitch with no chance for recourse?

I almost backed out as the deadline loomed. I begged my husband to write it for me. His exact response was “I can’t make fun of tail wiggler, just write about her sending you expired Jell-O and shitty Dresden Doll music.”

I talked about it on Facebook and Twittered the amount of difficulty I was having coming up with material. I seriously thought it would be impossible to talk shit about someone I consider a good friend. I went to sleep thinking “this girl is going to hate me if I’m too mean”. I woke up thinking “Seriously…offend Jessie?” I now consider myself a huge douche for even thinking I could say something “too mean” to Jessie Pearl Terwilliger (now with more Google-bility).

Honestly, who could offend the girl that considers the conception of life “The Quest for a Fetus”? The girl writes about being fucked with chocolate colored king-dongs, she’s not easily intimidated by a little friendly teasing.

The type of woman that gets embarrassed easily definitely is not the kind of woman who has talked about potentially shitting her pants every day for years. I’ve never met Jessie face to face, I’ve only talked to her a handle full of times on the phone but I know that she poops 6-8 times per day and it’s always “liqui-shits”. In my head when I picture Jessie I always imagine a red-headed girl with a mean looking face and a double bird salute. I guess I picture a female version of the rapper Eminem (back when he was the cool bare-chested, overhaul wearing slim shady guy, not the current Eminem that looks like a crack head millionaire). Just like Eminem, Jessie makes up her own world, her own magical world where she’s the “mother-fucking princess”. Who else could have a husband as loving and kind as David and yet enjoy stringing a Justin Timberlake look-alike like a marionette? I’d give my left tit (it’s the bigger one) to have a boy that looked like Justin-friggin-Timberlake give me the time of day and yet Jessie only offers to give him a boob-honk. Hey Step, call me, I’ll let you honk, push, and steamroll the girls, I promise. In Jessie world, everyone is a pawn. Jessie talks of Sally’s jealousy and desire to be more like her…um, hello…every single one of us wants to be a SAHM with 2 kids and a husband (and live in California where it never rains). There’s also the In-Laws who Jessie bashes with silver tongued remarks every chance she gets. Seriously though Jessie would you want Ty to bring home a chick as brazen as you? It’s looking like David likes the trashy kind. (Ok, I’m finished with the crappy Confederate Railroad lyrics, I promise.)

Wow, you know when I think about it none of these are reasons to hate-a-bitch.

Jessie, you’ve always said you “didn’t come from much” but I think you’re wrong. You came from a place that taught you to be the badass chick every single one of us wants to emulate. You might go about life with a “my dick is bigger than yours” kind of attitude, but you come by it honestly. Congratulations on four years of spilling your guts on the internet.

Okay, I will have you know a few things here. One, the expired Jell-O was intentional as you could clearly read in magic marker all over the box, which said, and I quote, "there's always room for expired Jell-O!" And it does not at all compare to the box of crap you sent me, which contained old People magazines (I didn't even know who the celebrities were since I don't watch TV) and a phone shaped like a frog. I don't even have a land line!

Secondly? Don't you ever call me tail-wiggler again, okay? That is blasphemous to my husband's beautiful name that he bestowed upon me when he legally took ownership of me, okay? It's turd-burgler or turd-wiggler, if you want to go there.

Oh and yes it does rain here.

Oh and what the fuck do you mean by Confederate Railroad?

Anyway, I want to close this by saying that I actually get tons and tons of nice email every day. I have gotten phone calls. I've kept Liz in Seattle (who is late to this party here) from falling asleep as she drove to Canada by listening to her talk about her boring Insurance job. For hours. And I do save your nice comments and the nice things that you say about me in a folder on my computer. I look at it when I need halp. Someday I'll be able to share with you the situation that happened on the 1st of April, but right now I just cant for a lot of reasons. But know that what helped me through it was YOU.

I leave you with these...

I do appreciate your friendship. You're always there and there isn't any pressure. It's nice to know that I can email you with a problem, and I know you will respond. Thanks. :)

just an fyi, i am going to do my best to spread the good word about you, so dont be creeped out if i twitter about you incessantly, or add you to my upcoming blogs. i think more people should know about you.......

Hello...how are you?
I have a favor to ask you...
In my speech class where going to do a speech over your favorite author right?...well I wanted to do it over you. And I was hoping if you could tell me things like, when you started writting, why you started writting, Did you go to college and get a writters degree before you started writting, how do you live with being a writter-you know like do you have any other jobs--or just write when your bored, How much usually do you pay to make your books,what company (website) do you use, you know and more things like that.
Mostly a background biography.
But once the teacher said what was our next assignemnt I jumped up in class and said ''I WANT TO DO MINE OVER JESSIE TERWILLIGER!!!'' LOL. The teacher liked the idea and said I could. yay!!!! lol. But you know if you think any other info would help me with this project please tell me...
THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME....


Thanks guys, I couldn't do any of this without you.

A Vagina Is Forever

A black rose

Dripping with gold

Sally you are so tragic.

Sick and sad

Lost because you know little more

Than what your desire fakes for you.

Gold flakes that don't stay

And all the men

Your illness whisks away.

Nastiness, foolishness.

You are the black rose

With your petals curling and turning

But still smelling sweet.

Put it on and take it off

As you wilt and warp into your past

Again and again.

You learn so little but teach so much.

The time will come for your own neck to bend,

My friend

Because you always take too much.

I notice that when Sally messes up she stops talking to me. She doesn't knock on my door to tell me about the man she made out with at the car wash or forward emails that are in Romanian but contain the same Photoshopped pictures of angels over car accident scenes and frogs inside of lettuce bags.

Her ex fiancee stayed overnight two nights.

We saw him coming back with donuts as we were leaving Sunday morning.

She was gone before we got up on Monday and she wasn't home for ages, if she ever even came home I don't know. But I have her key. "Just in case something should happen," was her reasoning. I don't know that I want the responsibility of her key, she has an awful lot of diamond jewelry that mens bought her that I don't want to be held accountable for. Nor would I trust her with my own key for I own very few things but they are important to me nonetheless.

Plus she's a god damned gypsy.

Sally, I like her a lot in a way. The management here knows we're all buddy-buddy, not only from the way she cooked them steaks to get them to put in new carpet for me, but also because the manager and the two maintenance guys saw David and I at Home Depot and they asked if we were putting in a zip cord to put between me and Sally's balconies so I could just fly over there.

Not bloody likely.

We saw her ex come up the stairs with her and we heard her lock the door. Then after a few moments David went running to the wall we share and pressed his ear to it. Curious, I did the same, and heard high pitched giggling, overly dramatic little girl being tickled giggling, and then moaning of some kind.

She's higher up than him now where they work, like she's his supervisor. I told her that it's all on her if it comes out that they've done anything, plus the man who got her the job will be none too happy that she's with this guy. She will lose everything that she hasn't so much as lifted a finger to earn.

Sally you are so tragic.

Good luck to you.

Sometimes I offer her up the opportunity to get away from all of these mens and all of this drama, which is why I invite her to write with me at Starbucks. I've got a deadline to finish my three novels-in-progress by November so I've been doing a lot of that lately, or at least on my balcony. She agrees to go but then she talks about nothing but her mens and this guy and that guy and all these guys and why her ex is psycho and how she pines for the miserable pretty boy. It's hard to write when she keeps interrupting me with her bad English. But she does fill my blog up sometimes when I myself am not particularly interesting.

What's her appeal?

"Would you ever fuck Sally?" I ask David.

"Naw. Bitch is crazy." He really said that. "Plus I don't know where she's been."

When I was little we used to have this stuff called Nickelodeon Gak, I've mentioned it before I'm sure, for it was over a bit of Gak that my friend The Real Bombshell and I met in third grade. Gak was this goopy stuff that I would NOT touch today, for it is slightly sticky matter in a semi-solid form, but it came in funny shaped packages that you could squish the Gak around in and create, yes, fart noises. This was part of the Gak appeal. But what I loved was opening up a brand new thing of Gak, the smell, how clean it was, how it was mine. I did not have a lot of stuff as a kid so a $5 thing of Gak was a real treat.

After a while I learned not to share my Gak with the other kids because by the end of the day it was all dirty and covered in hair and snot and whatever else was on their hands. This might have been the first stages of my fear of touching wet things or touching things that other people have touched. My mild germophobia. Mostly I was offended that I had something nice and they gunked it all up.

A vagina is a lot like Gak. When it's just for your use it stays the cleanest. Maybe you share it with a very special friend who promises to take good care of it, wash their hands before making fart noises with it or whatever. A secret container of Gak that only you and them can play with, that stays clean and wonderful for your enjoyment. But then if you go pass it around to everyone in the school yard it gets all full of dirt and germs and foreign hairs.

Sally often tells me of her unprotected sex-capades where she "forgot to use condom." Forgot. She's 29 and she's had...how many partners? (Exactly.)

Gak was only at its peak fart noise performance when it was fresh and clean.

I cant imagine having a vagina that wont do the cool fart noise thing without having to run it under the kitchen faucet...but then it gets slimy and it starts to deteriorate, and truly it never does handle the same after you try to clean it yourself. With Gak if you had $5 you could just go buy a new one.

Vaginas are forever.

Why do you think we have this Pig AIDS or swine pocks or whatever? It's because people like Sally let their Gak out all over town just for some fart noise related fun which without the proper tools not only becomes less fun over time but can cause other people's fart noises to be less fun as well.

Even when your special Gak friend is special Gak friends with someone else on the side it wont affect your Gak.

Not so much with vaginas. You have to take care of yourself because the government isn't going to, that's for sure. PS this Tamiflu that they're trying to distribute for the swine flu? It has some gnarly side effects that essentially equal flu-like symptoms. And the last time this flu came to the united states, in the 70's I think but don't quote me, I do know for sure that one person died from the flu and 25 people died from the inoculations for it.

The scary thing about it is that it's transmitting by person to person, like, doing random people right now might not be such a good idea. I'm not for sure, but I'm just saying.

"But is thrill," Sally says when I tell her that she should probably use a condom when she fucks a guy she barely knows.

I cant imagine what a thrill it would be to have a burning case of crotch rot. I'll be the first to admit that if it weren't for disease I'd probably be a big slut. Well, not really. I still don't like people.

Sally you are so tragic. Your petals are curling and turning but still smelling sweet.

Flies, Empty Fields, And Churches

If you're from the area you know by the title exactly which city I'm referring to. And you know that the church in this picture is right over by Best Lumber and Dr. Miller's office.

There's something really odd about picking up the Yucaipa News mirror and seeing a picture of your old middle school band teacher painting pictures of the mountain.

Mr. Remele?

And knowing that your brother bought his first house from that very man.

The city where a night on the town takes exactly seven minutes, and where every direction you give starts with either "on the Boulevard" or "turn from the Boulevard."

And the streets go A B C D E G.

And there is a 10th street, that's where the car wash is, and an 12th street, that's where the high school is, but there is no 11th street.

I drive by Sports Shack where the marquee is for rent to wish people happy birthday and such, and it says that the high school is doing a musical production of You're A Good Man Charlie Brown.

Dude, we did You're A Good Man Charlie Brown in 2001. I was in pit band. I rewrote the entire play to make it dirty and profane and offensive and sold the copies for $5. I still have a copy of that.

There's been articles in the News Mirror about these teenagers who have been terrorizing this 70 year old deaf or blind or somehow disabled woman by killing her animals with garden shears and threatening her and shit. She lives on the same street as David's grandparents, they're probably neighbors in fact. The system keeps releasing the little bastards and in the paper it said that one of the dads is a white supremacist. I don't know what color the lady is but the neo-Nazi shit runs rampant there and there's no way to ever really stop it. And there's no way to really stop the kids from doing what they're doing except to have the residents of the city start camping out on her lawn and collect money at a local cafe to pay for a surveillance system.

I don't think I could ever move back there. Not that Beaumont is much better in comparison, but there's just something weird about it. It has gotten worse and the reason is because other races started moving in and it's making the psycho rednecks go crazy. Beaumont has gangs, but the gangs aren't terrifying yet. They will become terrifying if the police here don't do something about them soon, but they're still denying their existence at this point for whatever reason. This, that, and the other.

I don't necessarily like Beaumont either. I mean I do, like I still like Yucaipa, and the schools are nice...but that isn't enough. Geographically this place kind of sucks because of the wind, but then again it's totally flat and the ghetto is in a part of town that I really have no business stopping in anyway and it's perfectly fine to just drive through. The closer you are to Cherry Valley (which is still Beaumont) the better it is, but it's also bothersome that I found a two bedroom apartment for the price we are paying right now on one of the prettiest streets in town that is still fairly close to Staters and all, plus within walking distance to the police station and the post office and Mana Donuts, but David shakes his head no and says that he's delivered pizzas there, and it's nowhere that he'd want his family to live.

But it looks like such a nice neighborhood.

But if anyone is a good judge of how safe a place is based on what kind of people live there it's David. If you recycle he knows your name. If you order pizza he knows where you live. And he retains all of this information in that super brain of his.

It's all fine, really, fairly safe to live in I guess if you're not an old deaf woman with rabbits and geese, I don't know. If you're not dealing crack down on 3rd street. Everyone I graduated with still works there somewhere in the town, and when you stop in to buy sandwiches or get something from the store you're face to face with one of the fuckers.

The advantage in Beaumont is that everyone knows me at the store but they only know me as an adult. As the writer.

In Yucaipa, you stay exactly who you were then, and I know this because I've talked to these people and it literally is just like old times. Because nothing has fucking changed. They even look the same.

Okay so I moved 10 miles down the freeway and I'm jobless and making like $22 a month in book sales and picking up odd photography gigs. I'm probably no better, but as my 10 year high school reunion draws closer, I think I've finally decided that I have no desire to even see these people. I'm friends with everyone that I want to be friends with from that era. That's good enough. I'm ready to move on, I've been ready to move on.

And I totally broke my electric fly swatter-zapper thing yesterday swinging it at the thousands of flies in my sister's carport. Thing wont zap anymore. Fucking Yucaipa.

Photo Ketchup

We spent another day in the ditch (and by we I really mean we this time, I halped too and even used a hammer) and so I'm going to deliver another photo blog today.

It's ladybug season, and the boys have been given a jar. A new gang has moved in to our neighborhood, the Ladybug Jar Gang.

This is Ty's girlfriend by the way...









Oh and I'm making some leg warmers that look like this:



Oh and this is where I used to work, I quit in July of 05 and haven't had a real job since.



Oh and if you're wondering how that photoshoot went, I think it went fine. (This is one of the duds but it still looks neat)



Presley got big.



David's brewing is going well and he is even inventing his own beer recipes which he keeps in his Moleskine journal...



Oh my god, and something really gross came out of my egg, can you believe this? (And identify it?)



Bella and Chimay



STOP! Poppet time!



(the owl is our librarian)



I'm reading this book right now...



Photo #97 of 365



Photo #98 of 365



What should be for 100?

The Salad Bowl

It's project time, and this one just happens to be awesome.

My sister has this dry ass ditch that never has any water running through it, and David, because he is clever and in need of a bit of earth to just follow through with his cleverness sometimes, asked if he could somehow grow hops down in it for his beer. She said yes, but it's not like there was any way to water down there, plus it was all just hard nasty dirt. But then a little bit of weed eating led to a little bit of cleaning up some of the crap down there (previous owners of the house threw everything from beer cans and bottles to cars down there. Yes, a car. It's buried, but we've now dug up the engine block, a headlight, and an exhaust pipe.) Then it turned into David cutting some stairs into the wall so we could get up and down as we worked...

And by we I mean them, because I get to be The Princess, which means I sit in a chair up on my roost and take pictures of everyone else working. I did halp though, I pushed the cart, and also I made a run to the hardware store to buy PVC glue.

Yeah so, David's plea for hops turned into what I have titled "The Salad Bowl." Lemme show you.

You'll see random tractors and steam rollers and such throughout the pictures, by the way. The boys halped as much as I did.

So this is what it looked like after all the weeds were gone and David tilled the shit out of it. PS. David's pain has subsided, sitting aggravates it so tilling and all this shit is like, I don't know, good for him? Either way, less pain is good.



David's stairs ended up becoming permanent with the help of some brickwork, along with some pretty cool planters. The top planter will have a dwarf avocado tree and a nectarine tree, and that cool little pie wedge one off to the right contains sweet peas...



After spreading shit around (literally) we got plants into the ground. And by we I mean David. I watched from the hill and took pictures of it.

Planting corn...



Planting zucchinis...



Planting hops...



It's not totally done yet as we still have grapes and the trees to plant, and I was unable to get the watermelon/pumpkin patch since it was dark, but here are some awesome aerial shots of The Salad Bowl...

Corn rows



Tomatoes...



The pepper patch (with the not yet planted watermelons and pumpkins top left)



Plus cucumber for the win.



Come summer it's going to be like "OH LAWDY IS THAT SOME CORN AND WATERMELON?" Why yes it most certainly is. We planted a SHIT load of watermelon. And by we I mean them. I did nothing, except that I pushed the cart OH! and I drew lines in the dirt where I thought the trails and patches should go. Plus I totally ran a "we need pumpkins and watermelons" campaign while shopping and the measure passed with overwhelming popularity. And I was the one who spotted the ultra cool mini irrigation system kit at Home Depot, that was totally my find so thanks to me our water issue is solved.

I call it The Salad Bowl because it's totally a garden in a bowl, and it's totally awesome. Still thinking eggplant because fried eggplant is win. Couldn't find onions or garlic even though part of the goal was to grow salsa. Plus she's also got a lemon tree, a peach tree, a pomegranate tree, an apricot tree, a cherry tree and a strawberry patch.

This is going to be awesome. Will update when everything is big and delicious.

Do Such Normal Things With You

My husband is thoughtful in the sense that he brings me free pizza and writes me obscure poetry about me being half blind with lines in it like, "when I look into your eye..."

Steppy is thoughtful in the sense that he is NOT thoughtful and he calls me from downstairs asking if he can come over. But he is thoughtful in the sense that he comes bearing hot cocoa and he helps me do laundry. The laundry part isn't so much thoughtful as it is, "you insisted on showing up, so I insist that you fold this."

We talked. So much. Over strawberries and hot cocoa until 2:00 in the morning. David came home with pizza at one point and there was beer tasting, but then he fell asleep with his head on my lap like a baby some time around 11.

Everything came up. The photoshoot, his marriage, my books, plans for the future. This really strikingly beautiful homeless man that I see sometimes, the one we call Gray Man because we don't know what nationality he is. His skin is dark dark tanned like leather hide, like perhaps he's Indian, but he has shoulder length gray dreadlocks. He's fucking ripped and he walks around Beaumont shirtless and barefoot using a walking stick as he pads down the sidewalk wearing a backpack thing that appears to be hand made. I've seen this man take down hundred foot trees by himself. I want to take a picture of him or touch him or something, it's really weird.

The way that berry canes just sort of pop up all about Yucaipa and on the mountain. Hiking to the falls, everywhere you look just shoom! there are berry canes sprouting. Everywhere.

How he caught a rattlesnake in someone's yard out in the canyon.

The garden that David and my sister are making so David can grow his hops and I can have corn and grapes and cucumbers.

Sally came home some time around midnight and pounded on my door to tell me that she made out with a guy at the car wash on Pennsylvania, the one where they filmed the opening sequence to My Name Is Earl. She was quite excited. But as she was telling me the story she stopped mid sentence and goes, "Is Steppy right there on the couch listening to me?"

"Um...yeah?" I dont know how she knew that, but it was like the thought struck her all the sudden like.

"Okay, come over here so he does not hear me," she says and steps back two inches. I mean we share a very small landing of a porch so it's not like I could go far, plus Steppy could still hear, so it didn't matter.

Somewhere around 2:00 in the morning when we were discussing Felix The Cat and the notion of breaking up but staying married, he's like "Whoa, I gotta go." It's like, honestly, yeah you should. I'm tired and god damnit I have to get up in the morning to take the kids to the Lowe's workshop.

He says, "If I say something do you promise that it wont upset you?"

I can make you promises but they wont mean a thing.

He says, "I really, really, really want to kiss you right now."

I'm like, "Wow, but like...don't, okay?"

He says, "No tongue, not like that, I just want to kiss you."

"I'm getting my mace..."

"I promise I'll be good. I just think we had a really cool evening and I want to end it well."

"Wouldn't you rather honk my boob? I'll totally let you honk my boob--"

"Again, it's not like that, I just want a kiss."

So I licked the side of his face. I'm proud to report that it wasn't salty or anything. Most faces I lick are salty, which keeps me coming back. I'm a total salt fiend.

I wonder if the Grey Man is salty. Probably not. Probably he tastes like chocolate and baby oil.

He shakes off the weirded out feeling of having his face licked and does one of those face smooshes where he grabs my cheeks and pushes them together so I've kind of got fish lips. Then he kissed me with a "muah" even. He said goodnight and he was gone.

"David, Steppy kissed me last night," I tell him this morning.

"How so?"

So I show him and he goes, "That dude's weird."

"I know. I told him to honk my boob but he didn't want to."

"That is REALLY weird."

"I know, right?"

"Can I honk your boob?"

"Of course."

*honk honk* "Yer gonna get it when my back is all not fucked up anymore."

I'm not even sure if there is such a thing as normal anymore, or if there ever was such a thing. Other than I guess this is it maybe.

Fixing The David

David has the sciatica.

It all started one day about seven years ago when he was rough housing with my friend's little brothers and he was carrying one on his back and he suddenly felt a weird pain.

It goes away and returns. The easiest fix is to get a massage, and this is what he does when he feels it coming on. The pretty girl with all the oil and hot stones gives Paco the rub down and he's fine for the rest of the year mostly.

Well he's been complaining recently that something was wrong but every time he had massage money he spent it on beer making supplies. I kept telling him, "You need to go get your massage," and he's like "but I need a carboy and I need to buy my hop rhizomes so I can plant them, blah blah blah."

This week his back finally said "enough of this, I needs the rub down." And David can no longer walk. He has to wait until Sunday for his rub down, so getting him through the week was a task on its own.

I consulted Dr. Stacey who is an expert on this thing as she gives rub downs for a living, who gave me some basic instructions for a stretch and some fixer uppers that I would have to halp him with. She closed the email by saying no boinking, something about calling us a bunch of animals, and said something about toys, mouths, and hands. I lol'd. "No thrusting, srsly."

Yeah yeah, I got it.

So David comes home early from the pizza job to get bodily manipulated. We wanted to go to the spa but he was like "it's too cold" plus there were people in it till like 10:30 at night, which I cant complain about because I have been that person so whatevs. I told him to take a bath. He got a beer and went into the bathroom.

"David you cant drink a beer in the bath tub," I said.

"This is how a MAN takes a bubble bath," he replies.

"David, no."

But the glass was already poured. He thought he was being quite funny, he's like "take a picture" so I did and I showed him that see, you don't look funny, you look sad and pathetic drinking in the tub. He frowned. But he still drank his beer. I sat on the toilet and watched him. Penises float, did you know that? Like a little buoy.

Then he complained about not feeling good.

"Yeah, you're not really supposed to consume alcohol in hot water."

"Well nobody ever told me that!"

le sigh.

Nothing we did really helped, he's still in a lot of pain. He walked to work this morning and a little old lady had to help him across the street. I told him he should have let me drive him but he was already there, it was over. He said he walks like a crack head, and I asked if he could bust a move with Don Quixote, that guy who jousts stop signs and fishes for cars with an imaginary pole.

I love David so much, I don't like when he's in pain. I told him that on Craigslist there are lots of men in Palm Springs who want to come over and give him a free massage. He didn't want to go for that though. I don't see why not, I mean it sounds perfectly legit.

He has a girl in Yucaipa who does him at the Wellness Center. A new place opened up a few blocks down and he walked in to check their prices and he said it was a bunch of Asians who didn't speak English and he said there was a special on their board called "Four Hands."

"Four Hands?" he asks.

"Four hands," the girl replies with a big smile and a nod.

He decided to go back to his regular girl. It seemed pretty shady, like it would end like a Craigslist ad. Only with four hand(s) jobs.

I don't see what he has against these nice friendly men from the Palm Springs Craigslist who are nice enough to offer their rub down services for free. Perhaps they are massage school students and they are getting some practice in by offering massages to other men for free. But David is always so suspicious of people and their motives.

I told him he should find one of those traveling massage people who bring the chair all folded up like a brief case and then just rub you down right there at your office. David could get something like that done at The Cans in his little metal shack there in the parking lot. But then he said he was being evaluated, or "spied on" by company spies so it probably wouldn't look so good to be getting massages in the middle of the business day. Poor David. I feel so bad for him, he's got all of these problems.

And he was supposed to be doing a bunch of manual labor this weekend too. Now who will plant my corn? Fiddlesticks.

My Moment With Lil

It's randomly cool again, after Tuesday's 2 1/2 mile walk where I almost died of heat exhaustion and I developed a bastard of a blister. Just when I thought I'd never get to use the stew meat I bought, it's randomly cool again.

I went to Stater's to buy carrots and celery and potatoes, my mace with me like always because you never know, and stood in too long of a line. Then my mercy, my savior, my Lil opened the register next door and smiled at me really big as she said she would take take me over there.

Lil is a pretty little senorita with blue Spanish eyes who weighs herself on David's scale every day. She wears her hair in a long black braid and even though she could pass as the beautiful woman that everyone in the village falls in love with but truly her heart belongs to a shirtless Indian that rides in on horseback to see her and kiss her arms as he promises to steal her away one night, she's still quite matronly. She feels like family. She reminds me of Victor's aunts. Pretty and always kind.

She's the lady I signed a copy of Bombshell for in the store last week.

"Have you read it yet?" I asked.

"I started to, but then I had to beat myself up to stop because I'm going in for surgery this week and I want to read it in the hospital. But I love it!"

"Well good."

She scans a few of my items. Holding my celery she looks at me and says, "You know...looking at you, you...wouldn't seem like you would ever write something like that."

I slowly look up at her from where I'm bending over to reach for things in the cart. "Did I surprise you?" I say with a weird inflection, not so much like a question but almost like a statement.

"Yes you did," she said and smiled at me kind of sideways.

I held my eye contact and raised an eyebrow. I gave her the same look that I give David when he suddenly notices that the outfit I'm wearing is really hot, or to Sally when I open the front door to speak to her but she shushes me and points to her door and mouths "The Indian guy is here, don't say anything about that guy I was talking about to you." The same look I gave my brother in law when he criticized Golden Dawn as I told him "Well I have another book but I'm afraid it might be a little too adult for you." The same look I give uniformed Steppy when he pulls me in for a hug by the waist and my hip bone bumps his gun.

This isn't how I bite my lip when I'm shy, which is a lot, or how I touch my lips when I think something is clever. This is one of the rare moments that I am out of my shell and possibly, honestly, the most sincere that I can be. Where I'm not a god damned kid anymore.

I don't know exactly what the look is saying, perhaps there are no words for it. But I looked at Lil with a wry smile and say, "Did you really think I was so innocent?"

There was a very strange lock-hold between us in that moment. Like when someone is saying one thing with their mouth but something entirely different with their eyes. Lil didn't say anything at all. She gave me a Cheshire cat smile with her perfect teeth and put my celery into a bag with effortless grace. She said she couldn't wait to read the rest of the book.

We didn't even say goodbye when I paid and left, she was already with the next customer.

She Loves Him, He Loves Me, I Love David And Also Cow Patterned Things

I'm skimming the water with my hand, pushing the bubbles on the surface away from me.

"He is so gentle with you, is like 'oh how are you doing,' and he is hugging you. I don't have one like that," Sally confides in me with a pout. "I want nothing more than anything else just to kiss him once. I know he is like kindergarten compared to me but how you and him can be so close with nothing to go between you on, but he has sexy lips."

This is me and Sally rebuilding.

"Your nipple is about to fall out of your suit by the way," she adds.

Damn these low cut things.

"I see how he is touching you sometimes, not like he's trying to own you, but how he's trying to feel magic. I would walk behind him and keep touching him with my boobs and he would not do anything but try to get away. I want to feel that magic."

"I don't feel any magic," I tell her. Her hair is pulled up like mine but she still looks like a million bucks.

"Maybe is because my boobs aren't as big as yours. I need a new body," she says. I offer her mine. She says, "Only to taste it."

Wait.

My body?

Was that like a sex thing?

"If I could have anybody in this world it would be him."

"Seriously?"

"I'm with a guy right now, sort of. Remember I told you? I meet him over in the wash and we do it there?"

"Yeah I remember."

"He would be the perfect guy for me, so perfect in every way. But I use him. I say to him 'I don't want to make love, I just want to have sex,' and I meet him at the park some nights."

"The park? Like...that one over there?"

"Yeah," she says like I'm stupid and not comprehending what she's saying.

"Like...where though?"

"On back part of the track, there is a tree with branches, we go behind--"

"There are houses right there, someone could be watching!"

"Is exciting, right?"

"Um...I guess so. But why wont you just take him up to your apartment, or go to his house? He lives like two minutes from here walking distance."

"He was keep asking that too, and I tell him that I don't want to wake up with him in my bed. Just sex then goodbye." Sally relaxes into the water. "Is not how it would be with Steppy."

"Dude why do you want Steppy? He's not right for you at all."

"I already let him into my heart," she tells me. "But he wont feel that way for me ever, he has you."

"He's married," I remind her.

"Yes but he does not love his wife, you can tell by the way he looks at you."

"Steppy adores his wife." She shakes her head no. "Yes he does Sally."

"Not like for you. You can tell that by how he looks at David."

"How does he look at David?"

"Like he is luckiest boy in the world." She sits up and tells me "I have to stop though looking at him that way. I've decided that I'm not getting any younger and wanting for a man who will never want me, even after I whisper in Romanian in his ear which works on like every guy, is never going to be good for me. And I'm not yet to settle down with anyone, so I'm just going to have sex so I can get things, that's all I need right now."

"You mean like how you get free cars and stuff?"

"And that one guy he named his boat after me. He showed me the picture, is called "Baby Girl $@&#^*" (Sally's real name)

"You have a boat named after you."

"Yes."

"How do you obtain such things?"

"What you mean to obtain, like get?"

"Yes exactly."

"Okay, for one thing I tell the Indian Guy on the phone as he's getting on the plane, 'is too bad you're leaving because here I am in my leather coat with nothing under,' and he says 'nothing?' and I say 'not even anything.' He was trying to cancel his flight right then, you should have heard him panic like that. But is nothing like how I want for Steppy. I want to kiss him, and I want it to be magical, you know? You think he is a good kisser?"

"He's a very good kisser."

"How you know that?" she asks accusingly.

"Long time ago."

"You have everything," she says, and kind of splashes me and pouts again. This coming from the girl with boats named after her. "And plus? He has big hands and that mean he has large penis."

"...If you say so."

"You know otherwise?"

The bubbles turned off.

"Time to get out now."

"You are knowing something."

"Yes I am."

"You would cheat on David?"

"God no. I've known Steppy for like 10 years Sally, I've only been with David for seven."

You can tell she's doing math in her head. "You are whore!" This coming from the girl who fucks for boats and cars. "You never tell me this before."

"There's nothing to tell."

"Is too something to tell."

"Or I'm just messing with your head."

"No. You know something else."

"Do I?"

"I will give you...seven dollars," she says as she pulls some crumpled bills from the little bag she brought to the pool, "if you tell me how big his dick is."

"How would I have that kind of information?"

"You have it, I know! I have a twenty at my apartment, you will tell me for $27?"

"I can tell you what you want to hear but it wont mean a thing Sally."

"You're mean," she says.

"I sure am. Hey thanks for the soak, that was fun. I cant believe it's that time of year again. We should go swimsuit shopping."

"You are mean and you are WHORE!"

"If you say so. Goodnight Sally."

It's Times Like These That I Wish I Was Sally

I went on a long walk today. Too long of a walk. About 2 1/2 miles of a walk. I figured that putting Wade in the wagon instead of putting him on the scooter would allow me to go further, and I did, but it was way too far. And it was hot today. And I got a blister.

This made me pout.

I showed David and he was like "Well that's a weird place to get a blister," since it's on the ball of my foot right in the middle.

"It makes me walk like a gimp. Buy me a ice cream."

"Ice cream makes you die."

"Buy me one."

"No."

I was going to ask him to kiss my foot but then a rabid group of Mormon boys showed up to recycle. They were the boys who accosted me the other day, all with little silver pinky rings that say "JC."

Speaking of Mormons, let's call Steppy. He almost always answers on the first ring, and he's almost always willing to dole out sympathy.

"Hi Steppy, I got a blister on my foot."

"Aaaw."

"Yeah, so will you buy me a new digital camera?"

"For a blister?"

"Well because I have a blister, but it's for me to use."

He's quiet for a minute. "Yeah, okay."

"What? Really?"

"Sure."

"But the one I want is like $700."

"Okay."

Le sigh. "No Steppy, don't buy me a camera, not for real."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm sure. It's still too creepy to accept gifts from you like that. I just like knowing that you would. I'm sick like that."

"You know your power over me," he goes. "Why do you want a new camera anyways?"

And I told him about how I felt really nervous this weekend, not about the pictures being good, but about the print quality. My cameras only have six megapixels. I'm way behind the times. Even though they're both still very nice cameras, after talking to my technical advisor Stacey, who I go to with questions on everything from brain damage to terrorist threats to photography, and kind of finally facing the reality that I'm ready for an upgrade. I hate upgrading because it means learning new things, which I'm all for except that the pictures stink for the first year while you're trying to figure the damn thing out. I just got comfortable with my Powershot, and I intend to keep it. But I'm thinking of making my Powershot camera two and making a new digital Rebel my camera number one.

And Steppy he's like I'll buy it for you and yes I am greedy enough to enjoy the idea of a sugar daddy, but I could never go through with it. He already offered to be my sugar daddy before and I couldn't go through with it.

I wish I was Sally. Sally who can pout sweetly and end up driving a Mustang home. Sally who got a guy to buy her a brand new laptop. Sally who has a man who buys her shoes on the stipulation that he gets to watch her walk in them and put them on and shit. Some fetish guy, I don't know much about it, all I care about is that she lets me borrow the shoes sometimes and gives me the ones she doesn't like.

But I cant...take advantage of a miserable pretty boy with an enormous crush on me. I'm shallow enough that I totally want to, but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, I'm just not that girl.

Sally is that girl though, and I could totally have her beg him for the camera FOR me, but that would be awfully suspicious. Plus I will mace her if she lays one slutty palm on him, MACE HER GOOD!

So I will be an independentacleish woman and buy my own camera. But my pay for Saturday's gig for the magazine falls just short of what I need.

So I'm selling my Lumix. It's still a nice little point and shoot but I've outgrown it. The macro still kicks ass. Full specs and reviews here. Comes with a case and a two gig memory card, $100 or best offer. I don't expect that it will sell for that much, but whoever does buy it is going to be receiving a lot more from me than just a camera. Probably a hug, or an air hug, along with some other things. Here are some pictures that I have taken with it over the years:

Please to be letting me know if you likie.

Bagpipes?

There are three things of which I am certain.

Edward is a vampire.

David would be better off as a city police officer due to the fact that CHP, though grand and wonderful and the best of the best of the blah blah blah, has the highest death rate among the agencies. Also, while on a city ride along yesterday it became clear just how detail oriented he is when the cops he was with totally missed a blood trail that he noticed just as they were getting back into their cars after a fight between brothers and a 911 hangup. We're talking drops of blood from a bloody nose or something, not like dragging a corpse, but he notices things like this all the time.

The gangs in Beaumont are all wearing plaid these days. Yes plaid. Plaid pants with white shirts and black gloves. This is something that David has been noticing on his own. Unless a person has no eyebrows I usually don't notice things. This is supposed to be their "secret dress code" but David cracked it. I mean, it's not like a huge discovery because the cops here knew, but David discovered it on his own.

And, someone here plays the god damned bagpipes. Bagpipes? Yes, bagpipes. No, not ukulele, though I thought that was quite clever of me to disrupt the quiet of the night with, but real no foolin bagpipes. Yes I have video.

So the question is, did someone hear my uke and then decide to sound a weird-instrument mating call? Should I invite them over for band practice?

There Are No Reasons

This is a difficult subject for me to write about because it affected me very deeply. I often find myself thinking about this, every day of my life I think about this, now more than ever.

10 years ago today I was in 9th grade. I was in science class when I heard my friend say something about some kids shooting up their school in Colorado.

"Cool," I said.

It wasn't until later when I got home to watch the news that I saw a kid dangling from the window of a school building, trying to land on a big armored car. The news said that they had no idea where the shooters were which is why they couldn't just send someone up to rescue him. There were eight shooters, ten, one really big massive guy loaded with 400 different guns, hell we didn't know what the hell was going on. The first headlines read "25 Dead in Colorado."

And then they showed the doors of the library. Blood was spilling out from underneath them.

In the following weeks we learned about the trench coat mafia, about white baseball caps and "do you believe in god?"

We learned what some kids will do when pushed too far. Or so we thought.

The ninth graders in Yucaipa don't attend the high school due to lack of space for them at the tiny high school, but I got to go to the high school for band after 5th period. I also got to take the late bus home. That's when I met this big fellow who wore a trench coat day in day out even in the 110 degree heat.

He was nice and everything, but he was the poster child for exactly what we should be looking for in a school shooter. He was quiet and withdrawn and even though he was very funny he seemed perpetually sad. So I asked him his name. This is how I met Victor.

As it turned out, Victor was a very smart guy. He wasn't picked on, not anymore, not after Columbine, not after he started wearing that trench coat. He drank peppermint schnapps at school and took a lot of LSD, but I told him "You know what? You're better than that. Let's get you to stop."

And so he did. Even the pot.

He was a genius at computers, he loved animals, and though he had a very warped sense of humor I enjoyed the things he had to say. I asked him why he wore a trench coat once and he said because his grandma bought it for him. That was a fine answer. He never really spoke about what happened at Columbine, but I could tell that he was thinking about it a lot, something just seemed like maybe that what was on his mind sometimes. Well, it was on all of our minds.

Yucaipa is a small white bread town with a very cliqueie high school. Despite the fact that Columbine was mostly indoors, the layout for that school and our school was very similar. The libraries were almost identical.

All of these painful details kept coming out, all of these briefings kept coming out, there were all these signs to watch for. Teachers were told to look for students who seemed like loners, who seemed like they might like to listen to Marilyn Manson. Kids who hated so called "jocks." Kids who wore a certain kind of clothing, like trench coats. Kids who liked guns. David, who lived a few miles outside of Littleton, Colorado, was brought to the office and questioned about all of the pictures of guns he had drawn in his notebook.

It's true, David was very interested in guns. Very. But he was never interested in hurting people. That's the difference. The school didn't understand that David's favorite channel (besides scrambled porn) was the History channel and that a kid could like guns without wanting to use them on anybody. We recognize this now as "Mini Officer David."

But Victor was my boyfriend by the time I entered 10th grade and everyone thought this was cool. I was with the big scary "school shooter," you know, and whoever didn't think this was cool would be shot.

There was a brief moment where there was kind of a "She's All That" plot and some girls were going to make sure that Victor and I were homecoming queen and king, and they were even going to do my makeup. These girls I didn't know. These girls who were trying too hard.

Then I obtained a trench coat, a blue one, as Victor's grandma had just bought him a brand new black one (mine by the way cost $2 at an estate sale, a gift from my good friend Greg.) I tried to wear it one day and my sister in law refused to drive me to school because she was convinced that people would shoot at the car. She screamed at me to take it off. I just walked, she was a bitch and she had no idea what the hell she was even talking about.

Turns out, nobody did.

In this article published by USA Today which looks back on Columbine 10 years later, it talks about how almost everything we thought we knew about Dylan and Eric were wrong.

They weren't goths or loners.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren't on antidepressant medication and didn't target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers' journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.

What's more? They didn't even listen to Maralyn Manson. They said he was too commercial. Furthermore, look at this excerpt from Chuck Palahniuk's book "Stranger Than Fiction" wherein he actually interviews Manson.

"The thing that always bothered me was," (Manson) says, "this is the exact same thing. Nixon came out and said Charles Manson was guilty during the trial, because Nixon was being blamed for everything that was wrong about the culture. Then the same thing happened with Clinton saying 'Why are these kids so violent? It must be Marilyn Manson. It must be this movie.' Then he turns the cheek and sends some bombs overseas to kill a bunch of people. And he's wondering why kids have bombs and they're killing people..."

Manson brings out watercolor paintings he's done, bright and dark colorful Rosarch-test portraits of McGowen. Paintings he does with--not so much the paints as the murky rinse water he uses to clean the brushes. One shows the grinning heads of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold impaled on the raised fingers of a peace sign.

"It turns out they weren't fans," he says. "One Denver reporter did enough research to prove they disliked me because I was too commercial. They were into more underground stuff. It pissed me off that the media took one thing, and it just kept snowballing. And it was because I'm an easy target. I look guilty. And I was on tour at the time."

He says, "People always ask me, 'What would you have said to them if you could talk to them?' and my answer is, 'Nothing. I would have listened.' That's the problem. Nobody listened to what they were saying. If you'd listened, you'd have known what was going on."

I admit to having a "saving people" thing, and I suppose, in all honesty, I befriended the "school shooter" because perhaps in a way I wanted to either have the information to stop something like that from happening in Yucaipa or to just see the beauty within the beast for what it really was. I ended up finding a lot more in him than I ever thought I would. And even with all of his faults, and for all of the reasons why I felt the need to end that relationship, I still think of him as a very interesting person and I was glad to know him.

His family? Let him be who he was. He was blossoming into a strange little vegetable and they still watered him because he was theirs. 83% of Americans polled believed that the parents were to blame for Columbine, and because Dylan and Eric weren't here for us to hate, we hated the parents. I don't know the Harris family or the Klebold family. But I did know the Jasso family. And I know that even though 83% of the country was looking at parents like them because they allowed Victor to wear his trench coat and continue on with his odd behavior and cynicism, I knew there was nothing going wrong. I saw the inner workings. Victor was loved and Victor was punished for things. Victor was punished for things a lot. They knew exactly what he was doing and they knew exactly what he was and was not capable of.

Even still, these kids don't do these things because of the way they were raised, they do them in spite of the way they were raised. Harris, who is now known as the "mastermind" behind the attack was, as quoted in the USA Today article as "a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath — a smart, charming liar with a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control." He was the type of kid who, when he was in front of adults, he'd tell you what you wanted to hear.

When he wasn't, he mixed napalm in the kitchen .

Harris drew swastikas in his journal; Klebold drew hearts.

Eric's parents knew that there was a problem and they were dealing with that problem, or so they thought. It's just too hard to expect the worst out of someone. With Victor, in a way I was looking for the worst. I was looking for what everybody said was there, and I never fucking found it.

I live in California, not Colorado. But it was big here and it still is big here. When David was taking his physical agility test for CHP there was a sergeant barking commands at the block of potential cadets while another sergeant went on to tell them that in this life there are sheep and there are wolves. The wolves are the predators, the bad guys, and the sheep are what make up the general population. He said, "You are the sheep dogs. Your job is to protect the sheep from the wolves and from themselves." He said, "Look at Columbine. What were those children doing when they found that police officer? They were clinging to his leg."

The main problem with these school shooters is they almost always end up killing themselves. I don't want them to live for their punishments, I want them to live so we can figure them the fuck out. This is why I am somewhat against the death penalty because really by snuffing these people out we aren't learning anything, where as if we keep them alive and study them like lab mice we just might learn a thing or two in regards to what to ACTUALLY look for, not just trench coats and sad music, but actual factors that create the profile of a person who could commit such atrocities.

I never believed that Victor could be the school shooter, never did I really think he could be capable of that. But one day he was asked to leave the school. He was not expelled, he was not threatened. He was simply asked to leave the school quietly and never ever return. He told me that it had something to do with a notebook they found on him, but he never really told me what was in the notebook. Furthermore I didn't ask because to this day I stand by what I've always said and that is the fact that Victor was not going to hurt anyone. Not only did he lack the weapons (except for a small collection of swords and bows and arrows) but he lacked the real stuff that makes kids go bonkers and start shooting the other kids. He did not have the mind set. I know that for a fact.

But it wasn't until after he died that I learned about the seating charts and campus maps that they found on him too. That? I have no explanation for. His parents don't either. I'd ask him myself but he's kind of dead.

It's hard for me to write about Columbine because Columbine makes me think of Victor, and even when he was alive when I wrote about it, my blog would somehow become like a letter to Victor about how fiercely loyal I am to defend him on this matter. I owe him for that. There are a lot of things I wont defend him on, but this, along with another private matter that I recently wrote to the courts about, is something that I totally have his back on.

I do feel like I owe him for how closely he let me into his life for three or so years, all the things he taught me, and all of the things that he showed me when he opened up to me. I found out that he was NOT the next Eric Harris, and at some point it became more than just understanding him and his motivations, or my motivations in befriending him. It became something more than all of that. It became something that I still write about and that still emotionally tears me down to this very day and connects me to a tragic event that took place my freshman year.

This song is the song that I thought of back in 1999. It was written in 1979 by the Boomtown Rats about the shooting spree of Brenda Ann Spencer who fired at children playing on a playground across the street from her home in San Diego. She killed two adults, injured eight children and a police officer and her full explanation was "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day." She's eligible for parole for the fifth time this year after being turned down the previous four times.

I leave you with "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats performed by me on the ukulele...

Because Nobody Else Wanted To

Man I am WIPED like a butt hole.

We did the big photo shoot today, it took two hours but then like 9+ hours of post production. They're on my Flickr but they're private so you must be marked as a friend or family member to see them. I would really appreciate it if you could have a look, tell me what you like, what you think I should send to the mag, what I should keep for my own use, etc. If you cant see the pictures it's because you're out of the loop and you can just get fucked.

Or ask to be added. If I like you I'll add you.

Anyway, the lady was really nice. And I was so glad to hear that she talked to another person at the mag who told her that they wanted pictures of her at home and such because the article is a personal look at her.

Her house by the way? Spectacular. I could take pictures of her knick-knacks all day long. She had a huge pirate ship made from genuine jade, and I have no idea how they carved a chain out of jade but it was awesome. She had a sax and a trumpet on display, it was like one of those houses that my kids would just wreck. Literally wreck.

At the hospital David and I followed her around, we got to see what her job was. Some doctors were confused/annoyed by us but she was like "This is MY day, I want a picture with YOU!"

We even got to see her with a patient...I don't want to talk about it. Don't ever make me talk about it.

Look, my eyes hurt from staring at the screen all day and airbrushing out stray hairs, so please let me end this quickly tonight with this. The way we work is we talk to people, get to know them, get them to act natural, and as I did have her explain to me things that I could never will never comprehend, I did ask her my favorite question that I like to ask people with unique careers. "Why did you go into this profession?"

She helps patients with wounds, like bed sores, etc.

She said, "Because nobody else wanted to." She said, "Nobody else wanted to and the patients were suffering."

She has my profound respect. She's a special kind of person for sure.

A Good Wife

I used to clean up before Steppy would come over. Now I make him help me fold laundry.

The Real Bombshell is coming over today, I haven't seen her since around October when I read Chapter Four of Bombshell to her, her mom, her cousin, and a big guy they call Little Timmy.

Sort of like how Victor was "Lil' Vic" in his family even though his dad Big Vic is like a foot and a half shorter.

I knew Steppy was off so I told him to come over and help me with laundry since I feel much more comfortable with an escort these days. Yes I have mace but I'd rather not use it if I have to. The wind factor could still be a problem.

"So Pico called me, my Marine buddy," I say as we're sitting on my bed folding a mound of clothes.

"The guy who said he loves you?"

"He was drunk," I remind him. "Anyway, he decided not to go to Afghanistan after all since he's still wigged out from being blowed up in Iraq. He's coming back to Yucaipa in June."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. He's going to apply for CHP with David next time, or whatever agency he ends up applying for since it changes like every week."

"That would be cool, it's nice to have someone go with you."

"Yeah but if they ended up in the same car it would be like that movie Superbad."

"But going up to academy with a buddy? That's going to make them more likely to stay."

"Well David would stay no matter what, there's no way he'd ever drop out. They might kick him out but he'd do everything in his power to avoid that."

"I have no doubt that David would make it."

"His recruiter was telling him that when he went up to academy his wife had just had a baby a few weeks prior and as soon as he was up there he was sleeping with another cadet. Then they said if they found out that if any of the married cadets were sleeping around they'd be kicked out, so the girl he was with had to break it off. But then he was screwing yet another cadet the next week. He was a bad boy."

"Yes he was a bad boy and I will beat the shit out of David if he ever does that to you!"

"Really? You'd beat up a no good cheating bastard for me?"

"Of course I would! You don't deserve to be treated like that at all." This might be what he means by Princess.

"Pico said something similar. But then he said something that pissed me off. He said that not only is he physically older than David since they're a year apart, but that he's mentally older as well. I raged in my berry crunch cereal just then, that pissed me off."

"What did you say?"

"I'm like, 'dude, just because you got blown up that doesn't make you a grown up, okay? David was a father at 15, he graduated high school early to get a job, and he's been supporting a family of four for all these years that you were out in the desert fighting a bullshit war. I mean I have nothing but respect for you for putting yourself in that position and I'm not trying to take away what happened to you because it was horrific and you are a very brave person for signing up to do that. But don't tell me that you're more mature than David. You're a raging alcoholic who hasn't had a chance to live in the real world yet because you went straight from Mommy and Daddy's house to the government's house. You've never paid an electric bill or even rushed out to pay it last minute because you just now scraped together the money. What you went through does not make you mature because you're handling it immaturely by drinking your PTS away instead of actually trying to cope with the problem and fix it. David's out there from 8 AM to 12 AM every day working his butt off for us. Don't you dare say he's not as mature as you!"

"Wow. What'd he say?"

"He said I was a good wife."

"That's true, you are a good wife."

"He said that most of the Marine wives don't know what the hell is going on with their husbands, all they know is that he fights in wars and that there's money in the bank. He said that I know everything about David, like we're intertwined and shit and I told him that's what marriage is supposed to be. I cant do shit without him and he cant do shit without me. If I wasn't kicking his ass out of bed every morning he never would have started running and getting in shape. You and me Steppy, you and me painted this house because his background investigator was coming and we wanted to make a good impression. David never would have done that by himself!"

"I know, but in all honesty you have to realize that Pico lives in a very small world. A very small and controlled world. I do too. And he's right because I cant talk to my wife about my job and she has no fucking clue what I'm doing out there."

"Well you don't tell me that stuff either," I say.

"But you know what goes on, you just know. And I know that you know because you don't even ask. You know that when it's serious it's just best not to ask me to talk about it. My wife wants to know, and I cant tell her. There's just shit that I cant talk about, not because I'm not allowed to but because there's no way to explain it. You get that. She doesn't. She thinks talking about it and praying about it will fix things. I show up over here when something is wrong or bothering me and you just let me sit. She'll bug me and try to get it out of me and then get offended when I ask her to leave me alone. David needs that, he's going to need for someone to just be there sometimes. That's what makes you a good wife. That's why I'm never going to let him get away with hurting you, even though I don't think he will."

Steppy for the win.

This Is The Second Notice That The Factory Warranty On Your Vehicle Is Expiring

I've had all I can stands and I can stands no more.

If I may quote the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on this issue:

This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is expiring

This "second notice" is more like a tenth or twentieth notice, and will be repeated ad infinitum until you smash your phone into a jumbled mess of plastic and circuitry.

Like many Americans, you may have a cell phone for vital communication needs and wireless internet browsing. You may have recently noticed a rash of calls from someone who appears to be quite concerned that the factory warranty on your vehicle is expiring, even though no one ever gave you a first notice of such, when you ride a bike or take the bus and don't even own a car, or are too young to drive. None of that matters. The factory warranty on your vehicle is expiring!

Intrepid anons have somehow located the source of these irritating calls and dealt with it in the way in which anon excels: repeated childish prank calls.

As expected, the company from which these calls are originating completely denies calling thousands of people a day and then hanging up on them. That's right, once you reach a human operator and request to be added to their do-not-call list, they promptly hang up on you and call you back later that day. That is why the only way to properly combat these shitstains is to be an absolutely vulgar asshole to them. Upon reaching an operator it is advised that you:

• Repeat the word "penis" in an overly excited voice.
• Threaten them with violence.
• Threaten them with a class-action lawsuit.
• Threaten them with rape.
• Threaten them with knife rape.
• Inform them that you very well may have fucked their mother.
• Scream yourself hoarse.

After enough of this abusive behavior, they'll soon remove your number from their various lists. If not, continue treating them like shit, it's not like telemarketers are people.

So besides the fact that the factory warranty on my vehicle is NOT expiring, primarily since I drive an 05 and whatever factory warranties it once had are surely expired, I'm sick of these god damned calls. I get these calls at least daily. Sometimes, like today, I got them three times. One of the recordings was a friendly male, where as the other two are the same robotic female voice.

The pizza place gets them.

David gets them.

Do you get them? I'm sure you do.

And the thing is that they come from a different number EVERY TIME! Normally when I get harassing phone calls from a company or creditor or something I label them in my phone as things like "don't answer" or "it's a trap" and yes, at one time fresh after the breakup, Victor's name in my cell phone changed to "asshole." But I cant do that with these guys because they're quick and slick and insincere (beware!)

And I cant start answering the phone whenever I see a foreign area code with obscenities because remember when that guy called me the other day from Illinois with that big photography gig for the magazine? I already feel foolish enough talking to that guy, do I really want to ruin my chances by answering the phone by saying something like "Angry Sluts From Tahoe, how may I serve you this evening?"

Angry Sluts From Tahoe, by the way, was my short lived so called "bad mouth hotline" that I had when I first moved out at 18 and my phone service came with a convenient second line that would make the phone ring funny when someone called it. The naked guy I lived with, the guy with his soft adult contemporary music and candle lit bubble baths for one and his sweaty ball prints all over the place, we would answer the phone and mess with whoever was on the other end of the line, which was most often a misdialer.

But nobody has figured out how to stop these calls yet completely, and I doubt this will make some kind of 20/20 or Dateline special. I've even gotten mail from these fuckers! It's a barrage of fucking expired factory warranties!

I am already on the Do Not Call list. I have already tried patching through to a human, it gets you nowhere.

I'm getting really pissed off.

Let me just say this, I've said it once before so this is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is expiring.

Fuck Thy Neighbor With Thine Mental Penis

I'm guest posting for my good friend Miss today so if you want to read this post and find out about fucking the neighbor with a so called "mental penis" is all about you'll have to click this link. Go ahead, it's not going to bite, it's just an external link that will take you to her blog. Don't be afraid.

And Leah? You click it too, I think it's just what you were looking for.

Miss is this girl by the way that David is modeling sex equipment to...



(and yes, his shirt does say "sandwich I'd like to fuck.")

The Princess

I think Sally and I are at odds, though I cant be certain.

Yesterday morning I get this email that simply says "morning...tell david i will kick his butt if he runs like that up the stairs so early in the morning or late in the nite and shuts the door too..."

I tell her "Well in that case stop walking around in your heels, because I can hear you walking all the way from the parking lot to the door. :)"

Something tells me this was the wrong answer.

I'm working on a very sad song on the ukulele for the 10th anniversary of Columbine which is coming up next week because for some reason I connect with Columbine more than I connect with 9/11 which as I've said before, I wont touch with a 10 foot pole.

There's the sound of heels and then a knock at the door.

"What is that? Your u-lu-lu-lu? Okay can you stop it please? I can hear it."

"I'll shut my window--"

"No, I hear that thing all the time when you play it, I hear everything in these walls. Is only toy, right? You cant play real songs on it? So stop, okay?"

"Actually Sally this is not a toy, it is a real instrument and yes I can play real songs on it. I'll gladly shut the window but I have to practice."

"Please don't."

"Why? It's 7:00 in the evening, the kids outside are louder than I am, what the hell man?"

"The Indian guy is coming over and I don't want to have to listen to it while he's here, okay?"

"Oh I see. You don't want my whimsical strumming to break your concentration when he's down there giving you face, or 'kissing your lips' as you call it."

Her eyebrows perk up to a point in the middle. "You going to stop then?"

"Uh...no?"

"I'll just call the cops then."

"Seriously?"

She's already on her phone. This is bad. A woman with an accent calls up and says something about the neighbor with an u-lu-lu-lu and 12 guys will show up with their pepper ball guns drawn and I'll be on the balcony in my long socks saying "it's just a ukulele" and then there's an explosion of spicy meat-a-balls and tear gas and then nothing but red and then black.

"Yes, my neighbor is being to noisy, you come to shut her up please?" She puts it on speaker phone and I am relieved that I recognize the voice on the other end.

"Um...S-Sally? What's going on?"

"My neighbor is too noisy and needs to be put in her place," she pouts in kind of a little girl voice which is charming as hell in the accent. She should really do porn.

"Oh the princess?" he asks.

Sally and I say "Princess?" at the same time.

"Is not a princess! Her and her ulie-lulie! She will not stop!"

"Oh the ukulele. Well that thing's not too loud, ask her to play the Johnny Cash song that she knows, she's really good at that one. Is she there? Can I talk to her?"

She rolls her eyes and I say hello. He says hi back all sweetly. "I'm going to Wal Mart later, you want some discounted Easter candy?"

"You know I do," I say.

"Okay. I'll try to bring it by before work one day this week. Cadbury eggs right?"

"Yeah, as many as you can get! Peanut butter eggs too!"

"I'll see what they have. Okay, g'night. Lock your door."

"I will."

"Byyyyyyyye"

"Ja, bye."

Sally takes her phone back and slams the door shut. I did stop playing though, I'm not a complete asshole.

But then this morning oh, OH I almost got to use my mace. I was on my walk with Wade and a voice from behind me says "Hello," all friendly like. Well The Princess does not take people saying hello to her lightly, so I totally whipped out my mace as I turned around. The pretty boys on their bikes both put their hands up in defense.

"I didn't mean to startle you miss," the squared chin one goes.

I slowly put the mace back into my hoodie and scoot as far as I can away from them on the sidewalk to where I'm almost in people's lawns.

"Are you enjoying the windy weather?" the cute one goes.

"It's Beaumont," I say, "it's always windy here."

"Okay. So, we're missionaries and our job is to tell people about Our Lord Jesus Christ." I grip the mace instinctively. "Do you have any religious background yourself?"

"No I'm...fairly atheist," I tell them, which isn't entirely true but it's the quickest way to explain to most people that I do not god.

"Ooooh?" the squared chin one asks with his ears perked up a little. "Why is that?"

"Um...you know, I...don't need ministering and I don't really believe in fairy tales," says The Princess. I keep thinking about those Prop 8 commercials and the fact that Steppy's wife didn't understand the logistics of a hand job. Special underwear. Joseph Smith. "I'm a happy law abiding person, I don't have the void in my life that most people fill with religion, I'm cool though."

"I see," he says. "So...do you live around here?"

"Yes."

"Like in this neighborhood?"

"Why?"

"Well I just want to know if you're one of my neighbors," he assures me.

"That's kind of creepy to ask where I live though guy, you know what I mean?"

They nervously laugh to themselves. "Yes um, well, is there anything we can help you with today?"

"I'm walking just fine," I say.

"Well we live right up the street and if you ever see us around and you ever need anything you can bet that we'll be glad to help."

"Thanks," I say.

They're still riding next to me and they're staring at me. Both in sunglasses, both looking at me like they're either trying to figure me out or see if they can fish out some kind of devil from my innards. Like this red guy will just jump out of my throat and be like "Foolish Mormons! This soul belongs to ME! MU HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

Would explain the heart burn at least.

And We're Off...No False Starts This Time

On this quest to produce some kind of offspring I realized that something was wrong.

And I know that we've been on and off about the subject and "yeah we're going to try for more" and then nothing really comes of it and we lose interest but this time we mean serious business.

What's weird is David's shitty fuck faced brother says to us at Christmas something about "making him feel even older by us trying for more kids."

I don't see how David and I having another kid affects some douchebag we barely know considering it's uterUS not uterYOU.

We've been in "it doesn't really matter" mode as far as birth control goes for four years now. Yet, nothing has happened. We've been baffled. David has been talking about more babies for several months now half assedly, not to the point of actually trying trying but just like "lets do it, and maybe you'll get preggers."

This is like, stupid.

Failed birth control was what got us Ty. And Wade was an abstinence baby.

I think the factor here that's missing is exercise.

I've always been moderately active. As a kid I walked everywhere, especially when I lived in the mountains. In Jr High I walked two miles to school and two miles back (up hill both ways...well actually just one, but it was a steep hill.) Then all through high school I did marching band which is actually pretty athletic. I mean not basketball athletic but certainly you burn some calories with all that jazz running. At the time that I got pregnant with Ty I was working as a housekeeper for this crazy Russian doctor who owned a huge mansion in Redlands four hours a day four days a week (plus fucking like every single day and hiking on the weekends with David...which also led to fucking) and when Wade showed up as a blip on the monitor I was at the gym swimming for three hours a day four days a week.

Right now? I've never been so sloth like in my whole life.

I've never eaten better than I have in the past few years (who'd of thunk that I liked steamed cabbage so dern much?) but my activity level is kaputski. I'm a writer, and a successful one at that considering I've finished a few novels. I also knit and read. That's a lot of down time. Which also, subsequently leads to etc. etc. etc.

So in an attempt to gain a little control over this I've decided to start walking.

I put a helmet on Wade and set him out on his scooter as we walked through a yuppy McMansionville neighborhood. Beaumont is fairly flat though unlike Yucaipa so walking doesn't really tire you out as fast and you can go farther. But by the end of our walk Wade was all but crashing into cars and just fooling around on the scooter so I'm thinking that maybe a wagon is in order. One way or another I'm going to get out and start going, my big can of mace hanging out of my pocket and all.

I think he said something about this mace being able to spray for 15 minutes but I don't know if that's right. That seems like it would only be necessary if there was a hoard of ninjas after you or something. Which I could see happening. It IS Beaumont.

For some reason I saw three cop cars, three different cop cars on my walk.

For some reason.

And for some reason that is oddly cool. Well, it's a lot better than the time that I stole a walnut from a raven and then for months I had a large flock of ravens that would follow me all the way to school squawking and screaming the whole way, even camping outside my bedroom in the wee morning hours to play "alarm squawk."

PS don't ever steal food from ravens. You are not nearly as clever as they.

We're getting health insurance, by the way, and for all intents and purposes we're actually pretty much hoping for a boy. I know I know, girl would be nice and I was so very upset about Wade having a penis but honestly it would just make things easier. I was talking to a family member who is pregnant with her third and she has two girls already and she said that another girl would make sense because all she knows is girl. That's true. All I know is boy. I'm a girl and I don't even remember what that's all about.

You can follow the whole ordeal on Twitter (or in the sidebar,) except that one person was like "um seriously?" in regards to my twittering of the situation but honestly with all of the things that I put out there especially in regards to the sex toy website, I see this as nothing different.

For the record we aren't taking any drastic measures or investing in ovulation kits or anything like that. I'm going to walk and take some vitamins and fuck, that's about the extent of it. Whatever will be will be. This time though it is on.

Uneventful

David is brewing tonight and he's having friends over. Friends as in a bum who drinks at the park and spouts off philosophy and uses rampant intellectualism as a social skill and a guy from the pizza place who is worth over a million dollars in rare coins.

Rich pizza boy character sound familiar? He is.

Doesn't sound familiar? Then you need to buy Bombshell. Then it will all fit together.

Anyway, the rich pizza boy is investing in David's so called small business. That is to say that he's chipping in to pay for 50% of the cost of ingredients plus he's buying David about $500 in fancy beer brewing equipment.

The guy works two jobs in order to have money for A. more rare coins and B. investing in things like the Iraqi dinar and David's beer.

I've got no beef with the pizza guy, he's cool and interesting. It's that Dana guy who drives me batshit. So David suggested that maybe I get out for the night but I'm still paranoid to be out by myself so he said to call Steppy. I fancied that idea, and I knew Steppy would too.

"So, you want to go to the movies or something?" he suggests.

"No, you'll just stick your dick through the bottom of the popcorn."

*offended gasp* "I will not stick my dick in the popcorn!"

I didn't believe him. I cant ever believe him. He suggested hitting up one of the restaurants at the casino and maybe some light gambling but I wasn't really in the mood for it. Really I didn't want to go "out" out, I just wanted to be out. I suggested that he sit and watch me write a book at Starbucks, and thankfully he obliged. So here we sit at a small bistro table, a gun in his leg holster. He tells me to up my B vitamins if I want to increase chances of baby. These Mormons and their procreation tips. He also said something about donating to the cause and I had to ask him to take his hand off my thigh. Now he's just doing paperwork.

So far it has been a quiet night here at my neighborhood Starbucks. I didn't bother to bring my mace since I've got an armed guard and all. Okay so I lied, it's in the pocket of my hoodie. I love my mace. The girls at the counter are new ones who I haven't met before. One of them is obviously 13 years old, still brace faced and with braids. The other girl's hair is painted like a really cool emo skunk or something. Zack Effron is here, so is his buddy Douchebag Chad who insists on wearing DC shoes even though he's at least 35. Then again I wear tall rainbow socks, but I'm 10 years younger and I have great legs. Some soccer players have entered, I'm about ready to just get the writing done. I have two of my Moleskine journals with me tonight full of notes for two books. If I get stuck on one I'll switch to the other.

I wonder what the other girl with a laptop is doing.

I know what Douchebag Chad is doing. He's been in the bathroom three times in the 40 minutes since I've been sitting here, and he always comes out itching/wiping/rubbing his nose.

Douchebag Chad is now Tweaker Tom, FYI.

A dude keeps staring at me. Steppy keeps staring at him. This is fascinating. Dude is gone now.

Yuppie soccer mom and her snotty little soccer kid are eating cinnamon rolls. Oh god, they took Dude's table and now Dude is back, one table closer.

Oh...I forgot. Cleavage hanging out.

Steppy rubs my leg with his foot almost possessively. I let him. He's still doing paperwork and I'm writing about another dimension where the sky is always, always, always pink and the hills look like lime green crushed velvet. Steppy finished his coffee and I'm a slow drinker so he starts drinking my tea and I have to remind him that mouth germs totally gross me out and to knock it the fuck off. He says sorry. And he buys me another drink to replace the one that he mouth germed.

Starbucks closes early now, like 9:30, and I'm worried about going back to the house because I just hate that Dana guy so much. I ask Steppy if he'll come home and hang out with me, maybe have a beer. A Terwilliger Home Brew. But he sighs and tells me no, that he has to get home. But his car is parked here so he might as well come up and say hi to everyone and get a visual of this Dana guy so he can remember to harass him for me when he sees him riding his bike around town.

But when we came up nobody was here. Just Sad David sadly eating his chips and dips that we made for the guests, a big pot of wort cooling in the sink.

"Nobody came?" I asked.

"Nobody came," he replied.

"That's weird since that guy gave you all that money and all. Dana's probably drunk off his ass on his mom's couch but Matt should have been here at least."

"Yeah my friends suck," he says.

And so Steppy went home.

And so it is time for fetal attempt #3.

(we have no idea when I ovulate, this is a wild stab in the dark...quite...literally...)

(I bleed at random times)

(I absolutely love corn chips)

(dry clean only)

Easter For Heathens

This is what our Easter is like pretty much every year.

Sugar coated marshmallows in the shape of bunnies? WHAT?



Cheese and crackers y'all, the main food group of heathens and atheists everywhere...



...and fruit too.



Jello? In soda? Oh we best be trollin'.



A dancing taco. Actually he has nothing to do with Easter but it's cool that his friend was out there dancing with him.



Then this rabbit dude comes along right? And he poops out these things...



...so that the children can find them. Go forth children! Find the symbols of fertility and rebirth you adorable little pagans you!!!









Sometimes obvious eggs are obvious



Oh right, and check out my awesome Easter socks, holla!



Oh yeah and embroidered toilet paper!



Obviously Easter is fun for us and we aren't binding and torturing the children. But the little girl across the street did tell some of our kids that if they didn't love Jesus they would go "straight down there." Yeah, that kind of shit bothers me, kids shouldn't have to worry about bullies.

And of course there are more pictures over in the Flickr, you know what to do son.

Now if you'll excuse me...

I love you. I am on a quest to make a fetus. Hopefully it wont come out with dye all over it from all the eggs and colored fucking candies I've been stuffing in my pie hole all day. Bye.

A Preemptive Shhh

There's always this one mother fucker, at least one, sometimes more, but there's always at least one motherfucker who will make it a point to snicker and say some shit to the effect of me not being Christian whenever I celebrate a Christian holiday.

I'll come to my conclusion right now so you can just stop reading this right here: Easter is an American holiday as far as I see it. The way it's traditionally celebrated here is bastardized anyway, and if Americans can do anything it's bastardize things through marketing. That's how we come up with our traditions.

Another fun key word is "commercialism." Can we say that all together now?

Commercialism.

Christians cant take all the credit for it. The whole damn country was in on fucking this holiday up!

Whatever it means to Christians, it doesn't matter to me. Whatever it means to pagans, it doesn't matter to me. This isn't evolution or gay rights, it's a fucking hollow chocolate bunny.

Grow the fuck up already.

I hate it that people are so ready and willing to share their bible with me, their secret of getting into the afterlife and sharing what they know about a man they believe is their savior, but when I want to celebrate a "Christian" holiday, it's all "NO! MINE! YOU'RE NOT ONE OF US SO YOU CANT PLAY!"

All right, well fuck you then.

They point out the whole me celebrating it situation like I'm trying to ride on the coat tails of their religion, and that isn't so. If it was I'd be just like everyone else who commits sins all over the place and then calls oly oly oxen free because they're SAVED!!!!!!!! and FORGIVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! because then I could still do whatever the hell I wanted and get into heaven like so many others. And they make heaven out to be such a nice place. Why on earth would I try to ride on a religion's coat tails for painted eggs? Why wouldn't I go all out and try to work my way into the pearly gates as well?

I'm not here to take anything from anyone.

We are going to go hang out with my atheist/non-secular Jew family while the kids hunt for plastic eggs filled with chocolate that came out of an imaginary rabbit's snatch.

No bunny does Easter like Cadbury. Bok bok bok bok bok bok...

We were invited to church. By his parents. David handled it and actually didn't even tell me until this evening because David knows that I get all outspoken and shit. David is just a very quiet "do not want" sort of guy. No explanation. No reminder to them that we're not Christian and to stop trying to convert us, just, "No, we're going to hang out with the atheist/non-secular Jews instead."

He expresses his do not wants so eloquently with so few words.

No explanation, just "do not want."

It's so polite it's offensive.

It's offensive.

I love this man.

So I'm just going to ask you, perhaps come to some kind of agreement with you, because I know that you guys with your gods and your bibles will always be knocking on my door or trying to invite me to things or saying god bless me when I sneeze, I just want you to know that I'm always going to say no. And don't be that mother fucker this year, don't be the person who leaves a comment or sends me an email about it, or anything like that. And I'm letting you know now that all religious e-cards will be reciprocated with an offensive one so please don't unless you would like to receive an offensive e-card for the lulz. I admit, they're pretty funny. Can you admit that?

Why would I react poorly to someone just trying to be "nice" in these situations? Because it's downright rude. You know my position, and yet you still hope that your e-card featuring a crucifix and a dove will somehow change my mind. Look, I'm just telling you it wont, just like this wont change your mind:

Let's just have a happy Americanized candy filled semi-Pagan Christian holiday.

That was a preemptive shhh, and I've got a whole bag of shhh with your name on it.

Don't speed, don't do speed.

JT

Freaky Friday

This guy from the magazine reminds me of David's background investigator. Kind of makes me have to pee with great urgency. I emailed him and said that the lady and I agreed to meet next Saturday and we would be doing a shoot at the hospital, her house, and a lovely park. He's like "I don't see the purpose of her house or the park, this is a trade magazine, I asked you to take the pictures in the hospital environment."

Jeez...sorry, I didn't know. Just trying to do things my way.

No. There is no my way. There is no above and beyond. There is Trade Magazine that needs specific pictures. I have an assignment.

I've been told to run far far away from this project. It's in my best interest to run far far away from this project. God, I don't know that it is, but I see how it could be. I see how this could be a disaster, but again, HE came to ME, and he saw my work, he knows what I can deliver and I just hope that I deliver it. I cant navigate the big scary world on my own, even though when I walk down corridors my shoes make that grown up walking sound. I want to give this my best, my all.

If I fail yes, this could end badly. And this is why I should run away.

But then if I do it, and it works out...think of how amazing this could be.

Plus David already asked for the day off so unless we want to go sit at Denny's all day, we're going to do this thing.

But talking to that guy this morning really put me off kilter. I really do wonder if I'm not growed up enough to do things like this. I still use Lip Smackers and I put my hair in pigtails. But then I do have that nice "professional" wardrobe on the other side of my closet so I don't know.

Then I go to the gas station. I hate pumping gas, it's so not my thing, and yes, I am spoiled. I think gas pumping is boys work and it's not at all in my job description to have to fetch my own petrol.

The problem started when I went to use the cash/credit machine outdoors so I didn't have to run inside. The less interaction with people I have the better. I enter my pump number and of course I cannot find the slot that takes my money. And I stare at the machine for a few moments. In my defense, it's like way off to the side and hardly even the main part of the thing. But then I find it and put my $20 in, but then it spits it back out at me. I stick it back in, it takes it, and I return to pump #4. Pump #4 isn't dispensing any gas. Mother. So I go back to the cash machine thing and it's all reset for the next person to use.

Bitch stole my twenty.

I drag Wade in with me and I tell the guy that his machine took my money.

This is what I mean by people in Beaumont being stupid and defensive.

"Are you sure that's what happened?"

"Yeah because I put the money in, but I took a really long time to do it so maybe it reset its self. Sorry."

He looks at me crooked and sighs "Okay, I need your drivers license number, your name and your phone number."

I gladly give him the information because I understand his position. I could very well be lying but this time I swear I'm not. Bitch really did take my twenty.

He sighs again and says, "I saw you trying to activate the machine but I didn't see you put any money in. Nor is the machine telling me that you inserted any cash, so--"

"Would you like my license plate number as well?" I offer.

"No, I'll get that from the tape." He sighs again. "Okay, I'm putting twenty on four. I hope for YOUR sake that YOU ARE TELLING THE TRUTH."

"Well for both of our sakes, I am so--"

"Because we will call the police, do you understand? If we review the tape and it turns out you're lying, this will go to the police."

"Are you like, trying to scare me or something?"

"Your pump has been activated. Go pump your gas ma'am," he says kind of sarcastically. I didn't bother to go back and get my twenty cents that was left over. Fucker can have it. Jeez. He probably wouldn't surrender it anyway, he'd think I was stealing it.

Look, I understand to an extent why he was acting that way, but it was also a bit over the top. I willingly gave him my information and even offered my license plate number. Plus we're talking about $20 here. Yeah, kids have gone to jail for stealing less from Stater's, but honestly I think the guy was a little angry at society or something. Maybe he was just having a really bad day.

The weird thing is that the machine stopped pumping twenty cents short and I was almost on empty. When I tried to squeeze more in it vibrated really hard like it was too full, but then in the car it said I had room for another quarter tank.

There's nothing wrong with the sensor thingy, so what gives?

Then I go to Staters and one of the ladies who works there asks me about my book. They know me there. They know me because David knows me, and David used to work there/still works in the parking lot. She asks me about my book and I pull a copy out of my purse. She's all mesmerized, and I pull out a Sharpie and sign it for her. She asked how much and I told her it was hers, she could take it.

Totally signed a book in the middle of the store using the shopping cart as leverage to write on. Leverage, is that the right word? Whatever. She then told me that she has a friend in one of the beach cities who owns some kind of business and she has authors come and do signings all the time. She says she'll talk to her for me.

I signed it "To Lil, my favorite Staters lady."

She said, "I'm watching you on your website."

Um.

Does she mean here?

Hi Lil?

Wouldn't be the first time.

Hi Mr. Sexy.

Then my card wouldn't scan at the checkout. It's practically brand new, but it wouldn't scan. Luckily I had cash on me but it was like, why is technology failing me today?

The machine in the laundry room that puts money onto your laundry card refused to spit my card back out. I had to kick it and whine.

Oh and the dryer only took ten cents off of my card, SCORE! But of course it totally didn't dry my clothes all the way and I had to run it again.

Then Eden Fantasys sent me an assignment for a raging black man's hard on. LOL! I'm serious. It's 10 inches long. I've named it Quincy after the one and only black boy I ever dated. Not because I had anything in particular against daring black boys, but he was the only black boy at my school. David saw it and lol'd. I mentioned my new interracial peen on Twitter and the Eden administrator saw it and goes "I have so many long cocks that need love! Like, srsly, a dozen! Please love that beautiful cock for us :)"

I lol'd.

This whole sex toy testing job has been funner than shit. And I'm getting all these weird followers on Twitter because of it. Plus now I have a huge box of weird things to show company. We don't even use most of the shit after the initial test, but we keep it because, hey, why take up space in a landfill? Why not make our collection as horrifically big as possible?

Plus it's fun to name them. I don't know why. That's probably disturbing, but I happen to enjoy Thor's company.

See also: Joe the Butt Plug (a David thing)

See also: Audrey II (yes as in Little Shop Of Horrors...you have to see the thing, you'd understand.)

It's just been one of those weird days where things keep happening to me. I intend to stay indoors for the rest of the day so if anything else happens it will have to involve the vacuum and/or a ukulele. It also just so happens to be Victor's birthday.

He was really into computers.

My computer restarted its self some time in the night and the blog post I had minimized but never saved was gone.

With the way that technology seems to be failing me today, I just have to wonder, you know?

I doubt he had anything to do with the black man penis but seriously? Nothing seems to be working right for me today and it's really starting to be a bummer. Also if the cops show up looking for money I'm so going to throw a fit. And if creepy gas station guy calls me in the middle of the night to ask me what I'm wearing, I'm putting him on speaker phone for everyone to hear.

Well happy birthday anyway, and sorry that you're dead.

Stop fucking with my shit.

Caught Without My Big Girl Panties

So I get this call yesterday from Illinois. From a prestigious medical magazine. And they want us to photograph this lady who works at the hospital right where I live because they're doing an article on her for some reason. Not only do they want pictures of her for the article? But the cover photo as well.

Us as in US.

The cover photo.

Serious gulpage.

And they're paying me a substantially high amount, as in like way over what I charge because they want to be sure that the photos are done RIGHT because they're going on the COVER and all.

A medical magazine. A major one.

I am Jack's cold sweat.

Of course I feel like a bit of a doof after talking to the guy because I know I acted all unprofessional out of sheer nervousness. My skills fall just short of being able to not freak out when I'm caught off guard like that.

Situations are so much easier to handle when I can use my mace.

You know what I mean by he emphasized the words "we want to make sure that the photos are done RIGHT," don't you? Like how people slow down and pause between words so you understand the gravity of their thought.

I promised him that we would be able to provide him with quality pictures or something along those lines, I don't know what I said, but he goes "I've been to your website, I've seen your work. I believe you will be able to deliver exactly the quality of photographs we are looking for."

Sometimes my eye twitches. This was one of those times.

Part of our shtick is that we are friendly, and that we don't really pose people and rarely count to One Two Three. And if we do, we snapped on One Two and Three and make you think we just clicked on Three. We talk to you, get to know you, and snap pictures of you once you forget that we are holding cameras. Our lack of professionalism during the shoot, that is to say that we wear nice shirts but we don't starch them, is kind of what gets us the pictures we end up with. I just wish I had better phone skills. And now I feel like I have to over compensate and totally rock this guy's world with these photographs.

I try not to overcomplicate things with my camera. I have no idea what an F-Stop is, and I rarely take the camera into manual mode, and when I do, there are only a few minor adjustments that I will make, like making the flash brighter or messing with the shutter speed. My camera is on the high end of the point and shoots, like a point and shoot with fancy options, what they consider "serious amateur." Maybe even "enthusiast." Camera #2 is just a high quality point and shoot that we use for candids.

Sometimes keeping things simple is how you end up with really cool shots, which is kind of our shtick.

The humming bird picture was taken on Indoor mode because I didn't have time to fuck with the settings or switch to a more appropriate mode, and I was standing inside taking this outside picture. It just happened to work. Obviously when I do my whole photoshoot thing there's more to it than just "wow I hope this works," because I do know a thing'r two and I will do everything in my power to control the camera and make it do what I want. But the hummingbird shot is still cool, right?

The general idea is for us to follow her around the hospital with our cameras. I figure I'll ask her to show me what it is that she does and give us a bit of a tour, but I'll need to know what kind of authorization I need, if any, so I'll have to get that squared away first. They're sending me a few copies of the mag so I have a clear idea of what exactly they publish and how the pictures need to relate. Luckily I have enough people skills to initiate the conversation and lead it in my direction, I just freak out when I get random phone calls from magazines asking me to do their cover photo.

Isn't this crazy?

Yeah, this is totally crazy.

It's just that I'm so small time, so so very small time, and I'm being asked to host the Queen of England in my two bedroom apartment, know what I mean? Oh I have contracts that I have people sign, but will I be insulting the crap out of them by having them sign it? Will they laugh at me? What in the hell do I do here? I don't know how to talk to adults, I'm better at social contracts and very basic "sign here" stuff.

I'm scared and excited and sort of really nervous. Need distraction...

Look at my new socks!

Deciphering Crazy And The Yucaipa Mentality + Hardcore Ukulele Volume VI

There is a guy I want you to know about and I call this guy Don Quixote. Yes, like the folklore figure.

Don Quixote may or may not be a crazy man. I've also heard him be called Mr. Mime by a few. Is he homeless like some of the other fine characters in Beaumont such as One Hand Luke and Grizzly Dan who lives behind the car wash? Just friendly like Toupee With Legs?

According to David the guy is normal to talk to. He has recycled before and he seemed fine in conversation. But what makes Don Quixote so noteworthy is his strange behavior which he displays as he marches up and down Beaumont Avenue.

This is not a great picture, but then again it is, because just look at him. Look at what he is doing. He's got an arm outstretched, he's not facing the right way to be jogging up the sidewalk, and he's doing...something. Can you see it?

The thing about Don is that he interacts with an imaginary world. This includes but is not limited to the following.

• "fishing" for cars and "reeling them in"
• Crouching down to "speak" to a "small child"
• Random hand signals umpire style in warp speed
• Rubbing his tummy while patting his head while walking like a penguin
• Jousting with stop signs
• Participating in "marathons," including stopping to help "injured joggers," encouraging other "joggers" to get to the finish line, then partaking in a "victory dance."
• Random jig time! Jiggidy-jig! Jiggidy-jig-jig-jig!
• Handing things out to "people" like possibly money
• My favorite, going for a home run by running all four "bases" of the corners of Beaumont Ave and Oak Valley Pkwy (without using proper crosswalk button pushing procedures first) and then high-fiving the no parking sign.

He does this EVERY DAY. Sometimes he passes while David and I are hanging out in the parking lot. We try to decipher what he's doing, and the kids know him as "that guy who dances in the street."

Don Quixote doesn't always wear a shirt. I'm waiting for him to just be out there in a Speedo doing his thing, and then he cracks open a squirrel and bathes in its blood.

We don't know what kind of crazy he has.

Perhaps he is exercising, perhaps not. Perhaps he is a really elaborate IRL troll. Perhaps he's a hologram. We don't know for sure.

"Maybe I'll walk up next to him one day and start mimicking all his movements and we can be like a team," I suggest.

"No honey. You'll just be entering a contest that you cant win," David says.

See, this is the sort of shit that you get in Beaumont.

Back in Yucaipa there was this guy who sat out in front of the police station every day for years. So long that not only did he change nationalities every few months, progressing from Mexican to Indian to full on African with all the sun damage, but I remember when he switched from a pocket CD player to an iPod. He had a folding chair, and none of us could ever figure out what he was doing. But he was always, ALWAYS there. Was he crazy? I don't know. But you always see people walking/hobbling/wheeling up the boulevard in Yucaipa so seeing a guy sitting there day after day absorbing skin cancer as fast as the sun could produce it was just kind of accepted as part of the norm. That guy sits there. That's okay.

That guy breaks out in random jigs and high fives the stop signs on occasion. Here that's okay too, because ultimately these people are probably normal enough, they just act weird. I'm like that too but just not quite as ballsy to go do jigs on the side of the road. Not by myself anyway. Mostly because I don't see the purpose of it other than maybe trolling a streetful of cars passing by.

And look, I love Yucaipa. I still find myself in Yucaipa on occasion. But I don't think I will ever live within city limits there again if I can help it. I mean I don't know for sure, but I'm just saying that the brand of crazy that is being manufactured in Yucaipa is not nearly as entertaining as the brand of crazy they're pushing here in Beaumont. Like the guy David saw rocking out on a harmonica while driving. Our brand of crazy here is genuine stark raving squirrel cracking crazy. In Yucaipa it's more of a mentality.

Not that I live more than 10 miles away from Yucaipa or anything, but the crazy here sure is different, I'll say that much and stick to my story.

And now I'm going to strum my ukulele to the tune of I Will Follow You Into The Dark by a band called Death Cab For Cutie. You like Death Cab?

Sun Tea and Training Vines

When I pulled out of the driveway this morning there was a cop waiting on the other side of the road. I turned to go to Staters so I could hang out with David like I always do before we head to school, and the cop flipped a U and followed me into the parking lot. He parked way over by Dominoes and stayed there until I left. That's when I saw him in my mirror again. And he followed me the whole way to school. When I pulled into the school he just drove right on past it. It wasn't Steppy.

Coming back home, it wasn't until about a block from my house that I noticed the cop again in the mirror several car lengths back. Like, "I'm not following you but I am" distance.

It's great today, all warm but windy still because it's always windy here. My honeys are starting to suckle, you know, and wrap their vines around the railing. The raspberries we planted are getting taller too. I used some twine to try to lead a few stray vines toward the railing. Our goal is to have it all just turn into a planty viny mesh to replace the cover that the tree once gave us.

I still miss my tree.

I decided to make sun tea of all things. I do like drinking tea and I always remember big tea jars on the porch growing up, but then my sister taught me a few years ago that you don't actually have to put the tea in the sun, you can just use hot water and set it on the counter.

Duh.

But it takes the magic out of it.

I have a shit load of tea, some of which is unopened. I'm not fancy and I'll buy the crap in boxes at the store so long as they make the flavor sound good. It's the trashy American version of high tea but it's fine, I don't really care that much, which is what makes it so trashy and American. I mix flavors though, and sometimes I'll add a gingerbread cookie tea to the orange spice tea. FUCKING MADNESS right? Plus I add orange slices to the pitcher so it's kind of like a Kool Aid commercial where the pretty mom lady makes the drink look so good that you might go out and buy some Kool Aid and throw a back yard party.

Looking at the pool even makes me want to swim.

And they said it was supposed to rain today.

Steppy came over to "check in" for a while and I glopped him a hunk of leftover tater tot casserole and nuked it on high. Hardworking mens who keep me alive deserve the biggest glops of food of all. He keeps telling me everything is fine and not to panic every time he sees me. That's not entirely true about everything being fine, but reassurance is quite helpful.

Don't panic

and

everything is fine.

Ty runs like Forest Gump.

Don't panic

but

keep that mace with you at all times.

Okay?

Because this is serious.

But don't panic

and

everything is fine.

I gave him $30 and told him to go buy me big umbrella or something that will provide some shade so I can sit on my porch and write. He said he had to go to work, and that I could go get my own umbrella if I so choose. And no, I cannot mace the clerk when they ask for the money, I still have to pay for things. Mace is not a "do what I say" card, it is for defense ONLY.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He says to go shopping, like how David said to get a pedicure and a drink at Starbucks. My plants sure are doing well, my porch is so nice. And the kids did chores so the house is all clean and the smelly candles are smelling...

"You really ought to go somewhere."

"I've done my obligations for the day, that counts as going somewhere."

That first night David took me to Chili's. He wont let me stay cooped up at home.

"But the neighbor likes to listen to my u-lu-lu-lu as she calls it, and it makes me so happy to play it."

He hands the money back to me. "But you need an umbrella or something for shade on your porch. Go get your umbrella."

Tomorrow.

Maybe.

Everything is fine.

Armed And Fucking Dangerous

Steppy stops by to bring me a copy of my police report, and also to give me a better thing of mace since the one he gave me a few days ago wasn't as cool as it could have been.

"This is just like the one I use," he tells me, and gives me this huge fucking thing. Size "Magnum," which like with condoms means serious business.

"There's tear gas and ultra-violet dye in it too."

More like ultra VIOLENT die, amiright?

"I want to go take a walk."

"Jessie, no, it's 11:30 at night."

"I know. I am going to fuck somebody's shit up."

"No honey," David says, "that's not what it's for."

"Well some mother fucker is going to get a faceful of this stuff one way or another."

The canister rivals the size of some of the things that the sex toy website has been mailing me and I had a hard time getting it into my purse. I used to carry pepper spray in high school, Victor made me. He would buy it at sporting goods stores. One time he even got me bear mace. He also bought fox urine one time to pour in people's cars so that not only would their cars smell like piss but a bunch of horny cats and dogs would be following the car around the neighborhood and pissing on it when they parked.

I think he is who might have taught me my mace rage.

I just kind of want to tell the fucker to open their mouth and gargle that shit like the girls do at the end of the pornos.

Steppy MIGHT have mentioned something about excessive use or something along those lines but I wasn't paying attention. That shit is boring. I would much rather test this shit out on a crack head. I'm even thinking of asking for my old paper route back since 3:00 in the morning is prime time for crack heads asking you for cigarettes/money/booze in this area. But then I also worry about how it's always windy in Beaumont and how there could be splash back and/or "spit into the wind" effects.

I asked him to give one to David too and David said no, he uses wasp nest spray. You know, that foam that you shoot from 20 feet back and then run when those angry wasps come flying out at you. That and he's heavily armed with a mighty large metal pole with a mallet attached which he uses to smash glass, which could also be full of win but also quite gruesome.

This is going to make my trips to Starbucks a whole lot more interesting as far as I'm concerned. Imagine if I had it when those punks stole that sandwich. Okay, so perhaps I shouldn't mace punks just for stealing sandwiches, but somebody SHOULD. Or if that fucker ever comes back to spray paint a penis on my front door again, I can just open the door as he's painting the shaft and I'll give him a faceful of eye searing fun.

See, the tear gas causes them to cry, and any skin that is wet is going to burn like hell. That's how Steppy explained it. Plus that dye essentially marks them as the guy you pwned with your mace just in case they cant seem to prove that it was him by the way he's screaming Jesus's name and running with snot from every face hole.

But I'm greedy, so I asked for a tazer. I've been told no tazer. But you can get them from Amazon for like $800 so it is possible that I could, COULD own one. At some point. And I am going to hold my tazer like gangsters hold their guns, all sideways and shit. He says that if I can go a whole week without macing someone who didn't actually deserve it, he will give me another one to keep in my bedroom, and at first I thought that sounded pretty kinky and I told him that we aren't into that pain stuff and he said no, to like, defend myself from an intruder or whatever. So I have to be good for a while but then, THEN I am going for a night walk.

"No Jessie, you're safe, you're being watched. But don't go throwing yourself into danger, that doesn't make anything easier."

Damn Steppy and his so called logic. Don't go looking for trouble, don't attack the mail man, blah blah blah.

They're acting like they don't trust me, which is pretty ridiculous. I'm the one with the big can of mace here, therefore I am right. Okay, and screw the fact that Steppy has guns because how's he going to shoot them if he's blinded and crying and dripping with snot on the ground, right? Aint no luck of the draw, it's math people.

I'm also starting to look into bull whips and possibly some kind of squirt gun that shoots rattlesnake venom, because that's going to mess someone up. I have found some stun guns that are fairly inexpensive, one of which promises to deliver 1.5 million volts to permanently fuck your shit up crazy. I found one that I like called Zap Stick. I love it. It does exactly what it promises in its name. One of them even claims that it gives off a terrifyingly bright shock of electricity that has a menacing sound to it, and if that doesn't scare off your attacker the 800,000 volts shooting through their body WILL DO THE JOB.

I have five simple suggestions for anyone who ever says that I am too hard to buy gifts for.

1. Books
2. Poppets
3. Sex toys
4. Socks
5. Self defense mechanisms

Those things will always make me smile. From cheap thrills to rainbow stripes to zapping the crap out of some mother fucker who asks me the time of day, I am not hard at all to entertain.

Oh, you should probably call before showing up just in case I mistake you for the mailman who has something coming to him, let me tell you.

Situation

Why yes, I have been rather vague lately.

And no, I cannot fill you in on the details.

There are some things that are best kept quiet and this is one of those. But yes, something did happen, and yes it did involve the police. We aren't in any kind of trouble with the police, the heat is on our side but we do have a situation on our hands.

I hate it when bloggers are like "Oh man this really AWFUL THING happened and I CANT TELL YOU" and get you all hot and sweaty and leaving you needing juicy details like a crack addict, but it's like I always say, this is my journal, this is also your entertainment, so we'll have to agree upon a happy medium.

Something happened though, and it wasn't a good thing. I'm just thankful to have the friends that I do and the resources that I have. And I'm so glad that David is a better speaker than me because had I been forced to handle this myself I'd probably not have done anything. But I have him, and I have my connections. It's great and all but the walls are closing in just a little too tightly for my tastes.

I keep thinking about that woman who had been on her toilet for like six years or whatever and her skin started growing over the seat and everything. The boyfriend or whatever would ask her every day "Honey, maybe it's time to get off the toilet." She'd sigh and say, "not today." I feel like toilet woman. But I refuse to live like toilet women despite the circumstances. I am getting out, and I am living my life. I just don't check the mail as often.

I talked about my "network" the other day, and how I have all of these people who do all of these things. I did not get that network by being a twat to people. Yes, I am a twat and a lot of other things, but when people approach me (on the internet at least, in real life I'm timid and standoffish) I am nice to them. I have a small cluster of young teenagers who actually come to me for advice, one of which is actually writing a report at school about their favorite author who happens to be me of all fucking people, and do you know how she found me? Through Goodreads. She read my books, saw that I was online and that there was a line of communication available, and she said hi. We've been talking ever since. Whether or not 13 year olds should be reading my books is neither here nor there and is an entirely different argument.

I also abide by the law as much as I can, even if sometimes I do not agree with these laws. I do this for my own self interest. Oh I've had my share of arguments with Steppy regarding police officers going to evict people from their foreclosed homes, doing the bank's job and stepping onto private property just for one example. And I've even had people say to me that because I lack religious guidance I must obviously lack morals.

I have two rules that I live by, two very simple rules.

1. Do what is right and beneficial, as what is beneficial is usually right
2. Be good for goodness sake

For goodness sake. For the sake of goodness, and all that is good, be good for goodness sake. I'm not even going to try to defend myself if you point out the bad things that I've done with the "nobody's perfect" argument, it just is what it is. I am what I am. But I do my very best. I do what I can. I don't try to overachieve but I do what I do, and try to live life according to what I think is the right way to live, which might not even include a tenth of what you think it takes to live "the right life." Then again, if you drive an SUV and speed in it all you fucking want to, you're not living by my standards. Arguing either side is just moot.

The point is that at the end of the day, I would say that I am a fairly nice person. Proof as such is that I have a number of folks to turn to who are willing to help me with such a situation that I've found myself in. I'm not going to get stuck to a toilet seat, but rather I am going about my life with caution and with a few extra sets of eyes to help keep track of me.

I like keeping track of me.

This is why I don't travel. I might get lost.

I enjoy remaining relatively still within my 20 mile radius.

I'm not missing a damn thing though by never going anywhere. I haven't left this immediate area in years and I still blog every day. It all seems to come to me.

What I do want to say though is that I'm kind of living in a dome right now and I do apologize if I've neglected anyone's attention or pressing matters. But my dome is pretty sound, and I'm still receptive in it so it's not like I'm stuck to the toilet or anything. You can still write.

Capture The Mood

Pacing doesn't help
And you can lock all the doors
But inside you're still
Bored as hell
Waiting for something or nothing
To happen.

Busying only lasts a while
And all the thick books
That you blow through weekly
Only seem to get thicker.

What you can do
When you have nothing else to do
While you're waiting for something or nothing
To happen
Is
Prop the camera on a shelf,
Stand in front of it,
And capture your mood.

You may look like an idiot
But at the end of the day
You're okay.

When it's all back to normal
You'll make a run for it
And like nobody's business
You'll kick ass and take names.

That's what you're here to do.

Nobody takes that away from you.

Nobody.

Nard Kicking Tomfoolery And A Very Steppy Bear Hug

I've decided that I have a pretty awesome network in my back pocket.

My pocket is full of research nerds, people who know people, and people who know how to do things that I don't. It's full of people who respond when I say I need something.

I try to give back whatever I can. I'm always answering these "So here's the situation, what do you think I should do?" emails and phone calls off the cuff. Or shaking my head at Sally with her streaked mascara on the porch saying "I'm so stupid, I'm just so stupid."

Sometimes my pocket pals come with a lot of really neat things on their belt.

All I know is there have been a lot more "routine patrols" through my neighborhood.

I have my arsenal and my attack neighbor.

I have my paper journal where I write it all down.

I have a gorgeous guy here teaching me how to fight and I think I broke my rib cage.

I've built most of my network through the internets, and I'm quite pleased with that. Everyone is a click away and when I need to know more on traumatic brain injury but I don't know where to start, I've got one in my pocket who I know can not only point me in the right direction, but actually give me a patient to talk to. And if there is information that I need to get out but keep on the down low as well, I've got a few numbers in my phone I can call. People are awesome.

Really, anything I need I most likely already have.

What I never understood about high school is that the girls all get taught a six week self defense course, while the guys are on the other side of the partitioned wall learning tactical wrestling moves. It's like, "Girls, if he comes at you, just kick him in the nards," and the other coach is like "Oh yeah, if she goes to kick you in the nards, just snap her neck like so."

What they should have been teaching those boys was about vagina dentata. This is of course the belief that women's vaginas are full of razor sharp teeth that will bite your dick off.

I'm tired and hurt after a long time of this learning session, a learning session that the neighbor would have taught me but she wouldn't hold back just a little. Steppy holds back just a little, she would really try to actually hurt me instead of teach me anything. I guess she did martial arts growing up, something about possibly going in to compete for the Olympics at one point.

"And don't you tell me that it don't hurt when a girl gets kicked right there, I got kicked there and I went to the floor quick. Then this doctor started massaging it and I had to tell him thank you but no thank you, there are people watching." She was 14.

Perhaps rough is what I'd need but I'm afraid she'd get off on it and try to make out with me.

You could say the same thing for Steppy too but my knee brushed against the goods and there was no boner. He really is more concerned for my safety. I also accidentally damaged the goods for real on one shot so I know I'm doing it right. That's what he gets for breaking my rib cage.

Of course there's more to it than kicking nards.

There's always more to it than kicking nards.

The trick is to first, calm the fuck down, because it's hard to make decisions when you're angry. Then, you contact one of your smart little friends in your back pocket to figure it out. You realize that there are a shit load of people working together to help you make shit right again. Then you do your homework, then the paperwork, you take all the precautions, and you sit back and laugh a little bit because you are not about to be taken as a sucker.

With friends in the right places, the wheels start into motion pretty fast.

Sitting in a police station there are a lot of things going on around you. Officers in and out, officers talking to people, the desk girls who are so friendly and nice. They'll call someone in to talk to you and all you have to do is present them with the evidence and whisper three little words: "he has warrants."

Clues

In The Cards

Found my tarot deck today. Decided to have a go.

Doing a 10 card spread this afternoon, just to be certain.

Card #1 is my present position. The atmosphere in which I am presently working and living. Today, we have the King of Wands. The King of Wands is a Renaissance man, practical and imaginative, active and contemplative, forceful and chivalrous. He has appreciation for the lessons and pleasures of life. He is an intellectual, an artist, an inventor.

I'd say that's pretty much where I'm at.

Card #2 represents immediate influences, which include obstacles that lie just ahead. For this I am presented with the Ace of Coins. I'm happy to report that this represents prosperity, security, and well being. I need that right now. I really do. I'm glad for this one.

Card #3 is my ultimate goal or destiny. Based on existing circumstances, this is the best that can happen for me at the end of the day. This is my ideal or aim within my present frame of reference. I drew the King of Swords, who is a man of volatile temperament. A born fighter and ruler and in complete command. He prefers action to reflection. Which I really, really wish I could accomplish on my own but I get by with a little help from my friends. I have to admit that.

Card #4 refers to my distant past foundation, all of the broad and basic events that the present events are based on. For this I have the Four of Coins. Interestingly enough, this is the card that represents lustful or greedy pursuit of someone or something. Irrational attraction, unreasonable desire for wealth. Not entirely sure what that's referring to as of right now.

Card #5 is based on recent past events and the most recent sphere of influences that are coming into being in the near future. I need to know this. I've pulled the Knight of Cups. He is a dignified and accomplished person, compassionate and intuitively accurate. A successful professional, humanitarian and is very idealistic. Again I'm fairly puzzled. I know lots of people who are successful professionals.

Card #6 is about future influences in a broad sense. I've pulled The Stars, but it's upside down so the meaning is reversed, making the meaning of this card for me refer to fleeting peace, melancholy, and pensiveness. God I was pensive this morning, check my Twitter, I actually used that word.

Now we move on over to card # 7 which is directly about me and attitude within the circumstances. This is like card #1, only this will kind of put me into a better and proper perspective. Oh boy, it says the flower of first love and love at first sight. The bond between two people which is invisible but formidable. That's interesting. The story behind this card is that Eros was sent by his mother Aphrodite to punish Psyche for her beauty, which rivals that of the goddess, but the young god of love instead fell in love with Psyche. For some reason this brings to mind hippies putting daisies in the barrels of guns.

Card #8 talks about my environmental factors. This mostly has to do with my influences on other people and tenancies and factors that exist with retrospect to other persons who might have an affect on me. Upside down Ten of Swords. This is beautiful in a way, this card's reverse meaning is fame or glory blooming fourth from misfortune. Cruel reality ennobled by art. Good thing that was upside down, because right side up is bad news for me. I win this round.

But let's take a look at card #9 which is insight to me inner emotions, inner hopes, hidden emotions and secret desires, fears and anxieties. Tell all, if you will. I've pulled the Fool, but he's upside down too. This means that on the inside I'm pretty fucked up. Rash and irrational behavior, childishness, oblivion, and even violence. I should also say that this could come into play in the future, these may not be my thoughts at this precise moment. I'm not one for violence, but I do have it in me need be. Hopefully that need wont be.

Finally we come to my last card, card #10. The final results, the culmination of all of the influences revealed by the other cards. We have here the Queen of Swords herself, and she's right side up. She's a person of sharp insight, persuasive, powerful and thorough. But she's introverted like me, and a person of deep sentiment and susceptible to flights of ecstasy or the flames of inner torment.

What all that means, fuck, your guess is as good as mine.