Five blades or die.

I apologize for being so damn lazy lately, it's just that I've been altogether uninspired, super busy at work, and totally lacking creative juices (unless you consider a return to crock-pot cooking creative...). And it's not that I'm even that short on interesting stuff happening in my life. I mean, I've had a roommate go completely off her pogo stick, I've gone to (and drank black russians after) a funeral with my totally insane family, and my neighbor caught me watching TV while painting my nails, fully naked. These are all good stories, or at least moderately entertaining, but I've just got zero capacity to tell them at the moment.

So sit tight. But in the meantime, and in the interest of keeping you even somewhat entertained, I encourage you to read my favorite Onion post of all time: click here.

It's old, but every time I go back to it I find myself hysterical.

I mean, five blades? Five blades? C'mon. That's just crazy.

I've done a lot of stupid things while drunk...

Including but not limited to:

- initiating a giant cake fight in a house that wasn't mine, with cake that wasn't mine
- missing the cup and instead pouring a drink into a friend's lap
- getting lost on a beach
- sending mass-texts to everyone I know and then not remembering the next day
- drunk-dialing (shocker, I know)
- drunk-MySpacing (worse, I assure you)
- bar-fighting (that's a really good story, actually)
- locking myself out of my house
- ordering $100 bottles of wine when what I really needed was gatorade and a cheeseburger
- buying a shirt of a large black man's back
- dancing with a transient
- etc.

...but I've never threatened to blow up a city with a TV remote.

And that's something.

Happy Friday!

Can I be your pet?

Click here for the article this post relates to.

I think I'm a pretty open minded individual, but I gotta admit, this makes me a little uncomfortable. Either this girl is completely diabolical and about as lazy as a couch, having worked out a way to, like, never have to do anything of any substance again, or she's disturbed.

I mean, it doesn't sound so bad if you are the laziest individual on earth - she gets to basically loll around all day, eating and making waste and sleeping and whatever in her house. She doesn't have to hold a job or do chores or cook or run errands... she's a completely unproductive member of a household, just like a cat.

But the tradeoff is she can't leave the house without her significant other, and if she does leave the house with him, she has to wear a collar and a leash.

Huh.

First, no thanks.
Second, how long can this possibly last? I mean, at some point, isn't the gimmick going to be over and isn't this guy going to want a significant other he can take to an "off-leash" company Christmas party? And isn't she at some point gonna be like "Hey, dude, I don't like meatloaf. I'm making a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, and that's that!"?

i can has cheezburger?

I found this site today on the random recommendation of a business associate and within moments of discovering it, it was up on the top bar of my browser as a bookmarked and much-loved site.

That position is reserved for very few sites, as space there is limited (I have probably 100 total bookmarks in my list, but only about 10-12 can fit as icons in the top bar of my browser). Among the best are wired.com, a couple industry blogs I monitor closely, Techcrunch, a link to my 401k planning site, 2 internal company links, a stock photo site for my creative work, theonion.com and, now, i can has cheezburger.

I don't know what it is, the anthropromorphizing of animals just gets me every time. Esepcially when they are animals who pronounce things funny, have a poor grasp of the english language, and are so completely self-obsessed as these ones.

And it's like a fun little treat -- you can check it 5 times a day and usually there's a new post every time! I might trade in my chocolate fix for cheezburger.

(by the way, the above image is the one I created of Akeelah -- watch for it to appear on the site!)

resolutions? maybe next year...

I always make a good effort at resolutions at the beginning of a new year. There is something about them that appeals to me, to my idealism. I like the thought of looking at your life, promising to make changes, and having a timeline in which to see those changes take place (a year, to be precise).

But the follow through is where I find myself occasionally lacking. Not always -- I often make great headway on a number of my resolutions -- but generally speaking, resolving has actually turned out to be more of a "thinking out loud about how I would like to be if I had any will power whatsoever, then forgetting about it, renting a movie, and eating two bags of microwave popcorn in one sitting."

So much for idealism.

But it's worked out so far; 2007 was one for the books:

I removed myself, once and for all, from a bad relationship. I nurtured new relationships and some old ones, too. I saw my mother through a nasty divorce. I lost, then regained my sense of family. I fell in love -- the real kind. I skydived. I challenged myself. I hired employees (yes, this girl is someone's boss. Isn't that scary?).

I went on a road trip. I went fishing. I had surgery. I recovered. I surprised myself. I accidentally ate pot cookies (that's a whole 'nother story).

I got a raise, reconnected with old friends, and made new ones.

I figured out what I stand for, I think.

I got more patient, less confrontational, and stopped yelling so much.

I learned how to negotiate.

I folded my clothes after they were done drying much more frequently. I did not run out of gas one time.

I performed random acts of kindness. I helped friends in need. I got more comfortable being a friend in need, too.

And I realized for the umpteenth time that nothing's easy, and I know even less than I thought I did, and that sometimes people aren't who they say they are, but sometimes they are.

Oh, and I discovered that one should not drive around with expired tabs, that alternators are easily replaced by car-savvy friends, and that weiner dogs and small cats have the same size poo.

And that no matter what, one should always say yes to topless pools in Vegas and no to eating chips in the shower.

Maybe I don't need resolutions after all.

It just feels right.

"Okay, let me see you," he said, holding his little camcorder. We were in a gift shop, surrounded by children scurring around with glee and parents who looked frazzled but happy, all to a very familiar soundtrack which was piped in from the ceiling.

We were in Disneyland. Just for the weekend. And I had run into the gift shop (one of a thousand on Disney's Main Street) on a whim and scrambled to the floor-to-ceiling display of mickey mouse ears; the felt ones, the old-school kind.

I snatched a child-sized blue pair with their floppy plastic mouse ears and propped it jauntily on my head, stretching that cheap (and dangerous) little elastic band around my chin to secure it. My heart immediately swelled a half-size.

I looked up to find Jim pointing his tiny video camera at me, smiling with his eyes, sun pouring in the shop all around him like some sort of beam of happiness. He looked golden. I felt golden. The moment crystallized.

"Can you see how cute you look right now?" he said.

I looked around the store. No mirrors. Was that possible? Ah, well.

I patted my head with satisfaction and grinned back at him from the very center of my inner 5-year old self.

"No," I said, "But it just feels right."

Naked near-death experience

I recently almost died, literally, as a result of two things: modesty and multitasking.

(Can't you tell already that this is going to be a good post? I promise that it will be full of all your favorite things, including but not limited to nudity, food, and medical emergencies.)

It was Saturday afternoon. I had gone to the gym and spent too much time there, and had a date that evening. As I got into my car from the gym, the planning began.

There were many things I needed to get done in very little time in order to not be late for said date. These things included eating, showering, and dancing around naked while figuring out what to wear and getting appropriately pumped up, among others. It struck me, then, that there simply wasn't time for it all.

Here's how the math went:

Eat: 20 minutes
Shower: 10 minutes
Dancing, etc.: 55 minutes, at least

I had, say, 30 minutes total to work with.

Clearly, something had to go. Showering was a must-do, as this was a "likely to kiss" date, meaning sweatiness, even properly dried and coiffed, was a big no-no. Which left only one place to scrimp: food. (Clearly, the dancing is key to both my personality and my consistently smashing track record on dates. Let's just say I should teach a course on how to get boys to love you. I'm that dangerous. Ask me how to get them to not be complete douchebags, however, and I stare dumbly at you, for I do not have those answers.)

All the calculations done in my head on the drive home from the gym, I arrived at my abode a veritable whirlwind of activity.

I recall mild surprise that nobody was home, in our huge 4 bedroom house, when I arrived. As I stepped from the garage to the house, I pulled off my shoes and socks. Barefoot, I then raced to the stairs, and in doing so I passed the kitchen, where a bag of tortilla chips sitting on the counter caught my eye. Starving but still committed to my hurry, I snagged three chips from the bag and continued upstairs, into my bedroom and personal bathroom (I have the master bedroom in my house).

I put the chips down on the counter and turned the shower water on. As I waited for it to get warm, I stripped down and ate two of the chips, quickly. (Pleas spare me the lecture on how gross you think it is to put chips down on a bathroom counter -- it's my personal bathroom and is, therefore, clean as a whistle).

Sticking a hand into the stream, I determined it was nearly warm enough for me to enter. Grabbing the last chip and popping it, whole, into my mouth, I slid the door open again and went to step in.

And suddenly my eyes were starry, my heart rate was racing and I couldn't breathe.

In my haste to finish the chip before getting into the shower, or perhaps my inattention to it as I multitasked, I was choking.

On a tortilla chip.

In the shower.

Naked.

Swallowing hard, tears now streaming down my face, I flung the shower door open and frantically tried to cough. Nothing. I pawed at my throat, and tried the "finger sweep" move in my mouth -- but it was too far down for me to reach.

Having no gag reflex to speak of, forced puking was impossible. Suddenly I recalled seventh grade health, where we learned to administer to others, and ourselves, the heimlich maneuver.

This involved locating a corner of something (table, chair, etc.) and ramming your stomach area, right below your ribs, into it. Simple enough.

Eureka! I thought. I'm saved!

And then I tried it on the corner of my bathroom counter.

Remember, I am still naked as a jaybird, and a bathroom counter is typically sharp-cornered and fake-formica-topped. I jabbed myself about twice before I determined that there was only one thing worse than suffocating to death on a potato chip: heimliching yourself, naked, on a hard tile bathroom counter corner.

Now I'm really starting to panick. I'm only getting a tiny amount of air around this chip, and it's starting to get worse, not better. I realize this is a situation that has just taken a turn for the dangerously worse for me.

Realizing I can't heimlich myself hard enough to dislodge the chip without first puncturing my abdomen, I think about other corners in the house. Downstairs there were plenty -- chairs with round backs, rounded tables, even a bannister that would have worked. Surely that would projectile the stubborn little chip out of my airway and save me. Or I could run across the street to a neighbor's door and fall, gasping, on their doorstep for help!

Except one thing -- I was naked. As a jaybird.

And there was no effing way I was running downstairs, home alone or not, to throw myself on a counter corner, or at the doorstep of a neighbor.

No WAY, dying or not, that I was going to do that.

At this point, my vision is blurring and I am quite convinced that I am about to kick the can. I am now back in my bathroom, standing with my head between my legs, starry-eyed, light headed, and about to go down from lack of oxygen when the irony of the situation hits me:

I lived for 2 years absolutely alone in an apartment, and never once did I choke or get into a life-threatening situation. But the moment I moved into a huge house with 3 roommates, I choke on a potato chip while naked and home alone because I'm multitasking, and because of a sudden stroke of modesty and a low tolerance for pain, I was going to die, naked, on the floor of my bathroom, with the shower running, and a potato chip lodged firmly in my throat.

Fuck! I thought. I haven't even gotten married, reached my sexual peak or worn that green dress yet!

And really, is there a more embarassing thing for your family to have to tell your bereaved than "Yeah, she died of, um, well, a potato chip... naked... in the shower"? It rivals Elvis Presley!

And just when I am getting to the part in the grisly fantasy where my body is discovered, something shifts.

Perhaps it was all the spit and tears, perhaps it was the 150 percent humidity in my now steaming-hot bathroom, but something softened the chip.

It slid sideways, and with a grimace and some scraping, I was able to finally swallow it and take my first full breath of air in more than a minute or two.

I've learned a valuable lesson or two from this experience:

1. Chips are my arch nemesis, second only to the Giant and Collossal Squids
2. The gym can save your life, and I don't mean because it makes you healthy (if I weren't a tiny bit worried about what was going to jiggle and what wasn't, I'd have run out in the street naked and choking, I'm pretty sure.)
3. If anyone ever tells me they gave themselves the heimlich, I will unabashedly point and yell "LIAR!!" because I've tried, and it's just not possible.

...

Oh, the date went fine. I was only 5 minutes late. And I still managed to shower and dance (more so, even, than usual -- as I'd just survived a near-death experience).

And there was kissing, but no chips.