after much research and consultation with others, it's official.

i am the only person on the planet who still cares about watching the oscars.

i miss home.

oh and p.s. i'm lookin at a new couch in two point five weeks so cheers to that, cheers to the weekend and cheers to you america. ocean spray.

jenn's resignation was tendered yesterday, and what a tender moment it was. applications for a new partner in oshsuck crime now being accepted. must be willing to work for free, some weekends and overtime, must be fine with casual swearing and subversive flippage to bad drivers, must be fluent in thumbs-downing protesters of any kind and dressing up like a pirate whenever necessary. resume must include five instances where you broke the law, and one instance where you got caught. must be thrift store savvy, or just plain savvy, must be down with junior senior and must have a computer with a keyboard much nicer than mine. applicant must also be well-versed in all television and music, as i have much catching up to do on pop-culture from the years 1977 - 1995. also must be up on latest trashy tv trends like the oc as well as movie classics like dirty dancing. applicant must have experience watching bold and the beautiful, a cat that will make out with me, and be able to share plans to get the fuck outta the midwest.

five million dollars or a russell stovers 4-pack sampler box will be accepted in lieu of aforementioned experience.

jenn and i have hereby decided that it's a big fat secret, but the passion of the christ is your ticket to heaven. you don't see it, you don't get in. they'll be checking at the gate, so be ready. (and don't bother with the cliff's notes, you should know by now that's not enough to pass a test)

five minutes at the gate with saint peter's gonna go something like this years and years from now:

"hello, martha stewart. let's check your files. mmm hmmm.... job description, domestic goddess... we didn't really appreciate you calling yourself that up here you know but it says here you beat the bum stock rap and saw our movie so in you go, welcome to heaven. what's that? no, sorry, we only keep 200 count sheets up here, anything more's just too pricey. oh. that's too bad, you would've had fun here. well, have a good time in hell say hey to the dark prince for me - we were supposed to get together for golf last week but things've been so busy lately, you know, all that sars outbreak crap that wiped out the midwest... anyways you're kind of holding up the line could you get a move-on? thanks.

next?

saddam, what the hell are you doing up here?!??! you what? no, you don't belong up here i'm sure of it. let me call you a cab. (*SIGH*) fine, i'll double check the records. oh wow. you saw the movie while you were in prison. uh... so... come in... i guess.... WAIT!!! do you still have your ticket stub?! cuz you need your ticket stub to - oh, you do. and it's in perfect condition. and it's hermetically sealed in a gilded gold frame. of course.

next, i can help who's next over here...

conan o'brien, welcome! wow! we're big fans up here, love your show just love it. that in the year 2000 bit, it's our favorite. the only guy we dig more than you is jon stewart, and he's already here. it's just a formality you understand - you saw the movie, right? okay what happened when blah blah blah did blah blah blah to blah blah blah (hey, cut me some slack i haven't seen the film myself yet)? wow, dead on. in fact that's the best answer we've ever heard. great, if you'll just get out your ticket stub, we've got an extra special pair of wings for you....

um, what is this? it's not a ticket stub. no, no it's not. it's a mushy white ball of pulp. you what??!?! left it in your pants pocket when they went through the wash??!?! ohhhhh conan. this is terrible. no, sadly there's nothing i can do. in the book here it says ticket-stub-destruction is right up there with incest and murder.

it's not sooo bad, though... i hear satan's also a big fan."

you remember that angree carrot cake i was telling you about weeks ago? my lazy ass just remembered to get the film developed. all hail spike the carrot!!

okay when someone tells you they have a couch to show you and then you never ever hear from them again, even when you've sent them an email reminding them of their interest in couchy type transactions...

there's plenty of other couches in the sea, but that shit still ain't cool. the end.

oh yeah and i spent a huge chunk of yesterday putting new shit on the artsy website. go check it out or i'll kill you for wasting my time. i did it all for you, cuz you're the wind beneath my wings.

one of life's great mysteries... a few months back i found a copy of george michael's "faith" record at goodwill. it was a buck or something like that, so of course i picked it up. and i got it home and it skipped really bad all the time.

here it is, months later, and i'm just about to melt it into a fashionable record hat or something; i throw it on the record player to make sure it's scratched beyond any kind of listening and why the hell is it playing fine now?!!?!?

that same day i also got this interesting looking record called "a slice of lemon". it had a great oldskool party happening on the cover and some cool old songs like "downtown" on it. i listened to it for the first time this morning, and found out through the special recorded message from dick clark that the record was a promotional item put out by the soda people to try and get people to drink hot dr. pepper poured over a slice of lemon.

like cold dr. pepper's not gross enough.

a quick note for all:

the way to steph's heart is through boxes of one dollar russell stover's 4 pack samplers. mmm mmm good.

told my girl i had to forget her
rather buy me a new carburettor
so she made tracks saying this is the end now
cars don't talk back they're just four wheeled friends now

i'm in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile

Queen, "i'm in love with my car"

***********

contrary to popular belief i'm into boys... and it wasn't really the carburettor... i actually had to give up 180 bucks to buy parts and a tune up that was about 20,000 miles overdue or some crazy shit like that but man oh man the difference it has made. my car hasn't been this good to me since i bought it four years ago. we're thinking about renewing our vows; it's like a second honeymoon without all the old clutch problems we dealt with in the beginning.

i'm glad the jerky driving issues weren't super-serious. making the trip back to cali someday in anything but chuckles the happy weenmobile clown car of doom would just be wrong.

three cheers to liberace day!

i don't wanna get my hopes up too too much (yeah it's probably much much too late for that), but i just may have found a couch that fits everything i need, and i just may go have a look at it next week. details (hopefully good sordid ones) to follow...

happy thought of the day:

in 28 days i'll be finishing up work so i can commandeer a ride to appleton so i can fly to my sister's place back home in soCal.

that gives me plenty of time to watch the ring and die seven days later and magically wake up the next morning like four times. very exciting. except for the part where i'm never watching that freakin movie ever again.

aside from the occasional beer and such, i don't drink alone.

but tonight i saw midgets linedancing on tv.

and you gotta do a shot to that, you just have to.

i feel off today. the end.

three cheers to mark, who finally got off his ass and sent me this proof of nicole and i's karaoke superstar status!!!



apparently something slightly more high-end than a cameraphone will be on hand to better document our next big gig. in the meantime, i'm the one on the left. if you kind of look at a point 6 inches past the picture and let your eyes get sort of blurry, we'll look like we're 3d and we'll come out of the picture and kick your ass.

oh and p.s. i heart you all!!

except you over there, you smell like homeless.

been surfing the net for the past hour, checking email and the status of my taxes that i filed online yesterday, listening to videos play on mtv in the background.

until about a minute ago, when trl came on. and i was about to change the channel, because that show is the biggest piece of crap ever. but then they announced that it was their v-day show, and adam and drew were gonna be on. and i was super-jazzed, because what an awesome idea to have them on to do love line type shit... and we don't get that radio show out here in the boondocks.

and then adam sandler came onto the set, saying drew'd be out in a second.

because while i wanted adam corolla and doctor drew, they wanted adam sandler and drew barrymore.

which i guess makes sense. corolla and dr. aren't nearly as famous, and sandler and barrymore have a movie to plug. still, i assure you this kind of misunderstanding will never happen when i'm in charge.

vday's coming, you better make sure your ass is ready mofos! get together that box of conversation hearts! and then cry while you eat them!!! cupid woulda wanted it that way!!!

jenn and i were talking last week about how i've been single on valentines day every year since halfway through high school. not like it's any big thing that i obsess about - it's just another day. and not like i haven't dated at all since high school. but my dating, for whatever reason, never takes place in february. like that part of my brain, that handles my hookups and clientele, it goes on hiatus or hibernation or vacation or sabbatical or temporary leave or maternity leave or on safari or some shit like that.

we also decided it would be extremely cool to keep things that way for the rest of my life.

meaning if i was seeing someone around valentines day in the future, i'd have to break up with them for a few days. or fake my death. or go missing. or have a friend kidnap me. or go on safari. i'm sure the guy'd be understanding and shit, right?

an open letter to kfc:

you're not allowed to change the rules halfway through the game!

it stands for kentucky fried chicken, not kitchen fresh chicken!!!!

dirty stinkin cheaters!!!

sincerely,

steph

okay so here's how the weekend went:

friday
mad dash to get mass quantities of paperwork out the door
lull about an hour before quittin time when that was finished
happy hour with the rest of the art dept. chicks
pizza and pirates, a winning combination

saturday
estate sale madness, picked up a few records for like 70 cents or something
thrift store goodness, found some zippers and piping
ate a club chalupa
gazed in the wonderment that is m. schettle, got a billion pictures of crazy oversized fiberglass shit
drove to madison for karaoke/drinking/partying with mark, nicole, reem and others
(special note - my first karaoke song ever in my life was madonna's like a virgin. seemed fitting.)
barhopped for a while
took a cab
drank some more
ate pizza and tater tots
passed out on mark & nicole's futon

sunday
ate breakfast at clevelands
drank a ton of water
watched wet hot american summer
laughed my ass off
drove back to oshkosh
took a shower
went to work
printed a ton of stuff
watched the grammys
went to sleep

things that did not happen this weekend but probably should have:
dishes
updating the holiday crap that's still the main image on my website
couch shopping
drano chugging

things that will happen this weekend:
filing taxes
couch shopping
plane ticket shopping
american wake concert ticket shopping
grocery shopping

why yes. i do like shopping. the end.

one more thing, kiddies - there's a great article on cnn currently about how the outkast double disc happened. pop quiz to follow.

i've got to share this big ol' chunk of email i got from maria this morning with y'all, in the spirit of hearing a couple of times this weekend how much people enjoy reading her comments among all of jenn and i's jackassery...

***************************

I took some reading with me when I went to New York, and I wanted to share what I learned with you.

Because I am taking toxicology right now, I have many different articles about toxins to read (what a useless sentence). I purposely took the "Caustics and Batteries" article with me because of YOU--you are always making these jokes about drinking Drano, so I figured I should read about it to find out just what would happen.

So yes. I've been thinking about you.

Drano is an alkaline solution--and alkalis actually cause more tissue damage than acids. Not only will it damage the surfaces of tissues, but it will also penetrate into the deeper layers and basically liquify the stuff underneath.

Thus, if you really did decide to drink Drano, your esophagus would turn bright red with inflammation, then swell up, and then the cells would die a quick death. Ulcers will appear where the Drano contacted your esophagus. The tissue that can recover would begin to scar over, and, as a result, your esophagus would shorten (think of the scabs and scars you have gotten on your elbows and knees--sometimes the skin seems tighter, don't it?).

If the Drano penetrated your esophagus enough (and managed to hit the entire circumference), the diameter of your esophagus would shrink, resulting in something called a "stricture". Instead of having lots of space in that tube that is your esophagus, the tube would shrink down and it'd have the diameter of a #2 pencil--if not less. Not only does that cause problems with swallowing, but the esophagus could tear open. That's really bad.

For those people who do drink Drano and survive for a long time, their risk for esophagus cancer shoots super-high--apparently 1000 times higher than the general population. The cancer seems to show up about 40 years after the Drano ingestion.

And, if you did decide to drink Drano, it would hurt. A lot. "Severe pain on contact." You'd probably barf, that's how terrible it would be. And if you did barf, there's the chance that you might choke and accidentally breathe in the barf/Drano mixture. And inhaling Drano is bad news, too, because you'd be damaging your lungs. That's really bad, too.

So. Now that you know a bit about Drano ingestion, I hope you never do it. Because I'd be very sad and the docs at the hospital would be freaking out.

Just providing a public service announcement,

.............................................
Maria Chimichanga (last name changed to protect the innocent)

***************************

so there you have it - i assure you drano is just as refreshing as her findings!

i know there's no janetboob on tonight's grammy telecast, but i wanna get home for it anyways so i can catch prince and outkast and various other things the music industry wants me to like... currently i'm filled with white hot rage for this one piece of paperwork that takes a full ten minutes to spool to the printer. i just wanna print and go, why can't it understand that?

snow update: my car was a five hundred foot high lump of white when i got outside. by the time i finally got in my car and to work my pants were soaked about a third of the way up my calves from standing in snow that high for the 10-15 minutes it took to brush off the car. snow sucks and so do you. the end.

maybe that's a little harsh. snow doesn't really suck all that much.

dude, this shit happens all the time. when there's a ton going on at work, and i know i at least wanna get in there a little early the next day, my biological clock - yes that same one that keeps telling me to have superball babies - wakes me up at like 5am. so i lay around in bed for a while trying to go back to sleep and it just doesn't happen.

what's this mean for you, the consumer? you get to hear about stamps and snow.

firstly, i think last night's snowstorm was supposed to be the biggest dump of snow since i moved here a year and a half ago... and i'm just looking out my window, i haven't brushed off my car yet, but it really doesn't look like it's been all that bad. stay tuned, though. my attitude may change once i get outside and have to take the 7-10 inches off my car.

secondly (i had a teacher in grade school - or maybe it was the principle? who said firstly and secondly and thirdly all the time. we made lots of fun of her behind her back because we were (are?) jerks.), a few weeks ago i had to get stamps. so jenn came into the post office with me, and we decided i should get the thurgood marshall stamps because black history month was coming and we were gonna celebrate in style. fast forward to yesterday, when i needed to get more stamps. got up to the counter, where they've got a little plastic display sleeve displaying the stamps they've got available. and lo and behold they've got a new black history month stamp! so i asked for him by name. and that's where things got funny.

"how about some paul robeson stamps?"

mail clerk lady tells me how much they are as she's bringing em out. as she hits keys on her register, she noncholantly asks, "who is paul robeson, anyways?"

RIRRKSRRRSRLRLRRRR. (that's the record scratch noise you hear when a party stops.) i had no fuckin clue who the guy was. so i picked up the stamps and started reading her the information about the guy that was printed on the back. the clerk at the next register over helpfully adds some info. the point here kiddies is he was a busy guy and you better go read up, because there's gonna be a pop quiz at the post office.

stamps and snow. remind me to tell you about that later.

r.e.m.'s "stand in the place where you live" is playing on the corporate radio right now.

that song always reminds me of the 8th grade student council elections - jenni something or other and 3 or 4 of her friends sang "stand in the place that you vote" while dancing around on the stage. i think she was running for president. and i think she won.

i wish politics were still that much fun.

okay so the proper authorities are calling The Boob Show yesterday a "wardrobe malfunction", which is quite possibly the funniest word ever.