dear city of oshkosh,

you don't want me here, and that's fine. i got the hint months ago. you didn't need to send hoodlum punks to break into my car, pull out my dashboard and steal my cd player/stereo; i was already planning on leaving.

thanks a lot.

sincerely,
steph gogoblatz, md.
a.k.a. the rollerslut

so tonight's cheezy psychobutt aerobics instructor had some very interesting musical selections for us to die to. including that mister vain song from so long ago. we finally make it to cooldown, and some familiar notes start fallin out of the speakers.

"is this the burger dance?" jenn asks.

"ummmm.... i don't know... it could be..." i say.

and then there it was. the burger dance. in all it's burger dancey goodness. the only thing missing was a madison party and mark jumping around, drunk off his ass. good times, good times.

if i have to buy the hitch that will connect the trailer to my car, i may as well install some monster truck tires and hit the competitive circuit, too...

you heard it here first folks, our top story today is i'm outta here!

details: plan a didn't pan out because bueno ended up deciding to hire an administrative person instead of an artist. but i was promised that if they did decide to hire an artist in the future, i'd definitely get a call. which is nice. but doesn't help with the move, you know? so plan b was called to action. i just turned in my notice, and the weekend after april 30 (the day the art dept in wisconsin dies) i'll be packin my stuff into my car and a uhaul trailer and me and michelle will make a break for the border! after the road trip (maybe may 4 or so) you can get ahold of me at michelle and joe's place, specifically their couch! address all correspondence thusly:

steph gogoblatz
c/o michelle and joe's couch
street address
garden grove, ca 92845

sucks that plan a didn't work, but plan b ain't so bad, either. i'm sad that b'gosh is coming to an end, i'm a little freaked about not currently having a job come may, but i'm jazzed about moving. super-jazzed, even. let the planning for the steph-and-chris-moving-back-to-california extravaganza begin!!!

so i was perusing the links on jenn's blog and in the mix is lite brite. i wanna know why middle fingers never fail to crack me up.

so it was actually a good thing we ended up not going to madison for reem and donielle's party last night, because i would have driven. and if we were going to the party, jenn and i may not have run around doing all the stuff we did yesterday. which means my car would've blown up in the middle of the nowhere that takes place in the 80 miles between oshkosh and madison instead of overheating and blowing up in a lane of oncoming traffic as i tried to turn into the parking lot of my car repair place after it started looking quite uncle-buckish. translation: lots of smoke and some rattley noises, which is probably the radiator or water pump or something...

(no real explosions happened, and most likely it won't be an exorbitantly expensive fix, but i'm still glad we were actually on the way to the shop when it died.)

in other news this city sucks, but you already knew that. add to the long list of evidence exhibit X: the lame-ass-redneck 30something year old woman who had a serious problem with jenn and i at the movies yesterday. we were at least 5 rows behind this couple, the previews wouldn't be starting for another 15-20 minutes, and jenn and i were talking blah blah blah whatever. this woman decides she has a huge problem with us. just us. or maybe, more accurately, just jenn. just about all of the yelling was directed to her. other people (closer to her, mind you) were talking at the same levels. she yells to us that we're ruining it for her, we're gonna be reimbursing her for her movie ticket, asks if we wanna take this to the parking lot, ("you wanna go? you wanna take this outside?" i believe the threat was) throws a handful of what we hope was just peanuts at jenn. and then she yelled some racial shit.

make no mistake, we didn't just sit there and take it, plenty of yelling back at her came from our seats and some of the other patrons looked a little freaked out.

as soon as the previews started she shut up, but continued to shoot us dirty looks every time she heard a noise. even when the noise didn't come from our direction. the whole thing was just freaking stupid. racism is stupid. and, coincidentally, so is small town wisconsin.

on the upside i loved dawn of the dead. wow. and the word is in, i've decided to go full-time at the gig i've been secretly moonlighting at for the past year and a half. you should come visit while i'm working - tell em the big nasty redhead sent ya!

you know how when i'm on the receiving end of horrible customer service i like to tell everyone about it and write angree letters and such?

now for the flip side. good customer service equals me plugging the company and thanking them profusely for their help.

in the future, if you should be in the market for a new modem or something electronical, might i suggest something by creative labs? they're supercool when you're having problems, and instead of brushing you off after finding out what a crappy computer you have, they will email back and forth with ideas on how to fix the problem until it's solved.

i love that my computer's working again.

it's not a hundred percent, you understand. it still spontaneously reboots and crashes doing stupid crap like downloading aol instant messenger. but it's back to where it was. now i just gotta put all my programs back and i'll be a totally happy camper.

and now if you'll excuse me, i think a celebratory drano cocktail's in order.

so i've been refraining from writing about big things in the horizon that're gonna happen or not happen soon. personally, i don't do so well physically when i'm left hanging. my stomach's been gross topsy-turvy for almost two full weeks now. i wanna throw my computer out the window, i wanna eat a truckload of cake frosting, i wanna spend an entire day at the movies on a workday seeing everything cool that's out right now (starsky & hutch, dawn of the dead, hidalgo to name a few), i wanna bring knitting to work so i have something to do other than twiddle my thumbs and continuously check my email. i'm antsy enough to poke my eyes out with a pointy object and i want this song outta my head (thanks or no thanks to mr. tom petty):




i just wanna know where i'll be in a month, is that too much to ask?

i just started getting rolling stone's daily newsletter thingie, and this totally blows my mind:

"TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

STEVEN TYLER, 56
DIANA ROSS, 60"

biggest reason i should learn html and rebuild my artsy website using that - it'd be much quicker and easier to add new stuff like this tasty sandwich:




it's a celebration of work being slow and [EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT] except for you back there, you smell bad. hit the showers. and maybe gargle, your breath could use some help. then report back here, and we'll see how i feel. thanks.

hooray for poncho day!!!

so i've been reading the godfather, and after reading about him rising to power and junk i've decided it's time to start bootlegging my own liquor in the comfort of my own home, probably in my own bathtub. you can start sending me money to get the project off the ground, and i promise you'll get free samples in return.

oh also, i bet this is what elton and billy looked like singing together when they were on tour...

the modem is still being extremely uncooperative. i'm now waiting for a nice helpful email from the manufacturer, which should get to me in the next 24 hours. dear lord i miss being able to surf the net at night. i probably could just solve all this crap by getting a new computer, or maybe even just a new modem, but there's a part of me that likes trying to get broken shit (especially broken computer shit) to work. plus new computer doesn't fit in the grand scheme of things at the moment so i gotta try and work with what i've got and maybe shake what my mama gave me, too. long story short is my puter's a little out of commission at the moment but will be fixed soon. bear with me or i'll kick your ass.

i forgot to tell you that while i was home i taught michelle how to purl, which is neato cuz i didn't think i'd be able to help her figure it out, what with her being left-handed and me being a supercool karaoke star and all that. but yeah. a couple minutes later she was purlin like a... um... vurlin..., and we enjoyed ourselves a nice couple episodes of the people's court.

this just in from the desk of jenn: "you're not cool unless you poop. so you better get poopin' with me."

wiser words were never spoken.

so i'm back, and i know you missed me. it's the secret webcam that i had installed that's equipped with super-secret spy technology.

for god's sake will you please put on some pants. i mean come on.

vacation was good. too good. much too good. hailey asked my sister this morning if they could pick me up from the airport yet, cuz she knows that's where they dropped me off yesterday. and you know what bill cosby? you were right. kids do say the darndest things.

so let's review my kick-ass vacation in an orderly fashion, by the numbers so we can quantify it and run tests and experiments on the data:

friday, march 12:
1: hour late into lax
2: people picked me up after
3: times driving around the entire 7 terminal joint
25: minute drive back to michelle and joe's
45: minutes until pizza arrived
2: beers removed from fridge and consumed
5billion: references to zoolander made
1: copy of zoolander watched
6: hours of sleep

saturday, march 13:
2: kids woke me up
3: bowls of cap'n crunch consumed (when the hell did the phrase "crunchitize me captain! make it on the box?!!?!)
60: number of times all of my cheapo fun bracelets went from hailey to jacob and back again
500: number of times the new/old samsonite suitcase was opened and emptied
36,000: number of cups of imaginary tea drunk
2: kid movies watched that i'd never seen before (finding nemo and that one i can't admit to)
3: number off other family members that came over to hang out while i was babysitting
3: number of hot chicks (ann, michelle, me except that i'm more lame than hot) that were at the big sexy table at the american wake concert
746: number of traditional irish dancers on stage in between the
3: irish rock bands that played at the galaxy
5: hours until ann's salad arrived
1: missed coffee invite after the show due to overtiredness on all our parts
3: hours of sleep until jacob decided to start yelling

sunday, march 14:
3: more hours of sleep
47: number of times the watering cans were filled so the kids could water the rocks in the backyard
832: number of times the suitcase was jumped on
58: rounds of hide and seek played with the kids
3: hiding spots the kids actually use (under the kitchen table, behind the couch, behind the bathroom door.)
2: little people movies watched, including the one with my favorite line ever: "fire dept. timmy is stuck on a cloud.
4:episodes of MXC watched... i didn't really realize the kids were paying attention to it while we were playing a board game, but all of a sudden jacob yelled "uh-oh" and starts pointing, and some dude had just eaten it in the mud and was all dirty. from that point on they were hooked. i hope they don't try it at home.
2: hours spent at mom's house

monday, march 15:
1: hour spent getting ready for the thing
4: hits of chewable pepto bismal consumed
3: seconds it took to get from my sister's work to the place for the thing
15: minutes wasted driving around so as not to be freakishly early for the thing at the place
90: minutes spent at that thing at the place with the stuff
1: costume change into something more comfortable
1: lunch with ann at that tasty tasty mexican place around the corner from her work
1: business card snatched from her desk so i can give it to all my illegal immigrant friends.
1: book bought at barnes and noble in hb
2ish: picked up michelle
did some more stuff... uh.. what else happened on monday?

tuesday, march 16:
dude, why can't i remember tuesday?

no wait. there was lots of slacking to be had on tuesday. i can't remember what i did beforehand, but i remember after a certain point i just sat on the couch and read, which is a completely fine way to spend a day of vacation. picked up michelle, hung out, and here's a number for the day:

304: rounds of boggle. i have to admit that ultimate coolness points are added to our scores if good enough creative words are found (mostly swears), and it's kind of gross but i got ultimate coolness points for fisted. joe got a really good one, too... what the hell was it...

it's also pointless to talk about sleep anymore for the vacay because jacob's working on getting taken off of the bottle and he's not real pleased about it. he's still a cool kid, even if he did keep us up most of the time...

wednesday, march 17:
i think i slacked off a lot on wednesday, too. michelle had to work, and i think she took the car. did she take the car? dude everything's kind of a blur. we did a lot of stuff involving hanging out, which i normally don't do when i go back but man it was hot. speaking of, here's some more numbers:

1: copy of wet hot american summer purchased on the cheap at best buy the night before
1: friend of michelle's came over
4: burgers and a bazillion french fries consumed
1: victoria's secret catalog completely defaced beyond recognition. it's amazing what a few jackasses with a sharpie can do, that's all i gotta say. and that heidi klum looks great with one of those twisty moustaches that bad guys always twirled in their fingers in old movies.
26: pieces of fake food thrown around
5394: times the channels were flipped because there was nothing on
2: episodes of south park and one of dave chappelle's show watched

sleep, glorious sleep, why the hell did you leave me during my vacation?

thursday, march 18:
5: of us at glen ivy
7000: women with horrible horrible tattoos, including a creepy eyeball one and another with some cherries near her crotch. which we decided was false advertising, because she was probably a slut to boot. (man we're jerks)
83: pounds of clay were spackled into that poor girls butt... i can't even begin to describe it. ask me about it next time we talk. it's just freakin horrible. but mostly funny.
1: old lady walking around that looked like a clay sculpture or something that some kid did in a lifedrawing class. she looked like a cross between that and one of those drip castles you make at the beach. and she was carrying a staff. it was weird.
5: of us making asses of ourselves during "water aerobics".
82: armpit farts in that one underground area
93: bags of candy bought at tom's farm
12: choc-covered cherries met their demise within 30 seconds. tom's farm's choco-covered cherries could quite possibly be the world's most perfect candy.
3: attempts at joining the fam for pizza at lampost
1: curt phone call from the mother saying they don't do that anymore
1: pizza (with a salad, don't forget their rockin salads) ordered from valutinas
1: copy of wet hot american summer watched. the audience was lukewarm about the experience, i think. mostly because we were overtired, but also because joe was antsy to see MXC.

friday, march 19:
i did some stuff. i don't really remember anything noteworthy on friday. hmmm... we went to ikea. aaaaaaand maybe pored over the exorbitantly priced apartments in orange county in an apt. magazine. and we probably talked about some boring stuff and maybe we worked our corner for some extra cash.

there's holes in my vacation that i don't really remember... i know we played more boggle that day which always rocks.

oh yeah, we hung out with my little sisters a bunch. it was cool.

saturday, march 20:
2: dollars spent on swap meet admission
6: pairs of my fave socks purchased
2: noisy bracelets picked up for hailey
1: used copy of the book the godfather to get me through the travelling on sunday
45: minutes total spent breezing through the joint. sometimes it's cool to blast through the place like that.
20: minutes spent looking for parking in the structure in downtown hb near the pier
3: paintball matches watched
64: surfers watched
5: surfers that actually caught anything while i was there. not a whole lot of waves happening that day
1: wind ensemble missed because i was waiting for michelle to get outta work
2.5: hours spent hanging with the little sisters, and later my mom.
3: people that gave in to the power of the tea
500: more episodes of MXC taken in with brandon, joe and michelle

sunday, march 21:
8: time we left for the port of air
7: the terminal i flew out of
20: minutes through all the gates and checkpoints
3: text messages sent to various people
1: superannoying attendant on the lax to chicago flight
3: hours it took to fix the plane that was supposed to get me back to oshsuck at 7pm but instead got me back close to 10
6,349,232: number of times i thought about actually skipping my flight and just leaving all my crap in wisconsin, never to return.

but hey. here i am, my frog's happy to see me, my job's happy to see me... plop plop plop noo nee noo. speaking of the job i should get back to it. so there. if this isn't enough shit to read how's about you write your congressman?

that's it, "romancing the bone" wins for most creative junk mail subject until i hear otherwise.

welcome to another edition of world mysteries solved!!!

did you ever wonder how donald trump gets his hair like that? last night in the midst of margaritas and baby showers, the truth was discovered by our crack team of specialists.

it turns out that mr. trump is actually quite bald. every morning when the donald begins his day, after the shower but before breakfast, the cook fires up the cotton candy maker downstairs in the kitchen. then 5 or 6 of his brawnier assistants pick him up, flip him over, and rotate him around the bowl of the machine until a good 7-8" of fluffy pink goodness surrounds his scalp. his stylist shapes it in a genuine trump industries hair mold, and then his own personal tagger spraypaints it with the finest spraypaint nyc has to offer. he then dons his solid gold suit, eats some breakfast, and is ready to begin the day.

you heard it here first, folks! delicious, delicious cotton candy!!!

wokka wokka doo doo yeah!!!

it's gonna be a late night, what with drinkin with babies and packin my bags and all!

everyone pachanga!!!

friends of the internet, i seek your help.

there's this partial simpsons quote that's been rolling around in my brain for weeks, and i can't remember which episode it was, or even the entire quote...

there's this one episode where marge was on the news for some reason, and she was being interviewed by kent brockman... and he asked her some weird crazy question and she said something along the lines of who would want to know that. and kent says "(INSERT MISSING WORD HERE). pundits."

what the hell is that missing word? what episode is this from? why the hell won't it leave my brain?!?!

fifty points and a solid gold spork to the right answer.

it seems i won't be online in the evening again until sometime after i get back from vacation, since the next plan of attack on the computer currently known as assface will take a good chunk of time that i just won't have in the next two days. if i know you, you'll be okay. just eat some more candy and hum the theme song to columbo in your head for a while and it'll be just as good as aol chatting with me.

fifty points to the person who can call me and hum the columbo theme song, cuz i have no idea how it goes. it was just the first old tv show i could think of.

so when we last left off, before the format of this station went from fun to lets-rant-about-shitty-computers, it was the weekend. and it was fun. especially the part where we went to madison and i got to make like kiki dee during jenn and i's rendition of "don't go breakin' my heart". i like that there are fun names out there like kiki dee and didi conn, where i've indirectly known about them, but am just learning their names now. i'm gonna name my firstborn child didiConnKikiDee. or possibly pleaseJustPunchMe. i haven't quite decided yet.

anyways, there was lots of fun to be had at the karaoke kid, and while bee girl wasn't in attendance someone from her drone surely was. i haven't seen anyone attempt to make out with that many people in a really long time, like hours or days or something. good times all around. later jenn and i had a reunion tour on the stage, where we wowed em with the news that it was raining men. headed back to the ok corrall shortly after that (which, funny enough, is neither a corrall nor okay), and ate some cookies and drank some milk to some cheezy infomercial.

sunday was mostly slack day, sitting in front of the computer and working on getting it back to where it was.

monday and tuesday i did some stuff.

and that brings us back to today. i'm probably gonna do some stuff today, too. more on this gripping story as it develops.

why yes, my computer is still being a jerk. now it decided that it doesn't like the modem anymore, and that it maybe just wants a divorce. counsellors are being called in to get the two of them to work out their differences. hopefully they'll reconcile tonight over a candlelight dinner so i can get my ass on the internet again.

*sigh*

the saga of the shitty computer continues.

a couple of months ago my bro-in-law joe was helping me figure out how to fix this one thing, and he tells me hey you should back up everything that's on your hard drive cuz if your computer craps out on you then you won't lose the stuff.

and i was lazy. sooooo lazy. and backing up sounded like so much work, and i was eating cookies at the time, so i let it slide.

fast forward two months.

this last wednesday night, i backed up everything from my hard drive onto a cd. this morning i turned on my machine, with plans to regale you with stories of madison karaoke adventures from last night. and the fucker won't even start up windows 98, because apparently it's run out of all forms of space.

and if i had never gotten around to backing all my stuff (including such lovelys as the pig and fusspot sausage shirt, the tae kwon doe, my website's .fla file, every stupid greeting card i've ever made, and my 87 page long love letter to steve buscemi) would have been completely gone or at least super hard to get ahold of. but since i finally remembered to do it no worries, i'm just wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch.

i'll tell you all about jenn and i on stage live in concert, i swear, but it'll have to wait until i'm at home and my computer (which i've decided should be named assface) is cooperating again.

(i soooo can't wait until my budget allows super-swanky new computerness this summer.)

aaaaah, saturday morning.

on saturday morning, there's nothing i like better (aside from trying out for the next big cover-song-extravaganza musical, that is) than working.

lovely lovely working.

and now on to the business at hand:

five points to the first person who can tell me what the mystery goo floating at the top of my can of dinty moore beef stew is.

twenty points to the first person who tells me what it is and also admits to eating it.

and five hundred points to the person who tells me they have no idea what it is, but they eat it anyways instead of fishing it out with a fork because it's in the can so it must be stew-fixin's.

extra points may be added for creativity, winner to get a nifty prize (which i haven't decided upon yet) in the mail, offer void where prohibited, the decision of the judges (being me) is final.

okay, GO!

just call me steph gogoblatz, psychic extraordinaire.

okay. so y'all are obviously not jumping at the chance to send me back to school. may i offer an alternative which would cost much less? track this baby down for me (the cat, not the girl)... it'll only set you back 300 bucks. (that's the cat, i have no idea how much you could buy the girl for) such a bargain over grad school, don't you agree?

or just buy me the 19" tall statuette, which goes for around 20. don't worry if more than one of you sends it to me, i'll find a place for em all.

or just keep the quarters comin, and sooner or later i'll make like rodney dangerfield and go back to school.

i swear i like you for more than buying me shit.

if you really loved me, you'd hand over 24k so i could get a masters in graphic design.

aw, come on. please?

the greatest thing about big cities is being able to decide that the best way to spend your saturday morning is trying out for this.

why yes, that is during my vacation back in california. but i'm hanging with the neice and nephew that day. i'd take 'em with me if i wasn't so sure they'd show me up and steal all the good parts.