"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."*

   Hey, you crazies.

   Sorry it’s been so long since my last post.

   I live in Texas y'all.

   I am very hot.

   I have an apartment now.

   And go out a lot.

   That was a poem. Did you get it? Didja?

    Can you keep a secret? I can't. That has nothing to do with my next statement: I’m super in love with this town. I’m so hot most days it’s hard to concentrate or remember my name, but when I’m in my car blasting the AC, and I can focus on life, I find every sight I see highly entertaining if not downright inspiring. 

That's the reading inside at 12:30 a.m. Yikes!

   This post isn’t worth much…just a shout-out to the blogosphere to let y’all know I’m alive.

   Top 5 things I like about Austin so far:

1.  Despite driving in what I’m told is heinous traffic, I can’t help feeling Austin is a paradise compared to LA. Nothing takes more than 30 minutes, and it usually takes a lot less.

2.  Every street looks eclectic and original and bizarre. This is not a town of strip malls and Walmarts, praise Jesus!

3.  Some lady very nicely explained from her car in the lane next to mine today that I was in the wrong lane and about to experience a head-on collision. She offered to let me move in front of her. What? Courteous, kind fellow drivers? What planet am I on?

4.  My new apartment has a balcony overlooking a charming creek. Yay, nature! 

How cute is the GE stove from the 70's? And, as Ouisa pointed out,if it works, I'm one step ahead of my last apartment.

5.  Everyone here dresses fashionably: but not LA fashionably. We’re talking personalized, outrageous, adorable, crazy fashion from vintage to full tattoo sleeves to head-to-toe UT gear. In LA everyone dresses to look thin or importantly chic, here people dress to look unique, different, and like they just don't give a shit. And it’s WONDERFUL. I’ve never seen more beautiful people in one place in my entire life (except of course, at family reunions, duh).

   Honorable Mention: to Louise “Moose” Hopp: Gabe’s kitty has been my go-to companion, whether I’m on the front porch or the back picnic table. She sleeps at the end of the bed and only talks when she has something important to say. She searches out the strange rustling under the backyard steps and keeps me from running in the house screaming because I’m afraid of creatures. Thanks Gabe and Dan and Louise for letting me crash here!

Moose working security on the front porch.

I’ll keep you posted.

*That quote is from Davy Crockett.

"'Cause I've seen blue skies, through the tears in my eyes, and I realize...I'm going home."*

   Hi. It’s been a while. It’s okay if you’re over me. I’ve been sort of over myself, if you know what I mean.

   A lot has happened in the last three weeks. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will provide you with hi-lights, so we can ease back into our routine without too much hoop-la. I hate explanations. I never know what to leave out, and then I end up writing too much and everyone gets bored.

   Bored is bad.

   Okay:

1.  I live in Omaha now. It’s not permanent, but it feels strange. Being here on vacation is one thing. Living here (if only for a couple of months) feels overwhelmingly surreal. I don’t have a ton of stuff to occupy my time as yet, so I drive around and take pictures of things. Which is pretty much exactly what I did the last time I lived here…in the year 2000. Only back then I just drove around. And, to be fair, I can make anything feel overwhelming.

So strange to see in the summer, but so great all the same. Memorial Park, Omaha.

2.  Em and I drove from Los Angeles to Three Rivers, CA to see the Sequoias (more on that later). Then we drove from there to Omaha. In total it took 4 days. We are no longer sprightly, energetic people like we once were. We are slightly older and we get tired easily. Four days felt long, but three days would’ve killed us. Can’t imagine how much it would’ve hurt if we didn’t really like each other.

The drive from LA, via Sequoia National Park, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Western Nebraska.

3.  My life leading up to the road trip was a hazy blur of packing, drinking, eating whatever I could find, and sleeping and then doing all of those same things again. It may have been fun at times. I don’t choose to remember. 

My life pre-move: a vicious cycle.

4.  I realized the other week that I’m sexually attracted to men in drag.

5. Speaking of men in drag, did you hear Tim Curry had a stroke? E and I saw him in LA once. It remains the celebrity-siting hi-light of my existence. One of the sexiest men EVER. He's recovering properly, so don't worry.

6.  I don’t know if my succulents will survive the summer in Omaha. It’s already rained twice since they’ve been here, and the sun isn’t being too cooperative. They don’t like that. They look a lot like I do when I’m hungover. And my aloe plant has a broken arm from the road trip.

7.  I have been forced to kill three spiders in three days (Gabe would say I wasn't forced, and she herself would just pick them up with her GD hands and take them outside because she is INVINCIBLE). And I don’t want to kill them (yes I do! I do!), but not because I’m good and nature-y like Gabe, but because they horrify me, but the alternative is worse (they will mutate into Shiders and/or eat me in my sleep). It’s so spider-y in the summers in Nebraska. Just writing about it makes me feel things crawling on my skin.

8.  I feel very fat at present. And covered in webs.

   Alrighty, then, I think you’re up to speed, basically. I will write more and better things in the next few days, if my sanity holds out. I still need to find a groove but also...I was afraid to write, thinking that this would be hard for us. And then I had to figure out my parents' Interwebs code. But then I realized that one of us had to be the mature one. You’re welcome. 

*"I'm Going Home" by Richard O'Brien from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Performed by my beloved Tim Curry.

"I realize it's about letting things go and not adding more things."*

   I haven’t written a lot lately because everything I do is emotionally fraught and disturbing and seems poised to lead to buckets of tears because I apparently cry at everything now: episodes of Wings, Iron Man III, people not texting me back…seriously, anything. I know, on the slightly rational side of my brain, that much of this has to do with my impending move and the sense of epic-ness that it adds to every song I hear on the radio and every show I see on TV; but more than that, I think it’s still antidepressant withdrawal. Or I’m just back to my pre-medicated level crazy. (Uh-oh. Please, dear lord, don't make me like I was when I was 16 again! It wouldn't be right or fair or decent!) Either way it’s exhausting. And it makes me want to cry more.

   Last week (oh shit, actually it’s been two weeks now), I went surfing. And I went when I was in the death throes of antidepressant withdrawal. And it was the best thing ever. Gabe and Em had gotten me stand-up paddle-surfing lessons and I was nervous and excited to give them a try. I won’t bother you with the details, but they ended up just being regular surfing lessons. But that’s okay because it was great. And I think it was just what I needed to jump-start my brain from the hideous funk I’d been in for a week. Hanging out in the ocean and constantly working at getting up on the board and getting sun on my face and water up my nose and sand everywhere felt really great. And the dolphins swimming around the area (I’m told they’re very social and love people) made it even better. And even just sitting on the beach and watching the water felt good and therapeutic and right. It was wonderful and a much needed distraction from the “must do” list…which is far too long at this point and gives me minor strokes when I think about it. 

How I pictured myself as a surfer.

Closer to reality.

   Brief aside: it was clear that I wasn’t in my right headspace that day because I didn’t even think about Shiders ONCE.

   But in the very fast two weeks since that day, I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of things I have to do before the movers arrive May 30^th. I’ve been packing, on average, a box a day, and yet my cup still runneth over. This place is ridiculous. When did I accumulate so much crap? I’d like to sort the things into boxes in a way that makes some kind of sense. You know: kitchen, office, bedroom, etc…But there’s so much of it I feel like I’m drowning in piles of garbage. Precious, precious garbage. You can often find things as diverse as a sewing machine, a throw pillow, three pens, two forks, one sock and a coffee table book in a single box at my house. Nothing makes sense. Everything seems at once incredibly important and easily disposable at the same time. I’ve taken bags and bags to Out of the Closet and LA Shares, the electronic recycle and the street corner and still the things keep coming. It’s kind of humiliating in a way. And it makes me want to cry. Again. And more. And maybe one last time for the cheap seats in the back.

A sample of how I pack to move across the country (half-way).

   For instance, today I was cleaning out my dresser and held a t-shirt in my hand for three minutes. My college roommate, Lindsey, gave it to me. It has a picture of a bird of some type (a crane?) in front of a sunset and it says, “Nebraska: Big Cock Country.” After thinking really hard on it, I decided to keep it. But into the give-away pile went an equally amazing t-shirt from a dear friend who shall remain nameless (lest I make that friend as sad as I am). And I’m still agonizing over it. I may even cry over it, if I get the time later.(Oh wait, I forgot: apparently there is always time to cry.)

   That’s my problem: I’m too sentimental. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by no longer keeping a gift they gave me 12 years ago. Even if I never use the gift, part of me dies seeing it in a garbage bag on its way to the charity store. That’s why I’m a hoarder. I love things too much.

   In a perfect world, I would be less lazy, less sentimental and more driven. I would take these clothes, tchotchkes, unused kitchen shit, and piles of outdated electronics to Out of the Closet tomorrow and then go surfing again and try to re-center my chi and spend some more time with the dolphins. (The dudes at the beach are very in touch with their chi's...not so in touch with the proper use of the English language. When my friend Rebecca pointed out the fire smoke, our surfing instructor asked if it was "arsenal." Sigh. You can't be beautiful and brilliant, it would seem. At least not with all that water in your ears.)

   But the likelier scenario is that I’ll keep drinking cupfuls of chicken broth (that's my new thing...sodium, anyone?) and watching old musicals while I weep and stuff 13 years of accumulated crap into boxes upon boxes upon boxes. (I know. Nice attitude.)

   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate moving. Moving sucks and it can blow me. (Don’t think those were my exact words before, but that was definitely the feeling behind them.)

 
*This is from Dry by Augusten Burroughs.

"The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate."*

   Hi from Austin, Texas, y’all! Yee-haw!

   I’m visiting Gabe again…but now she lives in Austin instead of Minneapolis. I have to say I never would have visited her in Minnesota this time of year, but the weather in Texas is jeeeess right. Although it’s not as sunny as California, but what are you gonna do? Move everyone in the world to California? Oh wait, that already happened. That’s probably one of the reasons everyone there is leaving. That and it’s freaking expensive. And everyone is a narcissist. And it’s the place where dreams go to die. But I digress…

   I had a meeting at U.T. Austin because it’s one of the schools I’m considering attending next year. Halfway through my meeting with the kindly Graduate Advisor, Dr. Wilcox, I realized that I had something sticking out of my nose. It was sort of a white, flakey booger-type thing. (Okay, it had to be a booger—what else comes out of your nose besides snot and occasionally blood?) I hate typing those words as just thinking about things one finds in one’s nose makes me want to vomit all over this keyboard. It's pretty much the only thing that legitimately grosses me out. But that’s what happened, so I had to write it. (Did I?) Fuck my life. I’m sure he’s advising his whole committee to write me out a scholarship check right this very minute.

   “Hey, team! Let’s get this booger girl a scholarship! She showed some real courage coming in here today with crap coming out of her nose. This woman deserves full tuition, and I won’t rest until she gets it!”

   Gabe tried to reassure me that it probably wasn’t obvious to Dr. Wilcox, and suggested that maybe it was IN my nose and hidden rather than sticking out of my nose. This is one of the reasons I am friends with Gabe. Thanks, Gabe! I’m going to tell myself that she’s right and that there’s no way Dr. Wilcox would let me sit there and talk about internships and graduate housing with a booger on my face. If I were he, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate for one goddamn second. And now that I think about it…he did seem a little distracted. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

   Oh well. I’ve already been accepted there, so he can’t do anything about it now! Haha! The day is mine!

Here's a picture of campus. Sorry for the lack of original images in this post. (Image Source)

   At least I made a lasting impression?

*Tony Benn.

"I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them."*

   I’ve discovered a new way to get attention: wrap a bandage around your hand.

   I burned myself somehow the other day in that really inconvenient spot: the top of the knuckle of my first finger on my right hand. So everything I did (getting something out of my purse, folding laundry, washing my hands) made the mystery wound open back up. So I put on a band-aid and the band-aid kept getting wet or falling off randomly, so I wrapped my hand in bandage tape.

More intense than it looks?

   I really didn’t do it to get attention, but everywhere I go—even the gas station—people ask me what happened to my hand. And I have to say I’m loving it. Of course the injury has escalated in severity from “mystery burn” to “savage knife-fight wound,” but what stranger is going to know if I’m lying?

   In other news, I have another dream to share, even though I’ve insisted on numerous occasions that I hate sharing dreams. Maybe what I really hate is listening to other people’s dreams. So this is different because it’s my dream and therefore I am highly entertained by it. And you can skip this part if you want.

   In my dream, Em and I were bridesmaids at Gabe’s wedding. And we were at the rehearsal and her whole family made a conga line to go down the aisle. I remember feeling like that was really embarrassing, but that’s how Gabe wanted it, so that’s how it was going to be.

   But then the back of her dress split open and we had to fix it before the wedding later that night, which for some odd reason was set to begin at 10 p.m. She entrusted Em and I to go to the fabric store to get thread and fix it, but she kept saying, “I’m serious, you guys. You can’t smoke in the car with my dress in it.” Like we were 16 again. Ah, memories.

   But in the car I said to E, “I don’t think Gabe really wants me to be her bridesmaid.”

   And E said, “No, she doesn’t. But you complained about it so much that she decided to let you so you’d shut up. She’s really mad at you because you keep mailing pine cones to people.”

   Hmmm….what possible symbolism could pine cones have? And why would I mail them to anyone? Let alone repeatedly mail pine cones to many people as the dream implies?

From my forthcoming Pine Cone Series.

You will be happy to know that I did some pine cone research and came up with a few shocking/highly gratifying interpretations:

1.  Pine cones in a dream can symbolize wealth and good fortune. (I find this one suspect, as I think most things in dream dictionaries signify wealth and good fortune. On the other hand, if I was sending the pine cones to other people, it signifies how good I am at making money disappear.)

2.  They can also represent life and fertility. (Which has horrifying implications always.)

3.  According to a website which sells “Third Eye Pinecones” (I’m serious), the pine cone has for ages represented the human enlightenment. This website goes on to suggest that the term “pine cone” gets its name from the “pineal gland” of the brain, which is responsible for our perception of light. Hmmm…I always thought it got its name from the coniferous Pine Tree. But this is still my favorite interpretation for various (and obvious) reasons. So this is what I’m going with.

Pine cone with third eye. Pine cone series. Forthcoming. (Does anyone else think this looks like a California Raisin?)

   Anyway, this post is asinine and random, but I don’t really care too much. I may fix it later, but that seems doubtful.

*Susan Sontag.

"Don't ignore it, then. Talk back to it! Say, 'You can't do that number on me, Shit-for-Brains' or something like that. Otherwise it kind of weasels its way into your head whether you like it or not. What I'm saying is, you can't just sit there, you got to get pissed off."*

    Yet again I feel the need to give you an abbreviated rundown of my life, as I have no real points to make about anything and not enough (or maybe too much?) excitement in my life to siphon down into one solid point. So here are several “snapshots” of where my brain has been over the last few weeks.

1.     So I was in the waiting room of the dentist’s office yesterday when the World’s Most Annoying Human came in. She had long dark hair (dyed, clearly, since she looked upwards of 60) and she really wanted some new tooth-whitening gel. The receptionist said she would go in the back and look for the brand the woman was requesting. While 60-going-on-12 lady was waiting, she went over and knelt in front of the fish tank. She said things like, “Oh, you sweet wittle fishes! You so pretty! Oh, why you on you back, wittle fish? That’s not good!” I had to think it was for my benefit, because I was the only person in the waiting room and who the fuck talks like that when she’s by herself? It made me hate her. And it made me wish there was a T-Rex in the fish tank that could scare the shit out of her and her stupid I Heart Barcelona t-shirt.

This is what it would look like if a T-Rex lived in the fish tank. Lacey 2012. (8 million dollars)

2.     I realized recently that my shampoo and conditioner boast “lupine botanicals.” What?!? My shampoo is made from wolf extracts? I thought that was really sick and really awesome at the same time. But then I looked up the word “lupine” and it turns out it can also refer to a type of flowering plant. Bummer.

My shampoo.

But what's this? Wolf parts?

3.     My buddy Sam made me a pillow for my birthday that looks like this:

How great is this? Nebraska with a heart on Omaha!

It's very similar to my tattoo!

4.     I’ve decided I don’t care for Miley Cyrus. She said this in the recent issue of Marie Claire: “You always see the 70-year-old man driving the Bentley. He’s saved up his whole life and now he’s going to do something crazy. Liam and I are really lucky because usually people can’t afford to do the things we do. You should be driving the Bentley when you’re young and hot. That’s when you look dope!” Sorry, Miley. Not everyone is a quatrillionaire because they grew up as a talentless Disney tween. Sorry. Some of us earned our Bentleys (not me, obviously) through hard work. I think you’re an un-nice girl. I don’t like you. At all. And I think your teeth are freakishly small.

5.     Mike burned me a CD with a bunch of Prince songs! I love Prince! Prince, Prince, Prince!

6.     Em and Gabe got me paddle boarding lessons for my 30^th birthday! Bucket list!

7.     My awesome BFF Michelle came in town over last weekend with her BF Danny. Michelle added a new word to my lexicon: maybe we can call transvestite ladies of the night in Hollywood Mandy’s? Get it? Are you an Amanda or a Mandy?

8.     The ants are back...but they've congregated in different areas of the apartment. One or two in the kitchen, one or four in the bathroom, one solitary soldier on the coffee table. What the fuck is happening? I'm washing dishes before I use them! What's going on??

*The quote, irrelevant as it may be, is from one of my favorite books: The Bean Trees by excellent novelist Barbara Kingsolver (who is also Gabe's auntie!). It sort of speaks to my current/ongoing need to express my frustration when people act like douche canoes.

"Poor cat! Poor slob! Poor slob without a name! The way I see it I haven't got the right to give him one. We don't belong to each other. We just took up one day by the river. I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like. It's like Tiffany's."*

    I spent the weekend in glorious, lesbian-friendly Minneapolis with my two best friends, Em and Gabe. It was really good and great and wonderful.

    Despite the fact that Gabe warned us repeatedly about the bike rack strapped to the back of her trunk, Emily and I each took a hit. Em took hers on Saturday. I didn’t get mine until I was tucking my suitcase into the trunk for the trip to the airport: always a weird event that puts me in a strange head space (at least, that’s what I’ll be blaming it on). So I smacked the bike rack down on my head, which then smashed my sunglasses onto my nose and cheeks.

    By the time we got to the airport, I had a sizeable, red circle/gash on my nose.  Yikes.

    Once I was in the airport, I’d forgotten all about it and couldn’t figure out why people kept staring at me. I thought maybe I was looking super beautiful. But my clumsiness escalated.

    Have you ever heard of that character, “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” It’s a stock character derived from the portrayal of Claire by Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown. Nathan Rabin, a film critic, came up with the term and describes it as this: “That bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” You know, like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous and Zooey Deschanel in almost anything. It’s that girl who’s always spilling stuff and running into men with her clumsy yet pilates-toned butt and encouraging would-be boyfriends to roll down a hill with her and live in the now and smell the roses and never go to the doctor or to the bank or to work.

She's so UNIQUE! (500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009). Photo.

    I’m so not that girl. But I really don’t think anyone is.

    I smacked into four or five people trying to get my carry-on to my seat and then had to take up two carry-on spots in the overhead bin because I was “doing it wrong” and the flight attendant told me to just stop worrying about it. My poor arms were tired and no one had offered to help me, and I just wanted to sit the fuck down. The flight attendant asked if my bag had been cleared for “carry-on status.” She actually asked if I’d gone shopping in Minneapolis (I hadn’t). I did not hit any handsome men with my hind end, and even if I had, I don’t think they would’ve been so enamored of my expert clumsiness that they would've asked to fall in love with me.

She's wicked QUIRKY! (Almost Famous. Cameron Crowe, 2000). Photo.

    Once I sat down, I immediately fell asleep and ended up with my head on the shoulder of the woman sitting next to me. She was really nice about it. But she didn't ask me out.

    I jerked awake and got a bag of crackers during the food service and tried to bend down to get my book while holding the crackers and spilled half of them on the floor. The really nice flight attendant gave me a cup for the floor crackers. Then I repeatedly bumped my head and elbow into the nice lady next to me while I was picking them up. No dreamy looking men happened upon me during this time, entranced by my inability to connect food from my hand to my mouth. Weird!

She wants a PIGGY BACK RIDE! (Elizabethtown. Cameron Crowe--strike two--2005). Photo.

    After I got off the plane, I got stuck in several doorways with my bag and left a bathroom stall door unlocked enough for it to swing open mid-pee. No men there to be swept off their feet, unfortunately.

    I got caught in the elevator door in my building and then slammed my knee on my apartment door. Then I forgot that I had no towels in my bathroom and had to drip water all over the hallway after my shower.

    I’m not normally so clumsy. But I should’ve known things were going wrong earlier that morning when my shoe strap caught on Gabe’s porch table and yanked the whole table so hard that half of its contents fell on the floor.

    I’m pretty sure that if the Manic Pixie Dream Girl were a real person, she’d just be pissing people off all over the place. If I were on a first date with someone and they spilled coffee all over me, I’d think the date was going sort of poorly.  If someone showed up with a huge bruise over the bridge of her nose, I’d wonder if maybe she were a psychopath or the victim of domestic abuse, not assume that she was delightfully prone to running into doors and bike racks.

The original? Audrey Hepburn has Breakfast at Tiffany's,  (Blake Edwards, 1961). Photo.

    If these women were real, everyone would hate them, despite their "loveable" neuroses. We’d hate them for being late, for not having a real job, for not bothering to wear a bra or do laundry, for smelling bad and for generally being flaky and disrupting everyone else’s lives.

    I definitely got a sense of that when I repeatedly spilled on, knocked into, and upset other folks on the airplane. It’s not appealing, least of all to the person that’s right next to you. And I’m sure it would be slightly better if I looked like Kirsten Dunst or Audrey Hepburn or Kate Winslet. Because I’m sure that being exceedingly beautiful and charming or toothy and booby and having really clever, hippie-dippie things to say makes spilling hot coffee on someone’s crotch ALMOST tolerable. But I gotta tell you, it doesn’t feel plausible. It only makes sense if every word out of your mouth is scripted.

*From Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961). Holly Golightly might be the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I love Audrey Hepburn, but isn't it annoying how quirky and different she thinks she is? She's just an irresponsible bitch like the rest of them. Yeah, your freedom is super adorable and all, but you're really cramping everyone else's style, Holly. Just name the damn cat and shut up about it.

"The next video was sent to us by Geurgud Gardner from Baden Baden. Here they have come across the body of a tramp, which in itself is not so disturbing. Until it is turned over to reveal...ANTS! ANTS! ANTS!"*

    I’ve been doing some super important stuff lately, and plan to do more of it this weekend, so I haven’t had time to form a thought or generate an idea or an interesting story for you. But I didn’t want you to be sad, so I grabbed up a few hundred of the post-it notes I have been sticking on various surfaces of my apartment, and decided to offer you some random (and yet deep) thoughts from the last week or so. I just have a few things I have to get off my chest/kitchen cabinet. None of this stuff has anything to do with anything ever. It's neither here nor there. Nor anywhere. Ever. Seriously.

I keep my great ideas organized.

1.     My apartment is overrun with ants. Or was. I’ve killed them off pretty well. It started last week and, unfortunately, it started while my mom was visiting with her friend Laura and I was trying really hard to impress them with how clean my apartment is. I (incredible sleuth that I am) determined the source of their interest in my kitchen yesterday: a really old jar of honey. I find that kind of ironic, considering the bee infestation of a couple of months ago. Of course, I know bees don’t so much like honey as make honey. I’m not a moron. But it was still kind of funny. As well as disgusting.

2.     While I was cowering in the living room far from the ants on Tuesday I decided to watch Delirious (Tom Mankiewizc—son of Joseph L.—1991). It’s that movie where John Candy (one of my many dead, obese celebrity crushes--along with Chris Farley, Orson Welles, Burl Ives, Charles Laughton and John Belushi) is a writer for a soap opera and then, after a head injury, he finds himself living in the soap opera. What was funny about that (aside from everything) was how his love interest (Mariel Hemingway) is obsessed with ants. Ew. So while I was hiding from the ants over in the living room (living area, actually, since it’s all one room), I had a nice, close-up view of some ants on the TV. Awesome.

3.     I saw Rock of Ages a couple of weeks ago and I really wanted Julianne Hough to suck in it, mostly because she’s pretty and has a great bod and I’m jealous of her success. But she was good. So now I’m a begrudging Julianne Hough fan. But she’s still a complete imbecile in real life.

4.     I was halfway home from work today when I realized I’d left my cell phone there. I live in Los Feliz and work in the Pacific Palisades. That’s about 20 minutes in a real place, but about an hour’s drive in L.A. So I wasted an extra hour of today in my car. It’s days like this when I want to get on the 5 and go north until I’m in Canada and never come back to Los Angeles, California, or The United States EVER AGAIN. Can every road in this country really be under construction?

Boo.

5.  If I had to choose between Jemaine and Bret from Flight of the Conchords, my first inclination would be Bret, because in many ways he’s the more conventionally attractive of the two (and an Oscar winner). But ultimately, I think I’d pick Jemaine. Because of his slight disadvantage in the looks department, he would be more insecure and therefore easier to convince that I am considered a 10 in the US. 

6. I had browned-butter-and-candied-bacon flavored ice cream yesterday at Cool Haus. It was AMAZING. And then I was thirsty for 4 hours.

7.  I love Prince. Prince, Prince, Prince.

8.  I don’t understand why some crimes are called “hate crimes” if they're committed against gays or ethnic minorities. Aren’t all crimes “hate crimes?” If I bash in the head of a white supremacist, isn’t it safe to assume that I hate him, just a little bit? Or at least hate that he’s got the car I want and am therefore stealing? All crimes = hate crimes.

9.  I saw Smokey Robinson at the Hollywood Bowl with my mom and Laura. I have never been attracted to a 71-year-old man before. But I am now. Am I a reverse-cougar?

The guy in white is Smokey. My zoom isn't super awesome. Also, my camera sucks.

10.  I’ve never heard a Justine Bieber song, but I think she’s the most adorable little lesbian I’ve ever seen.

Hot lesbians. (Photo)

I’m off to Minneapolis tomorrow to visit Gabe, and Emily is coming from Chicago to meet us! I’m so excited! But I may be AWOL for a few days, because I could be having so much fun that I don’t have time to write. Try to get along without me. 

It's gonna be huge!**

*The quote is from one of Mike Myers genius "Sprockets" sketches from SNL where he plays Dieter.

**The title of the screenplay Gabe and I wrote in high school.