Leezer

For those of you Googling “American Idol,” welcome to my blog.  As I’ve learned from my Stat Counter, there are many avenues to my blog, none of which I’m particularly proud.  Apparently, Googling, “Bleached Anus,” will get you here, as will “I ruv it asian,” as will “poop.” (No surprise there.)  I’m expiramenting a bit to see if I can win Time Magazine’s Blogger of the Year award just by using a common pop-culture term in my title.  Tune in later for the results.

In the mean time, I was tagged by Expat to complete the following exercise:

- Post the rules on your blog
- Write six random things about yourself in a blog post
- Tag six people in your post
- Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
- Let the tagger know your entry is up

This is not going to be easy because I have no secrets to share. I’ve actually written just about everything there is to know about me, which frightens me into oblivion. 

Now, Expat indicated on her blog that we are virtual twins. This is true.  There are a few minor differences, however. First, Expat does not have the same hang-ups about religion as do I.  Second, Expat considers listening to others’ differing points of view as a challenge and a growing experience, while I consider the same experience merely annoying and a waste of precious time. Third, Expat is a true adventurer, having lived all over the world and having raised a kind, well-functioning family unit at the same time.  I could not do this.  Here’s to you, Expat!

Here are six random things, hopefully heretofore unpublished:

• Every night I wear a t-shirt to bed that says, “Ask me about my explosive diarreah.”  My husband thinks I’m irresistible.
• I scored in the thirteenth percentile in the Spatial Orientation section of the pre-college tests (this is out of 100, folks).  This is the exercise that requires you to figure out which way the wheels are turning. If you think THIS is bad, Leezerslawpartner, one of the best attorneys in the whole US of A, scored a SIX! He told me, “I didn’t even think this was possible.”  Adorable, that one.
• I secretly think I’m sort of funny-looking.
• I am so weary of telling my seven-year old, roughly seven times a day, how old our two-year old Shih Tzu is in “human years.”  Now I just tell her “Two. same age as he is in dog years.”
• My best friend Ruthie from childhood died in 1994.  She’s in nearly every dream of mine. Recently, in such a dream, I asked her,”why are you always here.” She said, “that’s our agreement. I’ll always  be here whether you need me or not.” It’s sort of comforting.  MCS reminds me a lot of Ruthie but I don’t tell her very often out of fear I’ll creep her out.
• In the fifth grade, I held two older girls hostage in the girls bathroom.  They couldn’t leave until they said the secret password, “shoes in your mouth, yeah yeah yeah.”  After the bell rang and we were discovered missing, the sixth grade teacher found us, sent the hostages back to class, and told me I would be the first female in Lake Youngs Elementary School history to receive a hack. He pounded the hack paddle into his palm, then at the last minute he let me go, sans hack. I’m sure a lawsuit from my parents was the only thing that stopped him cold.

Tagged:  Mae, Lisa, Lengli, Naynay, Pixie, Kitkat

I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. Either it’s the Saturn retrograde or it’s close to the end of the season for my two favorite shows, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.  Now, I have a professional degree. I’m not opposed to using latin terms when I want to appear like a know-it-all.  But I hoard my childrens “Littlest Pet Shop” toys because they’re the closest thing to living in a pod I can come up with - I mean the little toys live in the pod, not me, but I can live there vicariously.  And I love mind-numbing tv shows made for imbeciles. Oh well.

So last night’s American Idol featured Neal Diamond songs.  This is really scratching at the bottom of the barrel.  I love Neal Diamond and all, but I just can’t watch him without thinking of Will Farrell’s impression of a Neal Diamond concert in which Will (as Neal) talks to the audience about picking up a drifter - a man - and having sex with him.  Some mental images will live on.

And I find it a little upsetting that my favorite, Michael Johns, was voted off before Neal Diamond night. I can imagine him crooning, “Cherry,” - She’s got the way to move me, Cherry! -  with his shirt open to his navel and all the girls in the audience taking off their panties and throwing them on the stage. 

Speaking of panties, I heard yesterday on the radio that Roger Clemens and his friends are big fans of some up-and-coming fifteen year-old country western singer. They attended one of her concerts in which Roger stood in the front row and threw her one of his jerseys.  The media is reporting that the two have become “friends” and the relationship is purely “platonic.”  Now let’s think about this a bit.  Roger Clemens has two or three sons.  I believe the oldest is a grown man, or at least he’s in college. His wife is a body builder who abuses steriods and other prescription drugs.   Not that her bad habits have anything to do with his unhealthy relationship with a minor, it just makes the story a little more salacious.  So apparently Roger’s adoration of the jail-bait singer has progressed to the point that he’s now getting more attention from this spectacle than he did for perjury (remember his testimony before congress that he never used steriods).  All I can say is “Ewwww.”  And to the girl, where are your parents?  I wonder if the girl (Mindy) knows if Roger had to take little round bandaids wherever he went so the injection site on his buttocks wouldn’t stain his designer slacks.  Maybe she put his bandaids on for him.

That’s all for now. I wish I had something a little more interesting to share with all of you, but I’m a working mother of two small children whose back always hurts and one of the children is home with a cold.  

Today as I sat in my office reading George Will in order to delay accomplishing anything of value, I ate a Combo Number 1 from Thai Castle which theoretically is supposed to contain phad thai but usually is screwed up in some manner so I get extra curry or too much sticky rice.  The lime wedge included in my meal was far too tiny to be taken seriously, even as a Corona-accompaniment.  In any event, I gripped the little nugget between my thumb and forefinger and pressed as hard as I could, aiming for the congealed glob of carbohydtrates.  Pulp and juice squirted over the front of my blouse and down my forearms, then the little bastard shot out of my hand and behind the prefabricated office shelving upon which I’ve appropriately arranged my Dwight Schrute bobblehead and photos of my children. 

“Ah screw it,” I thought, not rising to locate the renegate citrus wedge.  “I’ll smell it when it starts to rot, then it’ll be easier to find.”   I went back to my meal and unfastened the top button of my J.Crew Heritage Chinos.  If only I could belch unnoticed.

And speaking of eating too much, today is the first full day of the calendar year in which the sun is in the sign of Taurus the bull.  Taurus is the sign of good food, good drink, and material possessions.  Never give a Taurus a card that says, “I owe you ten kisses,” or “Good for a free afternoon away from the kids.”  A Taurus doesn’t want this crap. He wants a bottle of Dom Perignon or a Rolex or a cabin next to a river.  A Taurus is all about the bling, baby.

Not so with Scorpios, who generally eschew luxury to make some kind of statement.   I am a Scorpio, the sign of death, rebirth, regeneration, and reinvention.  The symbol for the sign is the Phoenix, the mythical bird that is consumed by flames then is reborn from his own ashes.   The closest I ever came to this experience was when I was eleven and my family went to see our neighbors, the Battles, on Christmas Eve.   In the downstairs guest bath was a lit Avon candle (Mrs. Battles was an Avon lady) inside of a ceramic representation of Holly Hobby.  (Holly Hobby looked a little rough - more like Janis Joplin).  I leaned over to sniff the patchouli scented wax and one of my braids caught fire.   I interrupted my Mom as she set the Triscuits and the cheese ball on the dining room table and asked her I smelled like Joan of Arc. 

My daughter is a Scorpio, also.  This doesn’t surprise me in the least because I believe in poetic justice, therefore I forsaw having a daughter exactly like me.   Granted, you’d have to be a believer in astrology to accept as truth the proposition that those born under the same sign possess similar personality traits, however, she does happen to be like me whether or not the stars have anything to do with it.   My mother thinks it’s amusing when I cojole my daughter at the dinner table as she drags her hair through her soup.  

But then there are  the Capricorns (goats).  I don’t know which I’d prefer - being born under the sign of the goat or (in the Chinese Zodiac) the cock:  “Hi! I’m a cock!  What’s your sign?”  My mother is a Capricorn.  If she’s representative of her sign, then Capricorns have no tolerance for throwing away broccoli stems and they can read the Exorcist cover-to-cover without losing a wink of sleep.  This is, obviously, entirely unfair to my mother, whose lovely attributes defy description in a silly blog such as this.

This said, I don’t believe in astrology.  I do, however, believe that one’s blood type should dictate the types of foods one should have in his or her diet.   O-Positive.  Steak, steak, and more steak.

The Dalai Lama has been in Seattle for the past five days promoting his new movie “Dalai Does Dallas speaking about peace and compassion to sold-out crowds.  He’s likely staying at the Embassy Suites at the Space Needle because there are kitchenettes in the rooms, allowing the Dalai to safely heat his Hot Pockets.  (He burned down a Motel 6 in Indianapolis when he set his hot-plate too close to an issue of Redbook Magazine.  He now routinely demands a kitchenette).  

There’s a lot that people don’t know about Mr. Lama; they think that he prays all the time and eats crickets while pondering his next life as a lotus blossom.   Actually, the Lama is more complicated and surprising.  For instance, he travels with the complete DVD anthology of Melanie Griffith’s career, from Working Girl to the voice-over for Stuart Little.  He’s also a bit of a booze hound - the Lama’s handlers demanded a case of Modori Melon liquor and two litres of Sprite be placed in his dressing room at the Key Arena so that he could “lubricate” a bit before going onstage. 

The Lama doesn’t pray all the time, either.  When he’s not speaking about compassion, he’s pitching his line of clothing, “Green Jeans”  on QVC.  Made of recycled PVC fibres, the garments don’t  require washing between wearings; you just leave the garments outside overnight to “air out.”  Sadly, he’s currently defending a class-action lawsuit brought by female wearers of the garments who developed the human papiloma virus (HPV) after several wearings.  Settlement discussions are ongoing.

The Pope is also in Seattle at the moment, but he’s staying at the Inn at the Market because he doesn’t travel with a hot-plate. The Lama is a bit jealous of the Pope “stealing his thunder,” so the Lama has developed juvenile names for His Holiness - The Poop, Caspar, and Brillo-Head are among them (I don’t understand the last one).  In an effort to show Seattleites who’s “boss,” the Lama sent out for a tether ball to be installed in the Embassy Suites and Lama has challenged Pope to the best out of five.  Fox 13 at Ten is covering the event. 

More surprising than any of the above is this: there is a Mrs. Lama.  She’s back in Tibet until - as he puts it - she “can learn how to behave herself.”  The last time Mrs. Lama - who bears a striking resemblance to Nancy Pelosi - travelled to Seattle with her husband, she wandered into an Ivar’s Seafood and Chowder House and asked for a job as a night-hostess so she wouldn’t have to return to Tibet as the forgotten spouse of that country’s biggest rock star.  They have entered couples therapy and are currently building a hot tub in their back yard next to the trampoline.

• One rock-hard, half-eaten Eggo waffle;
• Seven year-old daughter’s prescription eye glasses;
• Fourteen miscellaneous Polly Pocket accessories;
• My flute;
• Three empty water bottles;
• One unread copy of “Navy Seal Workout Program,” to be returned to Barnes & Noble because, while I am happy to do the running part of the program, the obstacle course will be be difficult because I am without a ten-foot wall in my backyard;
• Blockbuster copy of “Spongebob - The Movie” which I now own because I rented it two years ago;
• Three (unused) tampons;
• Seven Hot Tamales;
• Five barrettes;
• Copy Junie B Jones is not a Crook;
• My PLU sweatshirt

• Paper toilet seat covers.  You put one on the toilet seat, the middle part falls in the water, gets heavy, and pulls the whole thing into the water.  Then you think, “Well, I’ll tear the center out altogether.”  Doesn’t work.  The whole ring tears in half. So then you get another one.  It does the same thing!  Finally, you just take some toilet paper and line the seat with that.  It falls off too.  I’ve resolved to just take disinfectant cloths wherever I go.

• Three-quarter sleeves.  These types of sleeves serve only to accentuate the primate-quality of my arms.  Sleeves should be long or short.  One or the other.  And don’t even get me started on cropped pants WITH a three-quarter sleeve shirt.  Basically the wearer of the outfit looks like a child who has overgrown his britches.

• The five star spiciness rating system in Thai restaurants.  These are useless.  Every time my husband and I go to a Thai restaurant, we do the same expirament:  He orders three or four stars and I order one star.  The food always tastes identical.

• Tylenol.  I understand giving Tylenol to a kid (Ryes Syndrome) but for an adult, its about as effective as a piece of liccorice.

• Antennae on cell phones.  Does anyone use these things? Are they just there for show?  Cell phone coverage is coverage is coverage.  The four-inch plastic stick doesn’t help with dropped calls coverage gaps.

• Deoderant tampons. If you need a deoderant tampon, then you should see a doctor.

• Cliff Notes, law school study guides and other academic short-cuts.  When I was in law school, the hulabaloo during the first few months of school as a 1L was which study outline/guide  to buy.  Most, if not all, of us bought a bunch of these in the first year, and by the end of school virtually no one was using them.  Why?  Because there are no short-cuts.  Shortcuts are exactly that - doing something fast and sloppy.  Kind of like the way my husband skiis - really fast, but without proper form because he doesn’t Stem Christy (plant his pole properly).   While certainly dry reading, the law school texts contained every thing we needed to know.  All else was trifles.

• Waterproof Bandaids.  These are bandaids that are clear where the brown strip is supposed to be.  Utterly, completely, infuriatingly useless.  I am always cutting my fingers nearly to the bone whilst cooking because, despite my comments above, I tend to chop quickly and sloppily.  I’ve endured too many showers rinsing the suds out of my hair and recoiling in agony as my long wet hairs pull through the inside of a deep cut.  So I tried the waterproof bandaids. (I’d just as soon wear a soggy pair of underpants than a soggy band-aid).  The water-proof kind are merely a sales gimmick.  My shower drain inevitably becomes a sad graveyard for these clear-plastic soldiers. 

President’s Day is Monday, February 18th, and I don’t know about you but I am dying to pay my respects to our founding forefathers by studying their hair. It’s too bad I live on the West Coast and not in Philadelphia, where the presidential “hair album” is scheduled to be on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences from February 16th -18th.   The hair album belonged to Peter Arvell Browne and contains locks of hair from twelve presidents who lived during Browne’s  lifetime, 1762-1860.   Apparently, it was not uncommon to ask famous people for their hair in those days, and it was not uncommon for hair to be given.  The hair album contains locks of hair from Washington (brownish-gray), Jefferson (reddish-gray), and James Monroe (hair color unknown).

I really don’t want to see dead peoples’ hair; I don’t care who they were when alive.  I don’t want to see their fingernail clippings or their boogers either.  The curator of the National Academy thinks the display will be a success, because “It gives you a sense of who they [the Presidents] were as people.” 

I disagree. 

I have had an ongoing obsession with Abraham Lincoln for as long as I can remember. I’ve read most of the Lincoln biographies written, I have books of photographs of him, and I’ve read his writings.  I even travelled to the Ford Theater and saw the chair he was sitting in when he was shot.  The chair is still covered with his blood and sits in a glass case in the basement of the theater.  In a nearby case is Lincoln’s top hat, his watch, and, yes, a lock of his hair.   If Lincoln’s corpse was also preserved under glass in the theater basement, I doubt staring at it would give me any more sense of Lincoln, the man, than staring at a photograph. Reading Lincoln’s words gives me only a rough approximation of his spirit.  I’m not too interested in his blood type or other facts about the container embodied that spirit.

I once read a magazine article comprised of letters from women about their worst bosses.  One letter in particular stood out from the others:  a woman took a job as an administrative assistant for a man who, during her first week of work, requested that she ask all the female employees in the office for a sample of their pubic hair so he could place the samples under glass domes like the ones pocket watches hang from.  

While there may be an elegant segue from that anecdote back to locks of hair from dead presidents, I don’t know what it is.   But maybe there’s a connection between Browne and the world’s worst boss.  Maybe they were both searching desperately for an organic connection to something they, themselves lacked.  Or maybe they’re both weirdos.

Update:  After Mae’s comment about Mozart’s hair, I had to google it for myself.  Look what I found:

Che Guevera’s hair:

Napoleon’s hair:

Jefferson’s hair:

Mozart’s hair:

And (drumroll) I’ve saved the best for last, Alexander Hamilton’s hair!

Because we recently moved to this neighborhood, our kids have discovered the mecca that Halloween can be.   One hour of trick-or-treating filled our house with more candy than we can ever eat, especially when combined with the stuff we didn’t give away.   I don’t really care for candy, preferring the caloric equivalent in butter and bacon, so all the sweet stuff is kind of annoying me.   It’s in the way.

Last night my seven year old and her friend decided to sell candy door-to-door.  Using one of my largest mixing bowls, they set out through the neighborhood with such entrepreneurial spirit I didn’t have the heart to suggest that their timing was off a tad.   So I bought the only candy bar I really like - a Butterfinger.  See, it’s salty enough to satisfy my butter/bacon/salt preference without being too sweet. 

What are you doing with your leftover candy?  Can anyone help me with this vexing issue?

By the way, the man in the picture is no one I know.  This is something my Dad sent me.  No, it’s not him either. 

Life is really too short for boring passwords, especially passwords containing a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.  If you’ve ever forgotten your password on JCrew.com, for example, it will be reset and e-mailed to you, looking something like this:

            RXZ7219*N4

Today I had my annual physical and was told by my clinic that its online service is now available which allows patients to make appointments online and ask questions of their physicians.  To join the service, all I needed to do was ask the receptionist for a password.  Although my mouth and what comes out of it is my bread and butter, I really don’t like talking to strangers more than is minimally necessary, so I thought making appointments online sounded fabulous.  I approached the rather dour woman at the front desk who smelled like a baked potato and wore flip flops and asked her for a password. 

“Here you go,” she said without looking up from her Readers Digest article entitled, “What Your Handwriting Reveals About Your Love Life” and handed me a slip of paper upon which was written this password:

AHDBL _ _ */ GJU78

“What if I want to change it?” I asked.  “What?” the receptionist asked, breathing through her mouth at the same time.   “I don’t like this password.  I want to change it once I’ve logged on.  Will the system let me do that?”

The woman looked at me as if I’d asked her to pull a banana out of her nose.  “I don’t know.  What do you want to change it to?”  She asked. 

“Well if I told you then it wouldn’t be a password anymore, would it?”

“O.K. well I can’t help you with  tha-”

“Vulva.”  I interrupted.   ”I want to change my password to vulva.” 

“I don’t know if you can have a password without numbers of symbols.”  She informed me.

“Oh.  How about  ’Super Vulva 2007?’ “

“Maybe you can call our system administrator.  I think I have the number right here”  and she dug around in the pencil drawer of her desk, pushing aside soy sauce packets, a packet of Trident gum, and lip gloss, and handed me a scrap of paper.

I haven’t attempted to log in on the clinic website yet, but I won’t keep a password I can’t remember.  And I understand the point of alpha/numeric/symbols, which is presumably to prevent hacking.  But I doubt a hacker will come up with “Super Vulva 2007″ on his own. 

In these technological times, we have so many passwords, phone numbers, and PINs to remember, that we need to make it as easy on ourselves as possible.  I have one password for everything, and it is a nonsensical word that my sister made up when we were little; there’s no risk of it being discovered. 

If  I had my way, my doctor’s office would have handed out little slips of paper with passwords like the following:

• His Royal Imperial Squiggledy Gidget
• Poopoopeepeewawaweewee
• Ted Koppel Is A Heinous Cretin
• Badonkadonk Butt
• Frugality Equals Banality
• Shriners Never Get Flu Shots
• When Will Barbara Walters Ever Retire?
• Pork Loin Doesn’t Belong In Your Ear Canal

 If you ascribe to my philosophy, you’ll adopt a password like one of these for your own.  Be aware that if you’re in a jam, you might have to give your password to your IT person.  So don’t reveal any secrets about yourself (FourEyesNoChin).