Hey,

If there’s anybody out there, reading this, I just want to thank you, thank you for reading ! Well, today it’s halloween, so of course, everybody is suddenly interested in clothes!!!

We’re going to have a sleepover today, after trick-or-treating and stuff like that, but I’ll be going at 10:30! So it’s obviously not trick-or-treating time! So, we’re going to the second most scariest place in London, Camden Town. Don’t get me wrong, Camden’s great,  but it’s scary if you don’t know where to look! So, I’m going as an 80’s rocker, modeling off of Joan Jett, and Penguiz is going as a Newspaper! We’re going to Camden to buy stuff!!!!!! So, I might buy a bunch of sunglasses and accesories or just a bunch of random weird stuff. I might ( will) buy shutter sunglasses, you know like the kanye west ones..  Anyways, it’s going to be a great trip! Penguiz going to bring a notebook and pencil and I’m bringing the camera, and we’re going to tell YOU what is in style this season!

So, this is just the heads up post, I’ll be uploading pictures and stuff later, so be ready!!!

Peace out girl scout,

Emily

Have you tried out a pair of obviously ? How comfortable are they?

I’ve decided Im just going to put whatever I want on this blog… that is my name at the top so I’m in control. It’s a nice feeling =)

So whatever I’m thinking about will be here… a look into my mind… without looking in my ear…

Here’s what’s on the menu today.

1. I dont have time for a blog…

I made the first entry and then decided that I didnt have time to keep up with a blog… but here i am…. not sure what that’s about yet>>

2. thought in early morning theatre
If we gave each person the attention of a celebrity, would anyone be happy?
If everyone’s a celebrity doesn’t that mean that no one is.
So many people in here are really good at stating the obvious,
or what has already been said….see I just did it as well…

3.Shoes are evil and here’s why

1.the laces try to trip you
2.they make your feet white by keeping them hidden from the sun…
and white feet are scary
3.they take too long to take off
4.they cover up your socks
5.they make feet stink
6.they help to spread germs such as athletes foot (feet?)

to be continued

and thats why Im a flip flop kinda guy…
but there is probably a list for those as well =(

4. I learned to cross stitch today =)

5. So far I’ve only told one person about this blog?

When bacon cooks, it smells like salty greasey heaven, and while some so called “vegetarians” and “vegans” do not appreciate this, they are just denying their inner bacon-lover.  It is the call of the wild.  And though one mustn’t surrender against their will to the call of the bacon, it does make sense if you do.  Giving up your dreams of saving the planet and the children of every country by feeding them beans and rice.

Because really, come on.  Bacon does smell very, very enticing.  Until it is burnt to crispy ash and your dreams are shattered.  Maybe now, you can go back to saving the world.  I’m going to the diner.

New entrants to an industry bring new capacity, the desire to gain market share, and often substantial resources. Companies diversifying through acquisition into the industry from other markets often leverage their resources to cause a shake-up.

The seriousness of the threat of entry depends on the barriers present and on the reaction from existing competitors that the entrant can expect. If barriers to entry are high and a newcomer can expect sharp retaliation from the entrenched competitors, he or she obviously will not pose a serious threat of entering.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Here I am again; crap.

I didn’t do anything I’d planned on doing. Instead I went down to find dad in the garage, and we “jammed” while Michelle and Tara were swimming. He’s so difficult to collaborate with sometimes, without John keeping him on track. “Can we take it from the beginning?” and he keeps playing. “Can we play a song I know?” and he keeps playing.

Whatever, though. I came back upstairs after the second attempt at “Pretty Woman” and jealously played Guitar Hero Aerosmith for a while.

And here I am now, fingers skittering anxiously across the black keys, hoping for some kind of relief or peace from the thoughts and energy and nerves that keep nagging me.

Tomorrow, I’m not going to care. I guess Mitt can make all the excuses she likes about me. I need some singing, some real singing. It’s not that “Helter Skelter” and “Heartbreaker” aren’t real, but opera is so much healthier. And, oddly enough, feels more powerful at times than the blasting-belting-breaktheglass I tend to do.

So, I guess I’m done here. I’m just restless, I guess. Itchy for something to happen. I want to be busy again. Practicing on my own and writing on my own and doing projects on my own are altogether separate from doing things because of a deadline. Because I need to. Quite obviously I still need to get them done, I just don’t have a present and looming driving force right now. (My willpower hardly counts as present, or looming.)

I suppose I’ll trundle off to bed here shortly.
It’s goodnight for now.

Unless I sleepwalk myself up here in the middle of the night. And you never know about those things, either. My subconcious makes me text and talk in my sleep, maybe sleep-blogging will be next.

See you tomorrow.
…Maybe.

is NEEDLESS TO SAY.  Tonight at dinner we were having one of our normal random conversations when someone, not going to name names, said “needless to say” yada yada yada.  I sat there for a second and realized, if your statement was “needless to say” then why did you say it?  Why did you take that five seconds from my life that I will never ever be able to get back and use it for something that didn’t need to be said?  Why didn’t you tell me how to make stamps out of potatoes or how to turn a man into a sex pawn…something a girl can USE.

On the same level is the precursor of “obviously” which of course came to necessitate the phrase “Thank you Captain Obvious!” If we are having a conversation and someone says something like “He broke his leg in three places, he obviously won’t be able to run the 5K next weekend.”  According to you my reaction should be, “Really? I’m shocked, I thought he would just prop his cast on a skateboard and make a go at it. Man I was so stupid to not realize something so obvious, this is such a “duh” moment for me! Thank you for enlightening me!”  Say it with me everyone…Thank you Captain Obvious!  Obviously that was sarcasm! 

8:14 AM
8/19/09

My heart’s, my heart’s like a kick drum. Ba bum-bum-bum-bum-bump. I’m exhausted, sore. As the strange army guy we worked with on Monday would say, emotionally starving. Or was it spiritually? Whatever.

I hate it when people think they know you upon meeting you. This man comes up to Brendan, Skylar, James and I at Assembly of God and introduces himself, tells us he was/is a drill sergeant at some military training base. He’s going back to Iraq next month. Now, that’s all well and good and interesting until he asks us what we’re doing after high school. So we tell him, and then he begins rambling about the army and how after an hour talking to his students/trainees/maggots/whatever he can see right through them.

Yes, great. So what do you see in me, Mr. Omniscient? Who exactly do you think you are, you cocky bastard?

Brendan asks him the same thing, albeit much more politely.

“So what do you know about me?”

He doesn’t break stride in informing Brendan that he believes Brendan to be an upstanding guy and dedicated to his community.

Well, obviously, moron. He’s only tired-looking, dirty, and at the volunteer base, sun-tanned and sweaty. However, one might take him for a demonic acid addict with a penchant for axe murdering.

Let’s just say I wasn’t so impressed with Military’s people-reading skills. He started speaking to us– four kids– about God and the military next. About how war is necessary, and if God has a strong-arm, the United States is it.

I can understand and respect the guy’s loyalty, but God is the only one who can judge who deserves to die and who doesn’t. And as Brendan very delicately pointed out, it seems like believing that is like serving two gods.

The Commander in Chief isn’t holy, sorry, buddy.

…….

Now I’m on to another thought process. Just kind of floating along, here. I had to go make the coffee and put my mom’s lunch in the fridge in the back room and now I’m wondering when Brendan will get here, so I’m a little distracted.

I’m so sore. I don’t want to have to walk from the bank to the relocated base at the Moose. I’m all bruised up and scratched. It’s a satisfied battered, but I feel like the hammer I smashed repeatedly into my hand yesterday hit everywhere else, too. And now Brendan’s here. Time to start another day.

The sky is a heavy, soft blanket, speckled with stars and a glowing violet moon. After such a gorgeous day, it’s an entirely perfect finish.

I completed the staining of the barn today. I didn’t know it was possible to not repeat Avett Brothers songs after five hours, but mixed in with Corinne Bailey Rae, Heart, and Anna Netrebko, I had a steadily churning playlist from three thirty until eight.

I’m a little sore from all of the painting but satisfied. I think my grandpa would have been pleased to see the barn looking new and solid again, as opposed to the faded, sad state it had been in before.

I had never known my grandfather collected railroad lanterns. The day I clambered up to the storage space up top, I counted eighteen, and a little midget lamp.

There were tens of softballs up there, too: he’d been an umpire. I’d known that of course, but until I was working in the barn I hadn’t been aware of the items in it. He was a mechanic; there were hundreds of items that I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with scattered in that old barn, collected dust and debris and age. He’d known what all of them were for, though.

All I ever hear about my grandfather was that he was a good man. He was solid, he was loving, he lived a good life until the brain tumor got him. I wish I’d known him! I had years with him, but I was a little girl and had seen him with the adoring eyes of a granddaughter. I will never know for myself how great a man he was. Since I was three his mind had been riddled with cancer.

With the thoughts of lobotomy fresh in my mind, I can’t help but wonder: did the tampering the surgeons do with my grandpa’s brain affect him? I mean, obviously brain surgery would affect anyone, but did it mess with his brain function?

My grandma told me yesterday that he was belligerent toward her near the end. He’d acted… not like himself.

Grandma and I agreed that any addling of the brain tissue was bound to make someone a great deal out of it, and that we would rather just die than have anyone poke around inside our skulls.

Inwardly I was thinking, I’m sure he would have rather just died, too. And his angry behavior toward her when he was completely out of his mind might have been the reaction of a man with self-control stolen away from him by disease. He may have acted so “belligerently,” as she put it, because she’d treated him like a child throughout their marriage– at least while I was alive, and old enough to know the difference. He may have acted so out of turn because she may have been cheating on him while he was so, so sick with the dumb racist ass she’s with now.

I’ll be happy if they sell the barn I just painted and move away to Florida. If someone else moves in next door, the house I will always remember as Grandma’s, good on them.

But if the woods that I know as Grandpa’s is sold, before my dad can purchase it, I’ll have different feelings on it.

My strange, selfish grandmother can have her sexy man with white fluffy chest hair (kinky?) and move away. She doesn’t even know or care what I’m majoring in or whether or not I want to go away for college (she thought I was a homebody). She doesn’t know or care what Michelle likes to be called, or what instrument she plays. The other day, when I mentioned to her that Emma (Steever) is extremely talented, she was quick to jump in with, “Well you are too, chicky, you play the flute very well.” Because obviously I was comparing myself to Emma? (Um, no… there is no comparision to a piano master who lives and breathes music every second. The fact that she’s fricken phenomenal is just that: purely fact.)

And, hello, since when do I play the flute?!

I just have to smile and laugh and savor the time she does have with me. I’ve never been deprived of love–ever–in my life. So it’s a weird, twisting and stinging kind of feeling when a grandmother who once babysat me and loved my grandfather (or I’d thought she did) is so absorbed in her own adventures that she doesn’t even bother to know her only grandkids who live in the same state.

But the moon is lovely, tonight, anyway, so I’ll focus on that and not the cranky disposition this muggy heat has brought out in me. I don’t like the humidity in this house right now. Too oppressive, and depressing.

Posture can make all the difference in the world between an “okay” person & an attractive person. See?

Granted, Kirsten is all wet & most of her makeup has washed away in the first picture, but regardless, she’d look a lot better if she’d just stand up straight. Notice how she’s slightly hunched over & her shoulders are slouched–not so cute, huh? Now, in the second picture, she looks a thousand times better. Again, I realize it has a lot to do with good makeup & good photoshop technique, but still. Here, she’s sitting up straight, shoulders back, & looks much, much better. 

It’s tough to improve your posture; it’s just like breaking any other bad habit. You’ll have to think about it constantly before it becomes an everyday thing. Always try & keep your shoulders back, & practice straightening your spine. Yoga helps a lot with this. 

Practice makes perfect. Keep at it.

What do all these girls have in common?

Absolutely, positively GORGEOUS smiles. && It makes them all 10x hotter. So, what does that mean for you?

For starters, if you have/had braces, good for you–that’s the first step to beautiful teeth. If not, I strongly suggest you get them. Sure, they look retarded for the two years or so that you wear them, but at least afterwards you won’t look like you live in a fucking trailer park.

If you have a retainer, & I can’t stress this enough, WEAR IT EVERY FUCKING NIGHT. That should be pretty obvious; that’s what the ortho told you to do. But how many of us are too lazy to put it in at night, or we forget about it, or we just don’t want to because it’s uncomfortable? Fuck that. Wear it. It makes a huge difference. It really does. 

Brush your teeth. Again, that’s pretty obvious, right? Sure, but most of us only do the bare minimum. Brush your fucking teeth whenever you get the chance. && Use whitening toothpaste. Not only will you notice a brighter, whiter smile, your mouth will always taste minty fresh. : ) Another great thing about brushing your teeth a lot is that after your mouth feels so clean, there’s a good chance you won’t wanna eat for a while & dirty it up. That’s some good thinspo right there.

So, let’s go over this again–braces, retainer, toothbrush & toothpaste. Okay, cool. But we’re not finished yet. You’ve got to practice, practice, practice. Sure, that sounds kinda dumb, but really, how else do you get good at something? && A good smile makes a big difference.

The new Dos Equis Ads are actually Charles Bukowski. Weird.

Image 1:

The most interesting man in the world?

Or simply a drunk postal worker/poet?

See…

*

8 Count

from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I’d
let you
know,
fucker.

*

S

Obviously Benefits

 The Obviously for Men underwear range provides a number of significant benefits over regular underwear and addresses the Big 5 men’s underwear issues:

•Sticking – no more sticking to the inside of your leg

•Squashing – gone are the days of that ‘jammed down the front of your pants’ feeling

•Readjusting – never have to make an embarrassing adjustment in public again

•Sweating – our water absorbent material fibres will keep you cool and dry

 •Chafing – no more rubbing yourself raw every time you go for a run or cycle

The Obviously brand was created by two brothers Robert and Daniel Miljkovic and is based in Brisbane, Australia. Unable to find comfortable underwear the brothers decided to create a range of men’s underwear that would bring comfort to men who had suffered at the hands of their underwear long enough!

This desire to improve upon what was currently available in the underwear market led Obviously down the path of examining every annoying thing about men’s underwear and working through a solution that would improve the underwear experience for everyone. The result is our anatomically designed, Obviously for Men underwear range.

Valve recently announced Left 4 Dead 2, a game they had apparently been working on since immediately after finishing the first Left 4 Dead.

Great news, right? Who wouldn’t want more zombie shooting coop fun?

Well, apparently plenty of people. Considering the sheer amount of members joining the Left 4 Dead 2 boycot group, whining about the promised free support they now have to pay full price for.

Really guys…Valve doesn’t have to give out anything for free. By all means don’t buy the sequel if you dissapprove of this move, but stop demanding free updates. The more of you guys rage quitting on the franchise now, the less of it happening on my team while playing the awesome looking sequel.

The m-O-ssiah, Chairman Mao-bama, can’t blame Bush anymore.  Bush may have pushed for the initial stimulus bull, er…, bill.  But Uh-bama himself supported it as a senator.  The subsequent $787 billion dollar pork bill, $400 billion omnibus bill, and the other hosts of spending supported by the m-O-ssiah and accomplished by the democrat congress can’t be blamed on Bush.  Sorry.  He was already a fading memory in the history of the presidency when Obama signed these bills into law.  He alone is responsible for quadrupling the entire national debt that has ever existed from the founding of this country.  He alone now is responsible for the continuing downturn in economic growth.  He alone…  Leadership is a lonely occupation.  Sometimes it sucks when you’re the Main Mo Fo In Charge.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/12/even-a-messiah-loses-his-training-wheels/print/

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

PRUDEN: Even a messiah loses his training wheels

Wesley Pruden (Contact)

ANALYSIS/OPINION

Disconnecting the training wheels is a scary prospect for every apprentice biker, even with Daddy standing close by. We can sympathize with Barack Obama’s fright as his moment approaches. It’s not easy suddenly being on your own, paying the price of falling with your own skinned knees and bruised elbows.

Nevertheless, the dreadful moment approacheth. Anticipating D-Day, Peter Orszag, the president’s budget director, said Monday that the scarier than expected economic news – the deficit out of control, tax receipts down and costs of bailouts and “stimulus” plans up – is all the fault of George W. Bush: “It’s an economic crisis President Obama inherited.”

But Mr. Obama has already been president for more than a hundred days, and passing the hundred-day mark, irrelevant milestone as it may be, was cited as dead-solid proof that the president is the messiah he told everyone he was. Reality, however, has begun to cast a shadow over the White House, still as faint as the bright golden haze on the meadow but visible enough. “Blaming George” still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama’s government now.

The White House on Monday said the new estimate of the budget deficit would nearly reach $2 trillion – that’s trillion, with a “t” – and that’s nearly 13 percent of the entire gross domestic product. Pretty gross any way you spin it, and the president’s men (and women) are spinning it as best they can. Alas, the country’s predicament, if not yet the president’s, is probably worse than it looks.

The projected budget deficit is four times larger than the deficit record set last year. We can blame that one on George, but George, big spender that he was, turns out to have been a tightwad. Maybe this is the “change” Mr. Obama promised. Yes, he did.

The administration insisted Monday that by the end of this year the gross domestic product will be growing at a rate of 3.5 percent, which would be good news so good that it’s likely to be too good to be true, and it’s certainly more optimistic than any private economic forecast anyone has seen beyond the White House fence.

The White House flogged this news in a statement studded with more weasel words than usual: “Although the economic downturn so far in 2009 has been more severe than the administration expected when the forecast was finalized, if the financial system begins to function more normally, there is every reason to expect a somewhat stronger recovery, given the depth of the current recession.” Translation: “Don’t blame us, nothing is ever the fault of the messiah, maybe everything will get a little better if it actually does get better. We hope. But don’t count on it.”

What shines through the spinning, bright and bold, is that Mr. Obama no longer believes in the pie in the sky he promised. He has obviously learned a few things in his first hundred days. “Wow! So that’s where babies come from.” But he still can’t give up his teleprompter, his training wheels and good ol’ George. Good ol’ George is the president’s teddy bear. He can’t go to sleep without Teddy. George is his imaginary person, too, on whom he can blame everything. He feels very close to imaginary George.

George the imaginary person threatens everything Mr. Obama has in store for us – higher taxes (whether disguised as “user fees” or “investments”), Al Gore’s vast scheme to combat global warming whether the globe is warming or not, and a health-care plan guaranteed to eventually assure every American access to medical care equal to the quality health care now available in France, Canada, Britain and maybe even Lower Volta.

The good news, such as it is, is that the remaking of America in a way that a Chicago street “activist” of a generation ago hardly dared dream of may be of such potent poison that the body politic will reject it, as a healthy human body might reject a massive dose of arsenic (perhaps administered by someone in old lace). Several of the president’s Democratic allies in Congress are already balking at his scheme to extract killer taxes, such as curbing deductions for mortgage interest, gifts to churches and charities, and state and local taxes.

Soaking the rich, so-called, is OK, but marinating the rich may not be helpful. More than skinned knees and bruised elbows are in prospect as Barack Obama finally discovers that ready or not, he’s the president now.

• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

My grade five teacher was a morbidly obese woman named Miss Best. At story time, she failed to disguise the reality that she needed two chairs to be comfortable and was the type of teacher who kept a thigh-size jar of chocolate on her desk. When a student answered a question correctly, she rewarded herself by eating candy in front of us. Recess was generally spent plotting her death, but the goal was never achieved as, we reasoned, we would never be able to commission a crane strong enough to hang her over the lake full of alligators.

When my life was in the hands of a four-hundred-pound, twenty-six-year-old M&M addict, I followed the crowd and agreed with my classmates that the world sucked.
“What have we done to deserve this?” We would ask while drawing sketches of extra thick guillotines.
“The whole school must hate us,” we decided while researching chocolate-based poison recipes.
“She is the most horrible person who ever lived,” was the motto, until we discovered fold-away chairs and realized that they could provide us with at least a giggle.

One day, Miss Best caught a boy hiding a naked picture of Pamela Anderson in his pencil case and confiscated it.
“You’re just jealous!” He yelled at her, in a rage. “Because she is hot and the only thing best about you is your name.”
Hindsight makes me wonder how much chocolate was consumed that night and if Cadbury shareholders were suddenly able to buy summer houses come morning. But at the time, in my pre-adolescent innocence, I realized that what was said to Miss Best was the worst thing possible. I remember her facing the blackboard, fighting tears and staring at the near-empty candy jar in agony.

Suddenly I was overcome with sadness. We had spent months fantasizing the woman’s demise behind her back, but now someone had vocalized what we all thought to her face and it made us look stupid. The superficial words proved how wrong we all were. Unfortunately, Miss Best was going to hit the Freddo Frogs regardless of incorrectness.

If I had an M&M for every time I judged a person based on their appearance and then placed them into a stereotype, I would have about eight super-sized bags of coloured chocolate at my disposal right now and my chair would need to be made of a much more durable metal.
There is the little blonde whore who can’t possibly be intelligent, the intelligent geek who can’t possibly be sexy or the plus-sized woman who must not have feelings, just to name three. But there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions, of stereotypes that are disproved daily by the billions of people on the planet. Out of sheer laziness, we forget about the three-dimensional because, maybe, the reality of that is too heavy.
So we call someone a whore, boring or fat, because it is easier than plotting what their real personality must be like.

I was recently talking to a boy friend who asked, “You really like sex, don’t you?”
It was nine o’clock in the morning, I had not even brushed my teeth, and I was eating chocolate for breakfast. Shockingly, my mind just wasn’t There.
“I do. Yes. Just like everyone does.” I felt comfortable making a generalization in such a context. “The only difference between me and a lot of other people who enjoy sex is that I am vocal about my support for it.”
“True,” he conceded. “But there are still a lot of girls who are ho’s out there.”
I thought for a moment. I will never deny that there are a lot of people Out There who lie, cheat, steal and deceive. But sex in itself cannot be an amoral act. Only the aspects surrounding it. I explained this to boy friend.
“Notice how you only said ‘She’,” I highlighted. “You’re just following the crowd. Why don’t you start actually thinking about the situation and people as complex individuals? Otherwise, it just makes you look stupid.”

All of the chocolate in the world will never be as rewarding as it is to realize that someone is more than their appearance implies.
I sat on the beach and watched a morbidly obese girl self-consciously arrange an umbrella to cover her butt.
“That is brave,” my boy friend observed. “I wouldn’t go to the beach if I looked like that.”
“Why? You have no problem stepping inside a library.”
He took a moment to understand. And then the penny dropped.

In college classes versus in Cosmopolitan magazine…

Biology– Butterflies eat tears and taste with their feet.

Cosmopolitan– 1/5 of men have tasted their own semen.

Perception– When you drink Diet Coke, your body expects to ingest sugar because of the sweet taste your brain perceives. Consequently, when you don’t ingest sugar, you end up significantly hungrier because your brain registers that your body is lacking something.

Cosmopolitan–Full-fat gelato is “in” whereas fancy frozen yogurt is “out”, so I don’t have to worry about tricking my body into thinking it is eating something sugary without being out of style!

Developmental– Humans are naturally attracted to smells present in their mothers’ amniotic fluids.

Cosmopolitan– Apparently, the combined smell of pumpkin pie and lavender increases the blood flow to the penis by 40%.

Cosmopolitan facts also useful for Jim Gallagher:

From Cosmo’s “Guide to Meeting More Guys!”… The lunch line at Chipotle is teeming with men midday, go to one located in a busy area where a lot of men work!

for the really bored… so I restarted my pokémon game.. it was bored… no one would battle me T_T I was too strong… T_T terrible reason but the battle zone sucked. You battle, battle, battle…. and your pokémon don’t get any stronger.. what’s the point?

anyway I found this “funny joke on annoying people” thing and I’m gonna list the ones are my favorites
9. Start each meal by conspicuously licking all your food, and announce that this is so no one will “swipe your grub”

10. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 98 copies.

16. Reply to everything someone says with “that’s what YOU think.”

17. Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your “astronaut training.”

18. Declare your apartment an independent nation, and sue your neighbors upstairs for “violating your airspace”.

19. Forget the punchline to a long joke, but assure the listener it was a “real hoot.”

20. Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with Lysol.

24. Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play along to avoid the appearance of ignorance.

5. Erect an elaborate network of ropes in your backyard, and tell the neighbors you are a “spider person.”

26. Finish all your sentences with the words “in accordance with the prophesy.”

32. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.

41. Set alarms for random times.

50. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints by the cash register.

55. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.

59. Write “X – BURIED TREASURE” in random spots on all of someone’s roadmaps.

63. Wander around a restaurant, asking other diners for their parsley.

67. When Christmas caroling, sing “Jingle Bells, Batman smells” until physically restrained.

74. Inform others that they exist only in your imagination. (I’ve actually done this… I drove a kid mad…’twas awesome)

75. Ask people what gender they are. (I’ve done this one too, people get really pissed)

81. Lie obviously about trivial things such as the time of day.

91. Ask the waitress for an extra seat for your “imaginary friend.”

95. Select the same song on the jukebox fifty times.

97. Never break eye contact.

98. Construct elaborate “crop circles” in your front lawn.

A few years ago I arrived at my boyfriends house in Byron Bay.
“Hey, Ken, ya chicks here!” His roommate called out. I didn’t understand why he didn’t use my actual name, but assumed it must have been because I wasn’t wearing my collar that day.
Later, we were cooking dinner.
“Oi, Ken’s Chick, can ya chuck us a tea towel?”
“No problem, Ken’s Wanker Roommate!”
I chucked Him that tea towel so hard…

I think because my first word was “Dad”, RG took it upon himself to teach me the art of the English language. While other kids were being read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to go to sleep, I was filing through a dictionary and being read the history of the word The.
“Language is an art,” I was told. “It should be respected.”
There were no “ya’s”, “Yous” or “Cause I said so” in our house. Instead, it was “you”, “everybody” or “Because I am your Father”.
The result was that I had my first conversation with RG at eighteen-months-old. A skill he has long since regretted instilling.

When text-messages emerged, my proper use of the English language was rocked. All of a sudden, even Predictive Text was telling me that “LOL” was a legitimate word.
“I didn’t realize that you could spell fake laughter?” I questioned.
It only took a matter of months for people to evolve from Laughing Out Loud and start Rolling On the Floor Laughing. I tried to stop myself from being digitally funny so that I didn’t HTHS [Have To Hit Someone].
“I can’t stand it when someone puts ‘LOL’ at the end of a sentence,” I have said numerous times. “You may as well say ‘Cue Laughter’ at the end of your lame joke.”
Imagine if someone said something, laughed at their genius and then said, “I found that funny. Did you? Did you?”
We would slowly but immediately back away in the vain hope of not catching whatever socially awkward disease said person had.

Well…This actually happens. Text messages, Facebook, MySpace and the new little phenomenon called Twitter have made us oblivious to social awkwardness and linguistic laziness. Now someone is constantly Rolling On the Floor Laughing [alone] next to his MacBook, while other people are articulating appropriately in public.

“This is My Missus,” a boy friend once introduced his new girlfriend to me.
“Are you married?” I asked. I hadn’t dug out my laminated Singles Table Place Card, so unless I was really drunk, I couldn’t recall a shot-gun wedding.
“Nah,” (Read: No), “She’s just My Girl.”
“Oh. Ok. Does she have a name? Or just an array of insulting titles?”

When a nineteen-year-old boy refers to his Girlfriend as his Missus, Girl, Woman, Chick or Partner I start to ROFL.
“Do you realize how stupid you sound?” I have asked. Because someone has to. “You are not even Partners in Crime.”
“Why does it bother you so much?” One of my boy partners asked me. “Aren’t there bigger problems in the world?”
“Of course,” I replied. “But do we really need to bring the starving kids in Africa into this?”

We were all given names for a reason. And unless you are going through life with the names Apple and Moses Martin, there is no need to feel ashamed about using them. Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” The answer is Nothing. It is a blank canvas that needs to be painted with personality and character. “My Partner”, however, is like a Picasso: utterly confusing, gender ambiguous and usually owned by the wrong people.

Giving a boyfriend or a girlfriend a stupid title of fake maturity is the verbal equivalent of nails down a chalkboard for me. I have a name and I like boys to introduce me with it and, if articulately appropriate, scream it.
Language is an amazing tool that is quite often taken for granted out of sheer laziness or rudeness. If people bothered to think about what they were saying, they might even get a better reaction.
“You’re [The Johnny’s] ex-girlfriend, aren’t you?” eight people at a party recently asked me.
I metaphorically rolled on the floor laughing.
“No,” I said to everyone. “I am Sall.”

ACCOMPLISHMENT UPDATE: Being told twice that something I was doing/talking about/wearing was a recent “stuff white people like” entry.