Come to TOLD tomorrow!

These are the remains of Tintagel Castle, a fortress built in the 12th Century. The site itself, however, is believed to have been a Roman stronghold since the 5th Century. It's most famous for being the supposed birthplace of the legendary King Arthur.

Tomorrow at Seth Lind's awesome story-telling show TOLD: Magic edition, I will tell the story of the vision-quest that led me to this castle when I was 17. I kinda thought we were all supposed to have vision-quests before moving away from our hometowns, but some of my peers were smart and stable enough to dispense with the formalities of confronting maturity and they just bravely went ahead and tucked in to adulthood like it was no big deal.

I have not dispensed with any formalities associated with maturity. I pretty much need a vision-quest for everything.

Tintagel Castle was said to be impenetrable to any army. The fortress is built on a craggy cliffside, and any soldiers who dared attack it risked falling to a bloody death on the rocks below. It was also said to be a place of powerful dark magic, and the notoriously spooky Merlin's Cave gapes ominously below the castle walls. These were considerations FOOLISHLY IGNORED when I broke into it at around 3am on that fateful night in the summer of 2002 and achieved the pinnacle moment of the vision-quest, in all its terrifying, wonderful splendour.

COME HEAR THE FULL STORY TOMORROW - MONDAY, DECEMBER 20TH - ALONG WITH MAGICAL STORIES FROM VETERAN STORYTELLERS!!! There will also be magic tricks! Oh la la. 7pm at Under St. Marks Theatre at 94 St. Marks Place in the East Village. Facebook invite is here! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=176369429054554&index=1

I will also be revealing one of the surefire sentences to get into my pants during this show. May or may not have to do with navigating Sherwood Forest.

Retrofuturism Redux

Albert Robida is a retrofuturist's wet dream. Stay tuned for more about him.

Some Dead Darlings

Bust magazine is planning to publish an article I wrote in their December/January issue, and I am so excited. Bust is one of my favourite magazines ever, so come on, pleeeease pick it up when it comes out. I'll be watching all of you that month just as Santa will be.

Since we heard so much about men cheating on their wives this year, the article is a list of the top ten adulteresses of all time. It's getting edits right now; Bust wanted only super-strong, positive women in there, of which I had eight. The two cuts were a pair of sad sacks and a crazy astronaut, and I'm sharing those entries with you below because the main reason I am proud of the article is the space puns. I really went the extra parsec on those.

The edits I got were really good, and this article will now have two new fantastic and fascinating women in addition to the eight that were already hanging out in it. But please say a prayer for my now killed darlings, who were not tough enough to hang around the in-crowd:

Anna Karenina/Madame Bovary: Anna and Emma are conflated here because it’s the same basic story: if you’re married to a nice guy but you have a taste for bad boys, you’re probably going to end up under a train or filled with arsenic. Or at least you will if you’re created by a 19^th century moralizing male novelist. Most of the women on this list own their infidelities, but these two let their infidelities own them. I hate to say it, but if you’re going to model yourself after a fictional adulteress, you would do better to be a ditzy, amoral farthead like Daisy Buchanan than either of these two sad sacks. At least then you’re not the one dead by your own hand at the end – your lover is. Much happier ending, right? F. Scott Fitzgerald = Pollyanna.

Lisa Nowak: Astronauts have to endure an insanely rigorous training program in order to become indestructible physically and mentally. Yet NASA somehow neglected to prepare their astronauts for the toughest challenge of all: a broken heart. In 2007, Captain Nowak, an astronaut and flight engineer married to fellow NASA employee Richard Nowak, embarked on a solo mission with the objective of attacking and kidnapping Captain Colleen Shipman, the new girlfriend of her ex-lover Commander William Oefelein. She just wasn’t sensing that same buzz (Aldrin) with Oefelein so she really had no choice but to get (Neil) armstrong with his new girl. Oh yeah, she was also wearing diapers and was armed with a BB gun, pepper spray, rubber tubing, a 2-pound drilling hammer and a 8-inch folding knife, so it’s clear that she was seriously moonstruck. The silver astro-lining? It’s a fair bet that men actually are from Mars, given how desperately Nowak has always wanted to go there.

Rocket Summer Rules

Summer Rules is an awesome tumblr run by my equally awesome friend Lee. This is my all time favourite pic yet, made my belly all warm and such.

Also, it's EXTREMELY unlikely you haven't seen this, but here's an amazing music video called "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" by Rachel Bloom that was pumped by Neil Gaiman, Wired, and countless others. I am briefly in it wearing a hell of a sweatervest.

Jason Shebiro is a Doosher

Jason: oh man

gross of me

dont tell anyone im a doosher

I'M NOT A TRUSTWORTHY GCHATTER, JASON!!!

Hey. It's Me.

I recently learned through Nicole that I'm not the only one who often hears Admiral Ackbar's "It's a trap" line echo in my head (my head's generally pretty cavernous and empty, thus the echoing) about a whole ton of stuff in my life. I guess that means I'm really, really not the only who hears "I have a bad feeling about this" all the time.

Yet, I'm never reminded of upbeat Star Wars lines when good stuff happens to me; it's generally cautionary. I'm gonna make this pledge to you, world - I'll try to change that. More C3PO lines like "I never knew I had it in me," more Lando lines like "Here goes nothing," more Leia lines like "Count me in," and a fuckton more cocky Han Solo lines for sure, starting with "It's your imagination, kid. Come on. Let's keep a little optimism here."

You may notice that all those positive lines come from Return of the Jedi. That's cuz, well, don't know if you noticed, but the other two be deeeeprreeeeesssinggggg.

PS. FUTURAMA LAST NIGHT WAS GOOD AGAIN, OMG OMG OMG YAY!

ROCKET TALK AND ANNETTE FUNICELLO'S BEACH PARTY!

This is happening next Monday! BE THERE, DUMMIES!

Books that Actually Exist

Microwave your wine! And your loneliness :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

This is actually an amazing book title, so it's too bad the "Devotionals for Teens" label will probably make "awesome" highly synonymous with "JESUS-JESUS-JESUS-LOVE-YOU-JESUS!"

A whole book on this. A whole book.

Covering what the first edition missed about not being in the way of a huge ship.

A FELLOW EDMONTONIAN

On a big ol' Kids in the Hall kick right now. I love all of Bruce McCulloch's monologues so much but "Sandwich People" and "Open Letters" (Part 1 and Part 2) are my favourite. ENJOY THEM NOW!

141 Years Young, True North!!!

BACK...TO THE FUTURAMA!

That subject line is probably the best thing I've come up with in 2010. Read more on the return of Futurama from myself and the inimitable Miles Klee, here.

THIS IS HAPPENING NEXT MONDAY, JUNE 28TH AND I'M SO EXCITED 'BOUT IT!

Forgot about Gary

I have been meaning to post pictures from the day Chris and I visited Gary, Indiana for almost a full year. It seems like the rest of the world, I just can't help but forget about Gary.

Here's some of our fabled pictures:

We couldn't figure out how to get off the train when we got to Gary. Seriously. It was confusing. So we ended up overshooting our trip, and spending an hour in Miller, Indiana. This is what Miller looks like:

Then we got to Gary and watched a baseball game. There was a Bennigan's in the ballpark that seemed to be getting at least as much attention as the Gary South Shore Railcats. Nobody at the park was from Gary proper, apparently, because once the game was over, they all got in cars and drove to other parts of Indiana/Illinois/other blank places. Chris and I walked over to downtown Gary. It was completely deserted on a summer Sunday afternoon. We saw about two other people during the hour and a half we explored, and they were unsettled by our presence as we were by theirs.

Here's a garbage can I found to be really horrendously poignant. "City of the Century." Of course, that refers to the 20th Century. Even Gary's slogan acknowledges that its best days are over. How heartbreaking is that? Answer: a billion heartbreaks. Also, the town logo is the entire earth being coated in steel. We're happy Gary's proud of its resources but they do say that there can be too much of a good thing. And smothering our planet with steel crosses the "too much" line.

STEEL-MINERS STATUE.

We couldn't figure this pavilion out. There was no explanation. It was just celebrating 1998, I guess. And why not? The Lunar Prospector was launched that year AND Hello Nasty came out. There's a reason they call it 199-Great. They being me, and probably some other cool peeps.

We found some weird lifeform near the train station. Likely just a fungus, but could've been an alien. We poked it with a stick: no change.

This is the first house built in Gary, and is allegedly a museum, though it was so dilapidated, unprotected and generally sad-looking that even two Canadians could've easily broken in. We didn't though. We're Canadians.

And finally this. This. This was the coup de grace:

It reads: "To the man who works, the man who sweats, the man who pounds and rolls the iron, who plows the fields, and sows and reaps the golden harvest, the clerk, the student, the schoolteacher, the mechanic, the laborer, in fact to the millions of toiling men and women of the earth, who hope to rest their weary bodies in the great afternoon of life on something better than blasted hopes and vain regrets this wall is dedicated."

That should hit you where it counts no matter how or where you read it. But if you read it in an American town that boomed, then busted, and currently seems to just be aching for something else to happen before it's reclaimed by nature, and if the poem's presentation itself is painfully emblematic of the city's own historic arc, barely legible due to decades of neglect but clearly once spectacular and widely admired, and if the energy and optimism encased in the words are desperately at odds with the fatigue and hopelessness of the city it's supposed to represent - if you see it like that, you're allowed to tear up a little, or you are if you are me.

Colour Me Bacchanalian

When it comes to Greek gods (and with me, it often does come to Greek gods), I usually like to think of myself as kind of an Artemis tomboy/a female Hermes. Recently, due to some kind of reverse seasonal affective disorder which is nudging me into becoming a kind of gross, hedonist slob, I'm channeling Dionysus in a bigger way.

I really like Googling Image-searching Artemis and Hermes; they are both super-sexy deities. Identifying with them makes me feel like I could also be swift and lean and foxy and you know, able to fly a moon-chariot/shoot around the world on wing-sandals - these are mere variations of my ever-waxing rockets-in-my-buttcheeks motif.

However, I had never Google Image searched Dionysus before tonight, and I think the fact that this picture was the first hit is a sign I should really try to crawl back to archer-goddess/messenger god territory instead of plunging headfirst into the arms of the wine god.

Seriously, Dionysus. You are one drunk, sad baby and chances are you'll be sleeping in that piss. Get it together.

Krokodyl!

This is a Polish edition of Crocodile Dundee, and I don't think you need any more information than that.

Daily Han

Get off your high tauntaun, Tim Siedell

I really hate this article. HATE IT. I know I've written about Sex and the City too much before. Maybe ignoring it instead of actively hating it would be better. But I can't. This is my duty. THIS WILL NOT STAND. Get off your fucking high tauntaun, Tim Siedell.

Listen dickbomb, it is not even remotely acceptable to imply that women like Sex and the City. No. It's not women. Women aren't the audience. It's lame-tards who like it. Lame-tards who happen to have a double X all up in their helix. The Venn diagram between lame-tards and women, I hope, has a small overlap. I don't know, but I hope. I do know that everything within that overlap is a Sex and the City fan. And the rest of us aren't. Don't you even THINK of insulting us with your lazy, worthless observations. And if you wrote it based on your own experience with women, then I'm really sorry for you. Don't get me wrong: I'm sorry for you in absolutely the most condescending way possible. No sympathy here. Just harsh pity.

By the way, SATC is not our Star Wars. You want to know what our Star Wars is? Motherfucking Star Wars, asshole.

Don't you dare make having a dick a requirement for good taste.

1%

There are lots of things that are stupid about being human, but one thing that's great is what happens when our big ol' brains and our big ol' hearts are simultaneously thrilled. When I saw this breakthrough discovery about how matter beat out antimatter right after the Big Bang, I got that warm fuzzy feeling both in my brain and in my gut. For the former, let's reflect once more on how fucking cool it is that we've even devised a way to test this. There are people in the world that 1) observed that matter and antimatter particles always destroy each on contact, 2) wondered how matter has managed to be prevalent if that's the case, 3) figured out that they needed a particle accelerator to test this, and 4) built a particle accelerator. Seriously fellow humans: when we're good, we're great.

That's on the brain level. On the gut level, there are so many narratives that reflect this dynamic, in which the solid, honest and brave characters win out over the evil, deceptive and (at heart at least) cowardly characters, even if it's just at the same 1% rate that matter survives clashes with antimatter. That 1% made our entire universe, guys, and that 1% also made Luke Skywalker.

In fact, is it fair to say that the human race's central narrative is good wins over evil, even if it's only by a margin of 1%? I mean, minus Ragnarok, obviously.

We're kind of suspended between robot and animal, with an advanced mechanical intelligence in the first instance and a deeply instinctual emotional core in the second (and don't you even start with me about whether or not animals are emotional, you species-ist jerkface). When there's say, a giant oil spill, it sucks, because you can feel our failure intellectually and emotionally. But when we make a discovery about how our universe was conceived, and that discovery weirdly echoes the mythologies we already surround ourselves with, I mean...well done, humanity! Sometimes, the stories that we tell are beautiful and poignant in exactly the same way as the stories telling us.

PS. If you think that sentiment is corny, you have no place reading this blog. Get OUT!

Chorus-saurus

These theropods all have jazz hands.

Seriously, giant lizards. Out of character.

I'm Having a...

Today, my Wikipedia noodlings led me to a thing called an "anomalous magnetic dipole moment." It's something about Feynman diagrams and loops and a g-factor. But given that it ends with "moment," this just makes me think of people saying "I'm having a senior moment" or "I'm having a diva moment" or whatever.

I really want to be in a situation where I can say, "Jeez guys, I'm so sorry, I'm really having an anomalous magnetic dipole moment."

Let's make it happen, world.

A Story Begun. A Story Completed.

Chanson of A Bitch - Mostly Galle and Gainsbourg

Hey pals! I have a new tumblr with an extremely simple but important goal: to provide a few French songs (chansons) a week. If you are looking for a raison d'être or a cause célèbre or just some of that plain ol' je-ne-sais-quoi, don't commit a faux pas by ignoring ma petit cherie: ChansonOfaBitch.tumblr.com.

Oh la la!

Bradbury Locks it Down

There's an aggressively inscrutable scene in Donnie Darko where Drew Barrymore's character recounts this idea that "cellar door" is the most phonoaesthetically pleasing phrase in the English language. You can almost hear Richard Kelly jerking off behind the camera, whispering "What're they gonna think of this new allusion?"

Anyway, it's a weird old idea, and I never understood it, not only because I don't think "cellar door" is a particularly attractive pair of words but because I think it's weird to declare two words winners of anything. The English language is not a beauty contest. There is no Miss Latin-Derived Noun or Miss Etymology-Unknown Verb (though if there was, the latter, as a linguistic orphan, would obviously win. Big inner beauty points for that one are assured, compared to words with detailed pedigrees).

I thought this until I discovered the actual most phonoaesthetically pleasing phrase in the English language, courtesy of Ray Bradbury (and co-opted as a band name thereafter).

Rocket Summer.

Yeah, I get that part of the "cellar door" appeal was that it was supposed to be beautiful even when isolated from its semantic meaning. There's no question that "rocket summer" is enhanced by its meaning; they're two fantastic nouns apart and they're the hottest couple you've ever seen when they're together. They're Brangelina if Brangelina was fun and quirky (by the way, how do you conjugate verbs with these celebrity portmanteaus - is it as if they are a couple or one entity? Us Weekly writers would know...).

But who cares about the details, you linguist purists? Just say "rocket summer" aloud. Do you have tingly little sparkles in your mouth after? I do.




.....or does that mean I'm having a stroke?

Lil Blackbook

A neat interview for Blackbook Mag here. Thanks, Ortved!

Cutest Thing Ever!

I want to be a baby bonobo!!!

Gross Things I Resort to Eating When I'm Poor

My Mum, who is cooler than anybody you've ever met or will meet, reads this blog. For her sake, I am going to try to avoid making this sort of post a habit. She worries! (PS. Love you Mumma! Xoxoxoxo).

Okay, disclaimer over, now here's some stuff I ate earlier this month when I had less money than I currently have. Contact me if you want the full recipes for these meals, which require no more than two steps to prepare, and much desperation to actually ingest.

SPLIT PEA "SOUP"

I know what you're thinking: "Becky, a lot of soups come out of the can that way." Sure, but do a lot of soups stay that way once they're out of the can? I took this photo after this gelatinous cylinder had been cooking for five minutes. This is the closest my life has come to being an RL Stine novel since my hamster became some kind of slime zombie in grade school.

WATERY BEANS ON SPINACH TORTILLA:

I don't think I need to elaborate on this one.

I am leaving my job in September, so more of these easy-to-make, hard-to-swallow, unemployment-appropriate monstrosities are to come!

Snooki Provokes Deep Inner Conflict

The Dionysian, Rampage-loving, impulsive, indulgent, "let's set the basement on fire then get drunk and stoned on the roof" side of me (aka my "Bender" side) is really at war with the workaholic, responsible, to-do-listing, chart-making, "we have a moral obligation to heed obvious cries for help" side of me (aka my "Turanga Leela" side) over this picture:

PS. Is she by herself?

Johnston, Redux

Dru Johnston is less wrong than originally thought. Still, don't fear aliens. For every Sith, there is an Ewok.

Aliens, Redux

The day after my last post, Stephen Hawking went and said that he thinks we should fear aliens as opposed to trying to contact them, since they're more likely to be aggressive than peaceful.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."

I think it was the wrong thing to say, not only because that it's super presumptive but also because it casts a huge shadow on SETI and all their efforts. Kevin Hines agrees with me, and I'm pretty sure he's the person that makes assertions into facts. So now, it's a fact that Stephen Hawking said the wrong thing.

That's why Dru Johnston should be especially embarrassed to take the side he took. Observe the victory of peaceful aliens:

I Will Find a Way to Kill Carrie Bradshaw

I had a conversation with some girl with different priorities than me about what we'd most like to happen in the world in our lifetimes. Hers was woman President: totally noble and good and stupidly likely. Mine is hands-down making contact with aliens; unlikely, but I would be so unbelievably grateful to have been alive for such a momentous event.

She looked at me like I was the alien, though, and laughed very condescendingly. It was that sort of uncommitted laugh, as if she was putting out feelers to test whether I was actually serious. Well, I'm sorry, boring-face, but if you're not excited by the prospect of communicating with extraterrestrial life, that's not a problem with me, that's a problem with you. I bet when you see the word "cosmos" you think it's short for cosmopolitans. That's a lame cocktail and you're a lame person, and the first female President is going to think you're lame too. Despite what Sex and the City 2 tells you, simply being female is no longer enough to give you social currency. There are far too many super-cool girls out there for that to work anymore.

Parents: please indoctrinate your daughters with The X-Files, Star Trek, Futurama, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, E.T., Star Wars, etc., so that more girls end up emulating Turanga Leela, Dana Scully, Deanna Troi and Leia Organa (I don't like calling her "princess") instead of four grating, shallow women who are going to Abu Dhabi for some reason in a sequel. Or just indoctrinate them with Pixar movies, even though Pixar's blockbusters remain pretty boy-centric as far as main characters go. Whatever, girls will figure out how to use Wall-E as a role model, regardless of his robot gender.

Yes, I am being weird and militant, but ever since seeing the Sex and the City 2 trailer, and in anticipation of all the stupid promotion that is to come, I am basically on a mission to excise Carrie Bradshaw and all her stupid clothes from existence, using some kind of black hole missile strapped to a T-Rex.

Books on Trains

I saw someone reading a book called The Witch Doctor's Wife on the subway today. It reminded me of the first time I heard about The Time Traveler's Wife. I have not read the book, so I won't trash it even though the title makes me desperately want to. Indeed, few titles have filled me with more immediate rage. You have a time traveler on your hands and you're going to deal with his boring old wife?! That's like making contact with extraterrestrials and worrying about whether you forgot to turn the oven off (you're a scientist, so you probably did, and anyway: ALIENS!).

Can we just agree to name our books after their most interesting characters from now on? Just call it The Time Traveler or The Witch Doctor, and if you want to be feminist, make said interesting characters female. That's why the working title of my novel is The Capricious She-Huntress of Arcturus: A Rocket Saga.

I also saw a very old man reading one of the Twilight books, which warmed my heart. I wonder whether he's an Edward or a Jacob man.

Birds With Attitude

Rife with Meaning

One of the awesome things about my new apartment is that it is within walking distance from the Creek and Cave, where I spend a lot of my time eating fries, drinking beer and telling poop jokes on and off stage.

Plus, there's some weird stuff on the walk home from the Creek, such as this piece of artwork on the Pulaski Bridge.

Without the vandalism, this would look like parents abandoning their child, which is almost as disturbing than the picture post-genital scrawlings. Now, to me, it looks like a horny couple that are about to have unprotected sex, while the specter of their as-yet-unconceived child follows shortly behind. THAT'S WHY I SAID "ALMOST AS" CREEPY!

I also like that you get to the middle of Pulaski Bridge and are suddenly hit in the face with a big Manhattan. Not like, punched. Lovingly slapped, like, "Hey, did you forget you live here?! That was stupid of you!"

Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me About Robot Dinosaurs?

I haven't posted for a while because I just moved to Greenpoint and won't have internet in my apartment until Saturday.

By the way, why did you all let me live in not-Greenpoint for so long? Jerks.

Another reason that I haven't posted is that I have been utterly obsessed with getting a Pleo. Please send one or two or many to me. They will be so well-cared for! I am still deciding on what I am going to name my first Pleo, but it will be really hard not to name him/her Little Foot. And after that, the next challenge will be accomplishing anything except cuddling wid my wittle robot dinosawr.

Toon Murder on the Rise

Is this a good ad for Monroe College? Here are some reasons I'm skeptical that it is:

1) Student appears to be studying an old urine stain. Said urine stain would have to be entirely unrelated to the crime, unless the victim's urethra was on his neck.

2) Student is equipped only with a magnifying glass and a folder labeled "evidence." Much though I fondly remember my childhood notions of how detective work is conducted, I now understand by way of The Wire and whoever's dad it was who spoke to us in sixth grade about forensics that it's a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy and the exciting blood/guts aspect wears off and even becomes emotionally destabilizing for some. Don't try to pull this magnifying glass crap with us; we know we're not going to Monroe College to solve the mystery hauntings on Whispering Island like in Enid Blyton's The Famous Five Have A Mystery to Solve. Yes, my parents are British, and yes, this means I was indoctrinated me into the British mystery tradition. We have Sherlock, Poirot, and the Five. What do you have, Yankees? The stupid Hardy Boys? Don't make me laugh!

What's that? Oh...you have McNulty. Oh my GOD, you have Mulder and Scully! Okay, fine, I surrender! American Revolutionary War Pt. 2 once again goes to you! I will step the fuck off! I will lay my Redcoat upon this puddle so your nice, expensive shoes don't get dirty walking through it. Then I will retreat to a small, rainy island and develop a tea addiction.

3) Victim appears to be a shapeless cartoon man with claws instead of hands.

Reasons this ad works:

1) Student has nice ass.

2) Apparently, this has been the eight toon murder in a toon serial killing spree.

3) Student's jeans really a good fit, emphasizing aforementioned nice ass.

Sketchy Dude on G

You looked so confused by the fact that everyone was avoiding you. Here's why: you were wearing a toque that said "It's not illegal if you don't get caught." That shit's weird, dude. Put something less threatening on your hat, like "It's not illegal if it's....CUPCAKE TIME!!!"

Portrait of a Becky as a Young Mother

Last night coming home on the train, a mother stuck her kid next to me while she sat on the other side of the seat. It was a very unspoken stranger-please-take-my-kid-while-I-sleep-for-four-minutes moment. I'd peg this kid at 8 or 9. He had a video game with him which he played while he slowly shifted his weight onto me, leaning back into me like I was his recliner. I did not reciprocate this accidental affection, obviously. That would be super weird and creepy. In fact, I was worried that the mother was going to look over and assume that I was like, Pied-Piper-ing her son into a dreamlike state or something, so I tried to prop him up again without making him feel self-conscious for leaning so far into a stranger's lap in the first place. I failed. It was clear that the mother didn't care. So I just let this little boy deepen his snuggles with my left side.

A friendly guy that got on the train a few stops after me gave me a "your kid's cute" look. Now I was actively getting credit for being this kid's caretaker. The guy got off at Bedford-Nostrand with me, after I had propped the kid back up on his seat (the kid looked at me with a little confusion at first, but then just kept playing his game), and he approached me and said, "I thought that was your son!" I wanted to say something like "It was; I am finally rid of him," but instead I told him how I felt like I had gone halfway through the stages of adoption in that train ride.

I used to babysit a super-cool girl who actually kind of looked like me, and most people presumed that I was her mother. Being that cool girl's mom or being this train boy's mom would mean I would have had the kid in high school. It makes me so weirded out to be viewed as a teen mom now in in her mid-twenties, hanging around New York with her kid. It could not be farther away from what my life is - if they knew how poorly I take care of myself, they'd understand that child services would've taken any kid of mine long ago - but hey, if there's a kid there acting like you're their mom, that's what the world thinks you are. I can't blame the world for judging books by their covers. I own several books for the same reason.

I am not someone who dislikes kids or is ambivalent about having them one day: I want them. I wish I didn't, but I really, really do. Seriously, you fall in love with a person so hard that you think, "actually yeah, I could be with you forever," and then you get to make a new PERSON with them by expressing your love for them physically? WHAT? That's amazing! That's some kind of dreamland fantasy scenario, and I definitely don't want to miss out on it.

But yeah, nobody wants a kid at 25. Well, not true. I don't, and nobody I know personally does. So in these temporary moments where the universe shows me what an alternate reality version of myself as a young mother would look like, I become eternally grateful that I was so unattractive as a teenager, and that my high school boyfriend was Christian enough to insist that premarital sex was a sin. I didn't like it at the time, but I like it every time I skip over "dependents" on a tax form.

10 Ways I Could Really Nail My Callback

1. Stay on the back line the whole time. Sweep edit one scene, but go right to the back line afterwards. Stare at the ground, pre-execution style.

2. Walk on in every scene as a different character.

3. Walk on in every scene as the same character.

4. If somebody else initiates a grounded scene, respond by screaming, "Why aren't you more worried about this rocket's collision course with the Sun!?!?"

5. If somebody initiates a wacky scene, respond by saying, "This is all in your head! We're actually both in a mental institution. I'm your doctor and you're the patient, and it's the year 2000. You think you have Y2K in your brain. Your name is Jerry, mine is Dr. Grubenparker." Then turn to the people watching and say "How's that for who, what, when and where?" Then edit the scene.

6. Take "back line support" to mean making bird, ocean and lawnmower sounds to create the appropriate atmosphere, even if none of those things is mentioned in the scene.

7. Sit down with the panel and give them business cards. Tell them it's for "when they're ready to get a real job."

8. Play a character that only vomits.

9. Play a character with explosive diarrhea, and make loud fart noises if anybody tries to make the scene not about the very funny diarrhea.

10. Yell, "SCENE!" at the end of every scene.

Incredibox

Usually when I waste 45 minutes procrastinating on the internet, I give myself a hell of a self-flagellation that typically doubles as another 45 minutes of procrastination. Not this time! I just spent 45 minutes on Incredibox (go to it here!!!), and I deem every nanosecond of it a success. I have made several fantastic songs, and been romantically involved (in my imagination) with at least four of these French musicians. Because after all, I like my men like I like my coffee: skinny, sallow, sleep-deprived and sexily disinterested in their own creative abilities.

It sort of applies to coffee too. Shut up. Did you at least like the alliteration?

Virtually Scarless...

...is the equivalent of saying "scarred for life."

Glamour Cuts

The Glamour thingy that ran a week or so ago had to be edited down to five rules for single men, though I had written a few more. I just realized I have a blog and can post the ones that didn't make the team. For your pleasure (but really for mine) here are the runners-up:

1. Take note of her body language. Is she leaning towards you, playing with her hair, reaching out to touch you gently on the arm? Watch out! She probably has lice, and now so does your arm!

2. Make sure she's aware that you can show her the world; shining, shimmering, splendid. Invite her to tell you - and throw in some extra charm here by calling her "princess" - now when did she last let her heart decide? Note: make sure you have access to a magic carpet and a monkey sidekick.

3. Only fart if you're certain it's going to sound hilarious. Or if you've trained your butt to ask for her hand in marriage.

4a) Try not to mention your ex-girlfriends. Unless you dated the actress who played Alex Mack. We'll feel so bad about ourselves comparative to that mystery dream girl that we'll immediately put out. Or we'll get intimidated and leave, rethink it, call you in the middle of the night outside your house and then immediately put out. Like, I'm talking in-your-building's-stairwell immediately.

Nim Chimpsky

The longest sentence Nim Chimpsky (he was, I believe, the first chimp to learn sign language) ever said to his trainers was "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you."

I love this chimp, and I hope he got an orange out of this.

Some New Stuff

A funny video I am briefly in here.

An article about a book about atheism and potato kugels here.

My rant about how great Spain bar is here.

A dog wearing a naked human bum thing here.

Some more

Jurassic Park: Cake edition