What time is it? Yes, children. It's Peeps Time.


Actually, I don't like Peeps. I would rather kiss Madonna than eat a Peep. But I always wished I liked them. And the Peeps Fun Bus is touring Memphis this week. I hope the Peep Fun Bus has air-conditioning. I've seen what a microwave can do to a pink bunny Peep.

The first time I tasted a Peep, I thought, "No. That's not candy. That's what goes inside candy, along with nuts and chocolate."

But I do like the merchandise here. I want the Peeps mousepad. It looks kinda like a Ouija board.

(NOTE: Don't look, Mike. Your Christmas/Bar Mitzvah present is on here somewhere.)

Now I'm fascinated with Peep Jousting, too. Luckily, I am not alone.

I woke up this morning with the strange feeling of "just visiting".

Let this picture be a lesson to all you crazy lil second-grade girls out there: You can only pull up your shirt so many times before you have to kiss an aging pop icon on the mouth. And you're not the first one who's been there, so wash up before and after.

So Britney Spears and Madonna kiss on-stage. So much for true creativity. Damn. But tune in next week as Justin Timberlake and Joe Millionaire call a press conference to fluff each other on the site of what used to be the World Trade Center. Pre-order this pay-per-view event now.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want the world to be one, big 1950s sock-hop. I'm just starving for originality.

God?... Check, please.

My groove is now a clot in my leg.

Deep vein thrombosis and my crappy workchair will be the death of me and my kidneys. Plus these two bad projects i am working on feel more like concrete boots. So you know what, screw that. This link makes things better.

Slide on up ovah heyuhh and clicky da pic. You should be hearing "Groove is in the Heart" by Dee-Lite. it makes me feel better, but it also makes me miss my gaymen friends. I haven't had a decent hairstyle in over a year. And when a girl stops wearing lipstick, she's either given up all hope, is sick with the flu, or is lacking the guidance and motivation only a gayman can provide.

Not insane, just crazy.

Yes? I hear it's funnier when you open lots of browser windows at once. Ok, so I'm going to try that now.... Ok. It makes me want to jump out of a window actually... wait, no.... that's just the bloodclot talking. Whew.

The only other point of interest found today was a link sent to me from Austin Jackie ("Hi, Pearl ole Girl!"). It's someone on eBay selling stinky shoes to people who have foot fetishes. I'm not posting that link because, quite frankly, I ain't messing with that crazy chick. Her/His user ID is toes4yournose. Enjoy?

Who's crazier though... someone who obviously gets to walk around in shoes long enough to stink 'em up, no less, for profit? Or someone whose butt just fell asleep... again... for almost free.

Shite. I forgot to bring my toiletpaper to work.

I was going to scan it and display the artwork here, proudly. Without getting into any unneccessary details, massive does of B5 will dry your T-zone and wring you out like a toxic sponge. Fine by me, as I finish 1.5 liters of water for the day.

So there I was in a solid white bathroom with nothing to ponder but my feet and the pattern on the toiletpaper. I roll off five or six sheets and discover this pleasing little pattern. I hold it up to the light and find three repeating butterflies sized small, medium and large, frolicking amongst the swirly trails they've left behind for each other. It was really quite nice.

And when I look at something like that, I realize all the work that went into that process:

Someone was given the task of designing a simple toiletpaper pattern, one that repeats into eternity. After a few failed attempts at puppies, ladybugs and teddy bears, maybe that someone had a creative director who suggested "go with something natural, one that suggests nature." Getting paid to tell someone that type of input amazes me sometimes.

So, off someone went to the computer to design a pattern: Something from nature, something pretty. Something that would look good quilted onto rolls and rolls of toiletpaper. Something that didn't remind that someone of mistakes made along the way leading them to a career in toiletpaper-making.

Something pretty that would be overly-scrutinized by someone over them, someone quite possibly as hollow as a toiletpaper tube, who would feel compelled to edit in order to validate their place in the toiletpaper-making business. Eventually, someone's design would be re-editted and approved internally, then would be seen fit and worthy to take it to the people appointed to make the critical toiletpaper-making decisions – the Higher Ups in the toiletpaper-making process.

And if the Higher Ups didn't crap on it, then it was ready to go. Out of the shop, on to the toiletpaper-making engineers, off to the toiletpaper-making mill and onto thousands, perhaps millions, of rolls of toiletpaper around the world.

All this effort just to produce something that no one else in the world but me would notice as good, as everyone else blindly uses someone's hardwork to toiletpaper their oblivious unmentionables.

Well I know how someone feels. Except on a smaller scale and on much less important products than toiletpaper. Whoever did it, wherever they are right now, I respect them as someone who tried, despite the purpose or the inevitable.

Plus, this just in from Kittyspunk ("Thanks, I needed this!")

It's the story of The WaterBear.

So, what is a water bear? Ok, here you go. Well once upon a time, there lived a Family Tardigrada. Yes, many members of my family are organically damaged, but not that kind of Tardo. And it seems this family lives on and on and on. Read it, you'll like it:

"Water Bears are members of a largely unknown phylum of invertebrate animals, the Tardigrada. The first tardigrades were discovered in 1773 after microscopes were invented. Over 800 species have been described since then. The largest tardigrades grow to a size of just over 1 mm, but they can easily be seen with microscopes. Tardigrade bodies are divided into segments, roughly cylindrical and possess four pairs of lobopodial limbs (poorly articulated limbs without joints, which are found in soft bodied animals like Onycophorans). The limbs terminate in four to eight claws or discs. They crawl about with a bear-like pawing motion of the legs (that originated the name water bears) over sand grains in the seas, soil, lichen or pieces of plant material etc...

"Limno-terrestrial tardigrades are regarded as amongst the most indestructible animals that exist when they enter their resistant state—called a tun, and can survive in extreme conditions during cryptobiosis (the most extreme form of suspended animation)."

And, they multiply and grow in your eyebrows. No, they don't. I was just jolting you awake.

Now wait, here's your treat: the super-yummy Water Bear Song. Enjoy, and be a water bear.

I miss you guys... sniffly, sniff-snort.

And I've had so many interesting things to talk about but nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooo, I have to work for a living like a sucka. Yes, it's stupid. I wanted to talk about how The Today Show just blows chunks and sucks my brain out and I'm done with them now after they booked Amy Grant for their offensive Summer Concert Series. I mean, thank you for the Hall and Oates Concert, even though I do live this close to the casinos. But come on, Amy Grant disappeared in the mid '90s. Let her rest in peace. And stop with the Jimmy Buffet already.

But no, I'm an indentured servant, treated more like a pizza delivery guy. Crushed like a warm, fuzzy baby chick in the greasy cogs of corporate American capitalism. At least for the next few days.

So here's a link to the crazy but creative HoogerBoogie Man, just in case you missed his acid trip section on a previous visit.

www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/

Get yer zen on with the FlyGuy. If you've never seen him then you have to go for a visit. Lighten up with lovely thoughts. Enjoy yourself. Float up and down, and fly all around to explore it all. Talk to the swami-guru, have a cup of tea, but watch out for the hovering bruiser. You'll find surprises along the way. Try not to rush through it, but the ending has a nice, little surprise.

Sounds a lot like how life should be.

Last final, fugitive thought for Monday.

Enjoy.

One final, fugitive thought.

Katy M. Carter, where have you gone? Drop us a line, give us a dingle, let us know where you are these days. I don't have the funds or a picture that's good enough to reproduce you on the back of a milk carton.

The webstats clearly show that if a person can stumble across me whilst Googling "what+does+a+hemmorhoid+feel+like", then you'd think you'd stumble across this, too. You crazy, missing girl.

By the way: Damn.

It is ungodly hot here today. It's so hot that the local weather guy couldn’t even joke about it anymore. He usually calls it a "barn-burner" or a "scorcher" which just makes me choking mad. Because as soon as you label a day like that, it will feel ten degrees worse for the rest of the day.

It's like a "heat-index." Most of us live indoors now. Most of us live, work and travel inside a little Habitrail. You live in your house, you walk to your car in the garage, you drive to the parking garage at work, you hop out and into a skywalk to your building, you plop down at your desk. You never really went outside. You don't really need a heat-index. A heat-index is much like saying "You weigh 135, but you feel like you weigh 205."

Who has a practical use for a heat-index? Ok, maybe construction workers. But come on. They have it down to an art. It's simple enough to remember: South equals hot.

So, all you can do on the hottest day of the year is joke all the way to work about it. While Ron impressively broke out the words "plasma" and “perihelion”, all I could come up with was “Solid. Liquid. Gas. Memphis.”

Which I think is almost as funny as my tagline for a pancreas: "Pancreas: It's what makes dogfood brown."

Another reason to love Memphis. On the way out the door, someone may call and ask if you wanna be a zombie in a video for The Subteens. Yes, please.

Don't I look like Marilyn Manson's first dabblings in high school? And good news, now I know what Ron will look like after an actual run-in with a circular saw. He looks like Michael J. Fox. Ron has a bit more street-cred and krunky goodness than Teenwolf though. Man, I need to post the picture of the guy named Lil Brad. He turned out looking like Wayne Gacy.

Surely, the scariest part of the video will be my acting, as I had to stagger across the frame, chewing on a foam-rubber foot covered in Hershey's syrup. If I've learned nothing else, I've learned at least one thing along the way: When the guys running the camera laugh during your shot, your performance was either really, really good or really, really bad. There is no in-between.

We liked Bethany better before she knew how to make a link.

To make up for that one, here's Weebl and Bob.

Tonight, I'm going to the Flying Saucer for some ribaldry and camaraderie. (Get me, I sound like a swashbuckler.) Actually, just going for some beer. And some cheese and some sausage because I can't help myself. It's good. And oh yes, some camaraderie. Because that word's fun to type, must be used twice otherwise it's just pretentious and annoying, and because it's true.*


*A sad note: Unfortunately, I did not participate in the ribaldry and camaraderie as planned. Instead, I opted to stagger around in a field with a few strangers and a few thousand bugs. See Monday's post for explanation.

Aww. Because *I Heart You*...

Here's me, learning to make a clickable link for you,
to one of the coolest sites I've found this week.


(And now that I figured that out, I shall begin by ruling the Western Hemisphere.)

Yeah, I'm going to hell. For stealing someone else's Good One for the LED board. Introducing Manitoba, Canada's and perhaps the world's best time-wasting website du jour, eh? Type in what you want to see on this LED screen, and presto: Hours of fun. I even got into a "yer mama" fight with some complete fifth-grade stranger yesterday. I do so love the internet.

It's here. http://216.36.145.89/php3/ledsign/index.html

Cut'n'paste it, people. It's good exercise. (I promise I'll learn how to make a clickable link real soon.)

Here’s an interesting thought I ran across the other day:

It is speculated that, because of cell regeneration, no living cell in your body today is over 9 years old.

Mind-bending, isn’t it? I believe it. I believe the inside workings of human beings are much more alive than their outsides could ever hope; most times, the outsides are no more than cheap vinyl siding.

Also, I heard on NPR about a woman who was diagnosed a chimera. Meaning she was born of two fertilized eggs, fused. Different tissue and blood samples from different parts of her body revealed she had two sets of DNA. She had one son who looked nothing like her. Rightly so, because she was not only their mother, she was also their aunt.

How cool is that?

Something cool to think about here in Memphis, besides Dead Elvis Week. That's right: a whole week of soulful mournings for the passing (or not, some say) of The King of Rock'n'Roll on August 16, 1977. Live here long enough, and you'll appreciate the inner sanctum of a Japanese Elvis impersonator walking proudly on Beale Street, with a wall of jet-black hair plastered just-so, and sideburns trimmed with the precision of bonsai. Interesting how people love someone so much that they would do anything to be them, or recreate them. Cell by cell if they could.

Nine years in either direction, and who knows what could happen.

Abducted by aliens.

One day. If I'm lucky. Where the hell have I been since last Thursday. Oh yeah, in-laws in town (it was fun, scored huge at one estate sale), and been working on working with other people. Met the greatest chick in town last night who's started her own creative partnership business named... nah, more later on that one. Knocky, knocky, no jinxes, no jinxes.

So let's talk about how every living thing has gone crazy the past couple of days. The dog lost his rabbit ass mind and got on the couch twice this morning. That sounds like nothing, but it's the equivalent of flightless birds laying eggs during an eclipse. Ron had a dream that he had it out with his boss, and it is long overdue. I can feel the tremors now.

And you're not supposed to talk about your dreams before breakfast, else they'll come true. So before I had one mouthful, I told Ron about my dream, about how someone at work intervened on me. They said they'd been writing down everything I was saying in meetings. This was quite perplexing, since mostly I just sit, feeling the collagen molecules loosening in my skin, knowing that yes, my face will stick like this eventually, just like a hounddog. Then I feel the marrow in my bones drying out and hardening from lack of intelligent thought, and oxygen. Snapping back into the dream, I asked the faceless co-worker "You're writing down what I say?... Like ... what?" And he said "Like 'shut up' and 'fuck you'." I said, "I said that?.... Out loud?" And he replied, "Yeah." So I said "Oh... okay. So?" And here's where I thought I'd be fired. But he just said "Well, you just need to suck it up and stop doing that."

And then, something caught on fire.

Crazy? Not really. Now the cat. The cat is not just crazy, he's gone Prison Crazy. Last night, he slung some cat oatmeal on the wall some three or four feet across from the litterbox. I can't figure out how he did that, or why. Accidents happen, but damn, cat. The more I looked, the more I found on the wall. It was almost like a crime scene.

And then I realized it's Mars. Yep, Mars is making us all nutty. It's closer to the Earth today than I has been in 60,000 years. How they figured that out is mind-boggling to me. Obviously, it has to do with math. Therefore I don't understand it at all. I will also check the phases of the moon, I think I feel a full one coming on. But it's still interesting. What? You don't think this post was interesting? Well, shut up and fuck you. No, not really. Forgive me, I kid. I kid because I love.

http://www.deeprivermedia.com/terror.htm

I just like to toss this link in every now and then, just to keep it real. If I either had this much confidence or was this oblivious. I'd be a the Mayor of the World.

But not today. Today I'm just happy to find yet one more reason to like living in Memphis: FM90 Volunteer Radio. The WEVL. Playing the old blues song named "Hot Nuts."

Must research.

Gardenburgers are damn good.

Don't even be fooled. These flame-broiled babies will fill you up like a moose what ate the sack o' rice. No, I don't know what that means really. I think it means if you have no emergency buns, then don't overcompensate by eating two patties.

Patties. I hate that word. I hate a girl named Patty, too.

We're all stuck here at work tonight, and so I break out the emergency food: carrots and two Gardenburger patties. Good Lord, don't eat two. For so many reasons, I wish I were dead right now.

That's a good tagline for Gardenburgers, huh? "Don't eat two. You'll wish you were dead!"

I should've worked in advertising when it was good. When advertisers weren't afraid of being sued by the undeserving, money-grubbing piggies of the world. When copywriters were not afraid to write "Feed your children Golden Butter. Makes children as fat as pigs." And then, some artist had to go to all the trouble of painting a child's head on a pig's body. And that was good advertising.

"A fattened child is a healthy child. Try lard today!"

As usual, I'm always late to the best opportunities.

I know this girl.

She has a skin condition that is linked to a host of other hormonal misfirings. And really, she never could get it under control until someone gave her one pill. And that one pill is not benign, but it helps. It helped one aspect of her life that would only be referred to as Control.

So she set herself up as a guinea pig, agreed to take this drug far beyond the boundaries of government approval. As long as she was honest, and kept herself childless, she was fine within the system, as some type of unauthorized subject. She was, in the process, a control.

And when she told the truth, life kicked in.

“You’re married now, so I can’t give you this pill anymore. Because if you get pregnant, you might sue me. Because others have shown statistically, I could be held responsible. Therefore, I can’t give you this pill that you and I both know you need, to keep you from falling apart, hormone by hormone, day by day. Well, that’s just life. Congratulations on your marriage.”

Her closest living relative is on probation for domestic violence. A liar, a drunk, and refusing to take help. Claiming it's not by choice, it's from a short list of relations who can’t help it, and whom everyone agrees aren’t worth the powder to blow them to hell. The good genetics are such unaware nice people that they get smashed into dust, every time. Nobody will admit this but the girl. It should make her feel better, but it doesn’t. Is there no remedy to genetic ill? If so, this girl tries not to care. But she does care because she was born that way.

I know this girl. It’s not her fault. It’s just life.

Do you know why this girl has no children? It’s not because she was never married before. It’s because she never wanted to bring someone into a world and tell them, “That’s just life.”

Sam Philips, please pass me a tissue.

The guy who discovered Elvis, Mr. "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" died yesterday here in Memphis of respiratory failure. I know how he feels. A moment of silence...





Poor dead Sam Philips. But it's like that here. I like most aspects of Memphis, like Gus' Chicken (http://www.memphisflyer.com/annman2003/world-famous.asp), but if you have never had sinus problems, move here and you will. Again, I think it's an Egyptian curse. We have angered the Egyptian gods by desecrating a big glass Pyramid, packing it full of sold-out Dixie Chicks fans. I've been in the wonderful Land of Nyquil since Monday. And I'm counting the hours til I get back home to it.

But until then, I am fascinated by the number of people who have been accessing this blog, looking for this link posted July 16th, http://www.deeprivermedia.com/terror.htm

Which proves two of my theories on life: (1) It's hard to tell the difference between confidence and insanity, and (2) The best advertising is free, and it's usually funny or absurd.

There is no in between. I'll be looking for this guy to show up on tv soon. Good or bad, somebody will make us the judge of it.

I need to go pop some pills and fumigate my head. But for now, I leave you with a really, really good recipe. And it's easy:

Baked Potato Wedges:
Copyright, 2002 Barefoot Contessa Family Style
Show: Barefoot Contessa  Episode: Elegant and Easy

Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 55 minutes
Yield: 6 servings  

4 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary leaves


Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Scrub the potatoes, cut them in half lengthwise, then cut each half in thirds lengthwise. You'll have 6 long wedges from each potato. Place the potatoes on a sheet pan with the olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and rosemary. With clean hands, toss all the ingredients together, making sure the potatoes are covered with oil. Spread the potatoes in a single layer with 1 cut-side down.

Bake the potatoes for 30 to 35 minutes, turning to the other cut side after 20 minutes. Bake until they are lightly browned, crisp outside, and tender inside. Sprinkle with salt and serve.