I chortled silently as I read the last post, afraid that more than a whisper would draw my hawk-like mother's attention; the prospect of her frolicking over to the computer only to discover I was laughing at my own wit was not particularly inviting. I suppose that, reading of my mother's bird-inspired tendencies as you just have, you would guess that I was referring back to the 3rd grade writing example of a simile: "eyes like a hawk." Alas, no, I wish my mother had eyes like a hawk -- it would've prevented that wretched week of grumpiness she experienced roughly 4 months ago whenst trying to accustom herself to contacts. A failed attempt, I might add, and the 5 days in between the Monday that our possibly gay eye doctor prescribed soft contact lenses and the Saturday when she decided they made her eyes too dry and irritating was maybe a week I should've gone camping.

And I hate camping, and I hate tents, and I love s'mores but I could settle for them in my backyard -- so the fact that I considered the sport of living like a caveman is a testimony to the overall enjoyability of that week.

However, the idea of settling down in the prickly underbrush in the sad excuse for a sleeping bag in which father persists in leaving every pair of worn black socks he owns is no less than enticing to my sister ("She-who-must-not-be-named"-- I am a Reader's-Digest savvy anti-phisher and I really couldn't stand to blow my cover). "She-who.." and I had long ago resolved our differences in taste, but in the week surrounding the Perseus meteor showers, I am constantly being bombarded with requests to grace her and my mother with my presence out on the lawn at dusk.

Living in a small town as we do, light rays and pollution make for a suspiciously nonexistent meteor shower -- a fact that is largely responsible for dreadfully frequent trips to the beach, the dessert, the country. Apparently the Perseus in the country is a wildly active event, there being no diesel-guzzling fumes to shower their potent breath throughout the sky or monstrous skyscrapers to flood the world with light. I detect a potential display of the Northern Lights, what with the green sludgy gluck of SUVS and the luminescence of a million 120 watt light bulbs. It's a wonder that Japanese Tourists even bother with expensive trips to Alaska when they could view a mini-production of the Aurora Borealis from my backyard, totally free-of-charge unless they serve me raw egg.

I know I was going to say something about shooting stars, that's why I brought this all up in the first place. That was an awfully long time ago I'm afraid, and since then I've plumb forgot the undoubtedly sly and witty comment I would've made. Ah yes, and as to the deletion of this blog, this is the deal: I'm really dreadfully tired of it, what with its aesthetically criminal layout and blurbs that were funny like two years ago and stuff, but I have a super-soft spot in my heart for killing 40-110 minutes once a month or so online posting something really stupid, and I can't bare to give it up.

So I'm going to create a new blog, and possibly link to this one on it or something. I'm not going to now of course, it would all be too sudden. Sooner or later, though, I expect.

Wow, BTW! I just spell-checked this bugger, and the the numbers have soared surprisingly high since my last post -- 17 misspelled words in these few paragraphs and counting! It's forever calling me on "whenst," but I really just am so attatched to that word, or collection of letters, or whatever it is. Why the heck is it underlining "could've," anyway? Ever heard of a 2-in-1 deal, 'cause Walgreens certainly has! Everyone I know who knows anything about getting pissed off about spam knows the word "phisher," too -- including the ever-reliable Reader's Digest! Really, if we can't trust the magazine just one step down in brilliance from AARP, what in God's name can we trust? Okay, I'll admit that my first attempt of "aesthetically" looked suspiciously like "athletically," but perhaps I was alluding to the sporty symptoms of white on green!

What a horribly wretched blog this is. I suppose I shall delete it come July. I was full of spunk in the beginning, a bundle of scratchy cleverness and wit. I've stepped out of the blogging scene, returning only to read up on a more successful blog and marvel at the consistency with which my fellow blogger updates us on her projects. If I had a project I would doubtlessly fill you in in an instant- unfortunately, many moons have passed since I retired to my desk and hammered down an assembly of fun wooden decals. Tomorrow is the last day of school, and I am still waiting for a melancholy 8th grade nostalgia to set in. My year book has failed entirely in the respect that I look at it and just wonder how it was possible that LifeTouch screwed over every shining face of my regularly photogenic fellow students. I suppose that year books were originally created to serve as a lovely memento, a bargain at $20 considering the lasting memories it inspires. But every year the yearbook staff does that annoying thing where they cut around the heads of people, I suppose to create more space for other luminescent, spandex-clad beauties, but it really just creates the effect of tackiness, a testimony that my classmates really don't have ears. (This is somewhat random- let me explain. Ears are very tiny creatures, and in pictures are almost impossible to cut around without amputating them altogether. And once you've suggested that someone's ear is maybe only a partial ear, it's better to just slice off the whole thing and have away with it altogether, as it raises the argument that it may just be hiding behind the hair instead of existing as 1/2 ligament.)

There is never any closure to these posts. This is because I usually run out of steam before I've said what I want to say, and "The End," however effective it may be, always suggests that it followed some sort of story.

I feel like, instead of writing a posts with words and everything, I should snap a photo of something very creative that I made and then upload it with the scanner we don't have onto the computer that would then proceed to post that snapshot on my blog...about four to five years later, depending on how many people before me left their programs running. We have a very slow computer. Sometimes, I hit the butterfly icon even when I have no intention of checking my email for another couple of days. This is only sometimes of course, because generally I have every intention of checking my email before the hour is up.

The only problem with this post-a-craft scheme is that I'm afraid that whatever my selection should be, it would pale in comparison to my fellow bloggers'. Not to say that I am not a competent craftsman, because that would be a disgusting lie. No, I hear that their are craftmice these days. And also craftlogs and craftpiecesofhay. I am forever outdoing a fellow craftpieceofhay in whatever challenge he confronts me with.

If only homemade trash was the hot commidity these days. I am certain I would school any number of my peers when it comes to ripping things up (assuming that the thing in question is easily tearible and requires no upper-arm strength). Just the other day, for example, I tore an important document worth a great deal of money into four thousand tiny shreds (roughly). I really didn't stay to count and confirm that there were four thousand of them because a large hissing snake, such as Lord Voldemort's snake (introduced in #4), was snapping a devilish tongue at me. I suppose the document must have been his, I should say. I should say so.

My Tired Fingers

My tired fingers feel as though an arabian knight with cruel intentions plucked seven sharpened harpoons from his desk drawer and plunged them deep into the tips of my unexpecting phalanges, or metacarpals, or whatever the scientific term for fingers is. The fact is that I was gong to be clever and use a 'fingers' synonym rather then the word that would've come naturally to a mere human, but my cleverness died off half way through the sentence, and my eyebrows drooped and the corners of my mouth sagged and I was robbed of creativity. I was left with a dull, twelve-year-old-boy-doing-playstation type of a sentence that any parent who knows their place would roll their eyes at. And then do something equally non-productive in the next room over.

The number of words that have gone unspewed today is dreadful. My brain is overflowing with many colorful and nonsensical arrangements and there is absolutely no one nearby to humor with them. As I debated whether or not I should clean my room and do other weekly chores, or should I just kill time on the computer and feel guilty instead, I happened to chance upon a memory of a blog I once had. Intrigued, I typed what I thought to be the url and once again marveled at the witticisms that had been mine so long ago, that I had neglected to revisit for such a long time.

This reminded me that it had been frighteningly long since I'd created another hideously arranged template, and in doing so wasted several hours of what, in a parallel universe, might have been time well spent on carving a stick or discovering fire. There was no denying that any frivolous room-cleaning should then by postponed, and I should hasten to spend a non-productive evening at the computer becoming pissed off at an increasingly heinous template.

So I poured myself a cup of coffee, dousing it with a round of childish half & half (those who have reached an outstanding level of maturity drink it black, shaking their heads at any sign of cream and dubbing it uncouth). I reached my hand into the expensive tea canister that, after being emptied of all of its former contents, was made instead the dark chocolate treasure container. I supposed that subconsciously I was hoping to restore my pride by popping a 60% cocoa piece instead of the milk chocolate candies with significantly fewer health benefits, after being so childish in my choice of half & half. I have to wonder, is there any hope for a person who drinks drip coffee with such modernized calorie-laden preferences? Or am I wasting my time to think that I can salvage my pride after being so thoroughly proved wrong by my own clever subconscious?

Either way, I have to warn you that after committing yourself to a Dove Dark Chocolate Promise, you truly will not be spared any amount of cheesiness. Some promises leave my inspired, energized, and occasionally teary-eyed, but today's just left me feeling empty. Such as, who was ever suspicious that this promise might be fulfilled? When you find that person, you must send them back to primary school where they learn the basics of colors and counting and drawing pictures and eating crayons or boogers or earwax, but certainly not paste which is the stereotype for what a kindergartner might dare to send down their tiny esophagus.

Oh no. I've gone and crumpled my Dove Promises' wrapper. It held the anecdotal promise with which I would've taken pleasure in regaling to you. Anyway, it said something along the lines of: smile so that someone will be curious of the mischief you may be smiling about." Which sounds an awful like to me of someone who is trying to make themselves appear very mysterious and clever, and perhaps arouse a strangers thoughts of "what on earth of a clever ploy might that maiden have been responsible for?" or "that lusciously gorgeous women has a sly smile on her face like that of the mona lisa, and I am seduced by the sexy mystery of her wickedly clever grin" or "that fox does not chortle aloud easily, and so I must constantly strive to tempt her with half-witted comments that do not come close to surpassing her own."

Okay I have ranted for quite some time now. I may have used every descriptive word I can think of.

Quinn, who was naturally good at basketball

Quinn was casually shooting hoops in his school gym, swishing every basket but never paying heed to his continous successes. Nor did he think anyone else was paying heed to his continuous successes, quite convinced that he was all alone in the gym be himself. After a particularly tricky shot which, amazingly, hit the target, despite the some 275 feet that rested between Quinn and the basket, Quinn heard a mysterious coughing noise.

He whirled around but saw no one. He whirled around again and saw a tall, handsomely featured man with a business suit and tie and bow tie and ribbon and tux and authentic hawaiin sandals leaning against a wall and watching his every move. Quinn was surprised when he realized that what he had heard was not a cough, but merely the clearing of the man's throat, which was hoarse and phlegmy.

The man approaced Quinn. "You've got a talent, son," he said, grabbing Quinn's poochy cheeks and wringing them awkwardly. "You've made every basket."

Quinn did not aknowledge this compliment, in an effort to maintain modesty. However, it was actually just sort of rude and weird.

The man continued. "I've only watched you for one half of one hour, but I've got a keen eye that can spot talent in a heartbeat. I think you could go national, and then bigger than national."

Quinn raised his eyebrows and feigned surprise- he'd always suspected he could go bigger than national.

"What's more, I don't think you'd even have to practice. You're already so good."

Quinn thought, heck, if I wouldn't have to practice, I should just go for it. So he went for it, and he never ever practiced. Ever. And on the day of the competition, it was just a normal day during which Quinn was a naturally good basketball player. He won the competition against a bunch of people who'd spent forever practicing and was a victorious celebritiy for 4 and one half of one hour.

Gracious me, I haven't posted in a wildly long time. I guess if you count my last post which is about that I am going to Japan, than it's only been about three weeks. Only that was simply a teaser post that was meant to inform my three religious blog checkers of my good news, except for that two of them already knew. I got out of school last Friday, and I attended a school dance against my will, and apparenltly my will was a thinker when it protested my attending this dance because it was a lousy bomb. I have gone to a dance twice before and I know the nature of these demons, except for that two of my friends didn't and they signed up for one and I really couldn't do any activity independently obviously, so my last resort was to sign up as well. I had no idea that when someone asks you to dance they are expecting to dance the entire song with you, and it was a particularly slow moving dud of a song so I mumbled a silly excuse two and a half minutes in and scored an escape. This scored few points with any of my dance partners which created an "I told you so" moment for my will, who, if you will remember, protested my attending this dance in the first place.
Today I went to a white elephant party, to which I brought three cans of Friskies canned cat food and two lucious blocks of Toblerone. Since I was the first to open a present I was also the last, and just when I thought I was stuck with an attractive husky G.I. Joe character forever I betrayed him and snatched back my cat food and delectable swiss chocolate. It was overall clever thinking on my part and I'd regail you with another one of my numerous accomplishments except for that I am going to go and experience the Thai culture at a local exotic resteraunt.

I AM GOING TO JAPAN!!!

I mowed the lawn today for the very first time. And I have to say I love it. We have a cranky lawn mower that you have to jolt into action. You pull this funky lever ten or twenty times and BOOM! You're in business. Only sometimes, after six or seven tugs, it's suspects that I'm trying to rev it up and it rebels. I get into such a pattern, about two or three seconds in between each attempt, that it quickly catches on. I have a feeling that, if the lawnmower were a cat, it would be clenching it's teeth together and maybe it's ears would be flat and unattractive and fierce. And maybe if it were a dog, it would have set it's buttocks on the ground and shifted all it's weight in such a way that it's impossible to budge. Sometimes I have to sneak up on it; like, I'll do nothing at all for four or five seconds, like make it think that I've forgotton all about trying to start the lawn mower today. And then, BAM! I'm at it with all my strength and it never knew what hit it.

Except for that it's hard to sneak up on a lawn mower. And this being my first time, I didn't know the little tricks that veteran mowers learn from experience. Like, it's better to start on a flat surface. Which, I guess, get's the lawn mower in a good mood or something. And also, it better have gas in it because if there isn't then the mower isn't even inclined to start. Little things like this should be looked into when trying to start a lawn mower.

Coffee and I go way back. I remember fondly the days of italian sodas and cremosas and other naive beverages from the cottage. I would step up to the cashier in wide-eyed sincerity and order a lemon italion soda, or a limi or kiwi if I was feeling particularly spicy, because that was the closest it got to 7up when you lived a soda pop-deprived childhood. On those sweltering 75 degree days of summer, I enjoyed $1 granitas, which consist of fruit juice with added sugar and blended ice, while curiously eyeing my brother's less innocent coffee beverage. That was forbidden for those under ten- the caffine would keep us up til God knows what hour.

I guess my mother and father knew it was bound to happen eventually, but that didn't stop the experience from being excruciatingly painful the first time I asked for my juice glass to be filled with coffee. I crept into the kitchen and grabbed one of the macho 12 oz juice glasses, knowing all the while that when my mother had reluctantly said yes, that it would be okay for me to fill a glass, she had been referring to the tamer 80z variety. Five sips in and the rest was history- I was lost to coffee, the vicious cycle starting right then and there in my own kitchen in my own house, in my own eight year old innocence. The only hope for me would have been to be slowly weened off with church coffee, which isn't really coffee but more like a strong tea. But I'd heard talk of church coffee and steered clear of it- the first sign of coffee snobbery.

Now coffee is a habit, a hobby if you will. I reckon our family gives the cottage more business then the rest of our town put together. I've moved on from drip coffee with cream and sugar, and now experiment with soy and interesting flavors and the dreaded extra shot. I spend twice as much allowance on coffee as I do clothes in a month, and my brother recently counted nearly two hundred dolllars out in change from the year's coffee spendings. Is this right? Are there better things for us to spend our earnings on? Ponder this, and in the meantime, answer this question for a while:

What is the most money you've ever spent on a single beverage and what was it?

I could really get in to living on my own. I possibly might try it for a living. It's 100% stress free, on account of no one is breathing down your neck to do chores or clean something up or accomplish anything at all. Take yesterday, for example- I spent way more time then anyone ever should on a crossword puzzle, esspeically a puzzle of the "Super Fun 'n Easy" variety. I laid down in the hammok, while simotaneously beginning another crossword, and ate a cliff bar for lunch. Nobody asked "That's all your eating for lunch? There's some vegetables in the fridge. I'm making a salad, and then maybe I'll go work out and lift weights or run 10 miles and then complete an abs routine. Then I'll probably cancel all the sugar and fatty foods from my diet and eat nothing but herbs and ice water. Ice water burns calories, you know." Nobody whined about how there were dishes left out. I hate a mess of dishes as much as the next person- that's why, eventually, I'll get around to cleaning them up. And today? I scattered a mess of song chords all over the floor and left three guitars and a music stand out in the back room. And I STILL haven't cleaned them up! I also cooked shrimp and pasta without anyone reminding me that the shrimp was for spagetti sauce sometime and probably shouldn't have been halfway emptied and then refrozen. Which I did, in fact, and nothing has exploded. And I also emptied some icecream on to a cutting board and made a mess with grahm crackers and chocolate chips and blueberries. It was completely awesome and rewarding, and I'll probably do it again next time. That is, unless mother and father read this post, in which case there probably won't be a next time.

Today, I swatted a fly that was hovering over our kitchen stove. It flattened and fell into a boiling basin of whole wheat linguine. I fished it out with a wooden spoon and tossed it in the sink. Then I ate the linguine.

I'm usually pretty okay when it comes to being a planet friendly tree hugging vegetarians. I usually recycle (unless, of coarse, the paper bin is over 20 feet away- I mean, seriously) and I use both sides of my college ruled paper before tossing it, unless I've written with .5 lead, in which case I've pushed so hard that the opposite side of the paper is bumpy and therefore not available for future usage. But there's this new contraption that some other, more dedicated planet friendly tree hugging vegetarian has thought up, that I hate with a blind, vicious fury, comparable to Lord Voldemort after being yet again outsmarted by Harry in number four, or the White Witch spotting Aslan when she was so sure she'd done away with him on the stone table. But in this case, Aslan came in the form of the undoubtedly economical but extremely tedious blow-dry hand-dryers that are rapidly replacing every paper towel dispenser in the country. Now, after a good solid void a thorough hand washing is recommended, which would include lathering up with any variation of a St. Ives soap dispenser and cleansing your hands with lots and lots of water. Which, inevitably, would leave them dripping, begging tearfully for a cozy, dry paper towel of sorts to dry and warm them.

Enter a useless automatic hand dryer. Which leaves them unsatisfied and semi-sticky. And still wet.

And also, these things take a decade or two. Which is great if your a lonely grunting cavemen that has nothing else to do but make rabbit stew and dry his hands. But a happening teen, especially a teen in an airport bathroom five minutes before her plane blasts off really has no time for such nonsense. Especially if this teen is BRUSHING HER TEETH, in which case she is forced to dry her toothbrush under an automatic hand dryer before tossing it in her bag and hot footing it down to C4.

Above is a mugshot I picked up off google images.

Thriller!

Ever since I saw 13 Going On 30 I have longed to learn the thrilller dance. So I started out by typing "Thriller" into Amazon Music Downloads. And got zero perfect matches, and a whole bunch that weren't related. And then I went to launch.yahoo.com. The video is over thirteen minutes long, and they don't start dancing until eight minutes in. And there's no fasforward button. Then I visited a whole bunch of sites that wanted me to buy the video, which is a terrible deal and I will not shake on it because of it's free at Yahoo. Finally I've found a version that only includes the section of the thirteen minute production where Michael and a few hideous beasts (featuring terribly old-fashioned computer graphics) dance in the graveyard. And, bless my kind heart, I've given you the link. I expect most of you will probably want to learn this dance, too. The first link is for the just-dancing video but if you go to launch.yahoo.com, you can find the entire movie.

http://www.grouper.com/GlobalMedia/MediaDetails.aspx?id=663747&st=0&s=7&q=thriller

6:32

The fact that I haven't posted since April Somethingth has been weighing heavily on my conscience these last few days. I tried to post yesterday. I really did. Only I got caught up in trying to alter my template, and you know how it is: you spend years deleting and resetting and gong insane and by the time you've given up you're so sick of the computer you're considering going Amish. Atleast, that's the way it was with me.

It's six thirty two a.m. right now. Contrary to public opinion, Veget is not a chipper sparrow in the early hours of the morning, nor is she ever a chipper sparrow. The fact that it is before nine o clock only adds to my dull, lifeles quality at the moment. It's six thirty four, now. It took me two minutes to write like three sentences, and that's typing about sixty words per minute. The receptors in my fingers are currently receiving nada from my brain.

I stared out my window for inspiration a second ago. Artists and musicians are inspired from simple stuffs (the song "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream, you know). I only wish everything came to me in a dream; that would be a brilliant excuse to sleep all day.

whats she doing? the lazy bum, she's been sleeping for thirty nine hours!

shhh!!! don't wake her! veget is being creatively inspired right now. she'll wake up and paint the Sistine chapel!

whoever said that is dumb. the chapel has already been dealt with. the only fault in my plan is that people would catch on once i started waking up only to do something uniquely human such as feed the cats or watch tv or something. Then again, type a few random words and throw in sporadic spacing and I could create a beautiful free verse. That might be a better bet because even if no one understands it the majority of the world like to say they do.