So I saw an article on Yahoo with this headline and followed it, hoping for some kind of awesome insight. Sadly, it was super boring and predictable. Mortgage is some gargantuan chunk of your income? Can’t pay your credit card bills? Duh.

It occurred to me that some of you may be living beyond your means and not even know it (and besides, since when does a 600 or less credit score mean you’re living beyond your means? It could just mean you’re a deadbeat or a total f-ck up or think repaying student loans is for chumps).

Regardless, I thought I’d offer some REAL tips to clue you in that maybe it’s time to cut back a little on the champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

1. Your revolving credit card balance is in the high-six or low-seven digits.

The key word here is REVOLVING. It’s one thing if you’re racking up the big bills every month and able to pay them in full, and it’s another thing if not.

(By the way, if you’re of the former group, could you shoot me an e-mail or buy me a beer or several hundred beers or whatever seems reasonable?)

2. You have a gold plated swimming pool with a custom mosaic of your face on the bottom…and you’re paying that off with your job as night manager of a Taco Bell.

Enough said.

I know I keep picking on him, but it's meant affectionately. Really. Probably.

3. You’ve turned your face into a sphinx, have a $50,000 a month pill habit, your own amusement park in your yard, and at least three doctors on permanent staff, one of whom puts you to ‘sleep’ with anesthesia.

Doesn’t sound so bad?
Did I mention you haven’t really had a hit album since like 1988?

4. You just chartered a private jet to Mustique for a week and got home to find your gas, cable, and electricity have been shut off.

Not judging. Just saying you might want to make sure you can cover the basics before you start sharing Mai Tais and tanning oil with David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

5. You’re on a first-name basis with your local repo-man.

Once again, enough said.

I have to admit it.

I hate to admit it.
But I have to admit it.

I love me some crazy.

Sure, I enjoy the occasional weird or strange or bizarre, but deep down, at the end of the day, I’m all about the crazy. When I was getting my psychology degree, I took every abnormal psych class they had. And I would pester the professors for real-life, worst case scenario stories; the crazier, the better.

That’s probably why I was totally over the Michael Jackson death news coverage. His mom, his ex-wife, Diana Ross, Neverland, the poor kids who didn’t think looked like him due to their glaring whiteness, but everyone else said had his nose or eyes or something. Yeah yeah yeah…

But what’s this?

Diprivan?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative!?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative that can only be administered by an anesthesiologist!?!?

TRAVELING with your own, personal anethesiologist on tour?!?!!??!!!??

Coma by night, jazz hands by day.

Wow.

That’s f-ing CRAZY.

And I kind of love it.

Thanks Wacko Jacko.

I should have known I could count on you.

No one on anything less than sixteen not-to-be-combined substances could dance like that.

Last year I had a surgery on my bladder, and there was a MAJOR build-up around the anesthesiology part.

I literally was counseled for around 10 minutes that I could wake up in extreme emotional distress and thinking I was a panther or Courtney Love and did I have anything weighing on me that I wanted to talk about now, before they put me under?

(I was so seriously stressed that by that idea. I thought I might confess to killing Kennedy or something.)

Anyway, I don’t know what they used, but here’s how the day went (so that we can all vicariously pretend to be Michael Jackson).

I had to quit eating at 10pm the night before.

• Kind of worked and mostly fretted all day.
• My procedure was scheduled for 3:15pm, and arrival at the hospital was at 2:30pm.
• Sat in chair.
• Time passed.
• Someone came to get me, and realized that no one had taken my blood.
• Blood-taking lady was kind of mean.
• I was so hungry I could cry.
• Aforementioned counseling about hte ravages of anesthesia and a general disussion about kayaking (unrelated).
• Anesthesiologist was named Dr. Wolf and he’d recently been to Africa and I liked him a hell of a lot better than my bitchy urologist.
• Sat in bed a nervous wreck waiting to wheeled into operating room and drooling over the smell of toast because it was now 4:15pm and I was insanely hungry.
• Woke up in serious pain…and hungry, but not hysterically crying or confessing all my deep, dark secrets.
• I don’t recall whether I felt rested or woozy or groggy or anything, because everything was eclipsed by the pain. (It was a procedure where apparently not everyone wakes up hurting, so they wait until you wake up to determine if you’re going to need pain medication.)

Ate toast, and learned my surgeon had long gone home without ever even seeing or talking to me. Nice.

So there you have it!

Anesthesia ROCKS!

(or maybe it doesn’t?)

This also leaves me wondering: Did he ever eat?

You have to starve before getting anesthesia so that if it makes you puke, you don’t choke to death on the ham sandwich you had for lunch. If he did this every night, when the hell did he eat!?

I guess that explains the Skeletor physique…

Meanwhile, the year before last I had to have a gum transplant (where they cut a chunk out of the roof of your mouth and attach it to your gums by your molars) and they gave me this pill beforehand and it was HEAVEN.

I was blissed out and doped up but without any ill-feeling side effects and my brain would notice something and then quickly move back to just spacing out. It was like achieving Zen without even trying.

I remember the procedure…but not really. I remember it as a very hazy series of moments.

I basically just sat there and thunk happy thoughts whilst they sliced and diced my mouth. And although that sounds awful and probably was awful, I honestly kind of remember it like a good day.

What am I trying to say?

If I ever get super rich and super crazy, I’m demanding some of that stuff. Stat.

Now there are two new mothers for the world to look down on and judge harshly! Yay!

I know I said I’d catch you up on the rest of my trip, but that can wait. Seriously, have you seen these stories!?

First, winning the ‘you’re never too old to be an idiot’ prize:

A baby at 66 for Elizabeth Adeney – set to become Britain’s oldest mother

She may be an old mom, but she has youthful taste in keychains.

With her sizeable bump on show, this is Elizabeth Adeney – Britain’s oldest mother-to-be.

At 66, she is four years older than the previous record holder.

Mrs Adeney, who is around eight months pregnant, is believed to have undergone IVF abroad because most British clinics will not treat women over the age of 50. 

Friends say that the divorcee, a wealthy businesswoman who is still working a five-day week, is in perfect health and looking forward to the birth of what is thought to be her first child.

But her pregnancy will reignite the debate over late motherhood and the ability of science to enable women in their 50s and 60s to become mothers.

Mrs Adeney will be just short of her 80th birthday when her child becomes a teenager.

A friend said she had been desperate to conceive for years.

Last year, she travelled to the Ukraine, where a controversial IVF clinic has helped countless women get pregnant using donor eggs and sperm.

The friend added: ‘She was desperate for a child. She was over the moon when she learned last year that she was pregnant and has been quite open about it – it’s not the sort of thing she can hide.

‘Elizabeth has had a pretty good pregnancy. She has been very well, considering her age – I’m amazed how she keeps going.

‘She does get up a little later in the mornings than she used to and sometimes spends an hour or two at home before going to work but she is still at her business Monday to Friday.’

Mrs Adeney, the managing director of a firm in Mildenhall, Suffolk, which produces plastic and textile products, is described by friends as ‘very bright and single-minded’.

Yesterday, she declined to discuss her condition.

Here’s my only issue with this: Seeing as this child is the product of a donor egg, it is in no way biologically related to her. Why do this? There are thousands of older children who need to be adopted, surely with her wealth (and a nanny) she could have helped one (or more) of them? Plus, if she adopted someone currently four or five or even eight or nine years old, she may actually live  to be old enough to see them graduate from college. Just sayin’…

Second, winning the “I Thought This Only Happened With Dogs and Pigs” award:

Twin baby boys have two different fathers

A mother’s fling has resulted in her bearing twins – by different fathers.

At least the odd twin out isn't an albino.

Eleven-month-old Justin and Jordan Washington may have arrived in the world within just seven minutes of each other, but in an amazing twist of fate, they are half brothers.

Each has a different dad because their mother Mia Washington, had an affair and conceived two babies by different men at the same time.

The truth came out when Mia visited Clear Diagnostics DNA Lab after noticing the twins have different facial features.

A paternity test confirmed her fears – it showed there was only a 0.001 chance that Justin and Jordan have the same father.

‘It’s very crazy, most people don’t believe it can happen but it really can,’ said Genny Thibodeaux, from Clear Diagnostics DNA Lab.

According to doctors, if a woman has more than one sexual partner while she is ovulating, there’s a miniscule chance that different sperm cells can fertilise two separate eggs.

The couple is now coping with the aftermath of the DNA bombshell and plan to tell the twins when they’re old enough to understand.

Mia added: ‘When they opened the envelope and delivered the news they told me there was zero chance that James was Justin’s father.

‘My jaw dropped open.

‘It was the weirdest thing to think that two little babies could have grown in my stomach together and been born seven minutes apart but yet have different fathers.

‘I had never heard of it happening anywhere else in the world and literally had thought it would have been impossible.

‘James said he would stay because he loved me and raise both of the twins as his own.’

Hmmm…

Well, I suppose when they’re old enough to understand the word ‘slut’, it won’t be too hard to explain the circumstances to the little guys…

Meanwhile, I thought I should add that the caption on one of the photos of the happy family indicated that Mia was soon to deliver a third baby.

Good for you, James. And good luck. To quote George Bernard Shaw: We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

That’s the sound of my brain melting.

Smells kinda good, doesn’t it?

Giant Mystery Blob Discovered Near Dawn of Time

A newly found primordial blob may represent the most massive object ever discovered in the early universe, researchers announced today.

The gas cloud, spotted from 12.9 billion light-years away, could signal the earliest stages of galaxy formation back when the universe was just 800 million years old.

Ah, yes. Of course. NOW I remember when this happened...

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). An object 12.9 billion light-years away is seen as it existed 12.9 billion years ago, and the light is just now arriving.

 The cloud predates similar blobs, known as Lyman-Alpha blobs, which existed when the universe was 2 billion to 3 billion years old. Researchers named their new find Himiko, after an ancient Japanese queen with an equally murky past.

 

Himiko holds more than 10 times as much mass as the next largest object found in the early universe, or roughly the equivalent mass of 40 billion suns. At 55,000 light years across, it spans about half the diameter of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Lyman-Alpha blobs remain a mystery because existing telescopes have a hard time peering so far back to nearly the dawn of the universe.

Himiko sits right on the doorstep of an era called the reionization epoch, which lasted between 200 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang. That’s when the universe had just emerged from its cosmic dark ages and had begun brightening through the formation of stars and galaxies. Hot, energized hydrogen gas from that time period has allowed astronomers to begin seeing some objects — as much good as it does to squint at such fuzzy blobs.

Okay, so wha…?

what?

WHAT?

(more…)

So last night, I went and played poker with some friends and friends of those friends. By and large, it was uneventful, and I lost my $5.00 (More accurately: I was robbed! I had a pocket pair [queens] AND there was a queen in the flop, and I went all in [as I saw it, I had no choice], and someone got a flush on the river. Robbed! Like I said! And I will remember this the next time the poker gods want something from me. Harrumph.)

So anyway, minus getting screwed over by the poker powers that be, I learned something I never knew before. I discovered the demographic responsible for making the ‘Bret Michaels Rock of Love Bus’ the #1 show on VH1 (according to someone of said demographic.). And it’s 25-30. And you know what else?

Are you ready for this?
Are you sitting down?

It’s MEN.

Whoa Nelly. (And are those gang symbols he is flashing?? Is he threatening me!?)

Men freaking LOVE that garbage! And they seemed to be upset about his final selection (which I don’t have enough insight on to comment about as I didn’t see the end, but whatever, because my real point stands which is) MEN WATCH AND ARE EMOTIONALLY ENGAGED IN BRET MICHAEL’S ROCK OF LOVE BUS!!!

And I somehow find this strangely comforting.

I do.

I loved that one (married, straight) guy asked his friend in a girl-like squeal, “Did you see who he PICKED!?”

Somehow the universe seemed brighter.

And my own low-brow taste, less low-brow.

Im pretty sure this is fake, although my suspicious news source claimed otherwise.

And then, in the course of general, occasionally more juvenile ‘Super Bad’-esque conversation than I’m typically part of, someone asked if we’d seen the footage about the guy with a pine tree growing in his lungs.

WHAT!?

I have a blog in which I more or less just make fun of stupid sh*t, and I don’t know this?

An obviously highly scientific analysis by someone Chinese. I only wish the tree had some ornaments on it or maybe a star on top.

No one phoned me or sent me a link?

I need to start watching more Bret Michaels Rock of Love Bus…

So anyway, if you’re not living under a rock or with three broken laptops, perhaps you heard this ‘alleged’ craziness? Oddly enough, I couldn’t find a single reliable news source, and even those I did find (in the not reliable category with names like ‘inquisitr.com’ – intentionally missing the final vowel, probably because it was already taken by a valid gossip rag) kept using terms like ‘alleged’ and ‘supposed’ and ‘claim.’

Again, no clue if this is actual medical proof or some turkey gizzards and a chunk of pine branch from someone's back yard. It does seem like an awful big hunk of lung for a biopsy!?

So allegedly, a Russian guy went into the emergency room with chest pain and was coughing blood and somehow or other (and the evidence, as you can see, varies…as does the story) they discovered it was a fir tree.

Supposedly, a 2” m-ther f-cking FIR TREE HAD TAKEN ROOT IN HIS LUNGS.

The only problem is that even though Russian media has quoted Russian doctors about this amazingly horrible occurrence, a Russian professor has chimed in with the following: “It is absolutely impossible for a green plant to grow from this small seed inside a man’s body. In order for a plant to start growing from the seed, it needs a lot of conditions – light, then water and certain temperature.”

So…I don’t know what to make of it.

Maybe Russia is punking us?

Or misunderstood the date on which we celebrate April Fool’s Day?

Or maybe trees have turned evil and are morphing into parasitic beings?

It would make a good plot for a horror film.

Meanwhile, considering this is even worse than spiders laying eggs in your ears, I’m going to put it into the box of ‘another hideous idea that I am going to hope isn’t true.’

But just to be safe, I’m keeping my mouth closed for the rest of my life.