See what I mean?

Central Pennsylvania

Stardate 06092009

• Is there a rock in my shoe?

• Alpacas are super bizarre-looking critters, kind of like a the bastard love child of a llama and a rabbit and Twiggy. Slutty rabbits. Have they no sense?

• Combined smell of bushes on corner resemble Sarah Jessica Parker’s ‘Lovely’ perfume to a remarkable degree.

• Thirsty. So thirsty.

• Why is a small dirt road called “Palamino Parkway”?

• Stared at rusty puddle for a long time before realizing that drinking it may actually make matters worse.

• Hot. So hot.

• Broken – but still alive – turtle on the side of the road. Wondered if I came back and duct taped its shell back together if it could live out its life that way? Could it borrow somebody else’s shell a la a hermit crab? Realized answer was probably ‘no’ on both counts. Sad.

• Saw water in the distance. Dropped to knees and crawled toward it in my tattered running clothes. Realized it was a mirage. Got up and continued running.

• Cows stink, and on a humid day they stink more than usual.
• Sweaty. So sweaty.
• Pulled giant knot out of my ponytail. How long has that been there?

• I wait four miles into the run for the line ‘If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home’ and after it’s come and gone, I kind of don’t want to keep running any more.

• Considered flagging down passing cars and asking if they had some water or another beverage they could spare.

• Possum in the middle of the street (fresh road kill last Wednesday) now looking very ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

• I think my eyeballs are sweating. Or maybe that’s just tears?

• Only breeze of entire five miles  provided by a semi-truck going by at 80 mph. Thanks. Sort of.

• It’s all I can do to put one foot in front of the other.

• Soooooo thirsty. What was I thinking!?
• Home!
• Great run. Can’t wait to go again on Thursday!

I’m in hand-to-hand combat with an abysmal internet connection.

This is only  marginally preferable to no internet connection (i.e. my status for the last couple days).

To catch you up, I’m staying in a little cabin right off the water and shirking all of my primary responsibilities. I’ve come to appreciate that responsibility shirking may be what I was put on this earth to do. That or sleep and have crazy dreams, a skill I possess to a degree that can only be called a gift.

What I was NOT put on this earth to do includes (in no particular order):

• Downhill ski
• Salsa dance
• Keep African Violets alive
• Anything involving staring into people’s open mouths and touching their teeth.
• Work on a chain gang
• Mule drugs across the Mexican border
• Ultimate fight
• Snowboard
• Put false eyelashes on other people
• Raise pigeons/squab/any other secret code for ‘pigeon’
• Belly dance
• Teach at clown school
• Wrestle midgets in pudding (learned THAT the hard way!)
• Impersonate Madonna
• Stalk Madonna
• Forge checks drawn on any of Madonna’s bank accounts
• Name hurricanes (although I do feel it’s time we dug into the more ethnic names: Huricanes Beyonce, Cheech, and Plaxico already!)
• Skateboard professionally
• Build a rocket ship that actually works
• Swallow swords
• Swallow fire
• Swallow swallows
• Strip dance

I could go on, but it will get boring, and I care about you too much to do that to you.

However, on the topic of strip dancing, I do have something to share: You see, I remembered something yesterday while I was running in the woods. I’m doing a 12K race on Sunday, and I’ve been running a longer distance than usual – and doing so faster than usual – in the hopes of finishing in under an hour. Thus, I have additional time on my hands with which to think worthless thoughts.

(more…)

Your friendly host, hard at work on yet another entertaining blog, and doing some unpaid product placement for Grape Nuts while she's at it.

So yesterday at the gym, I had an idea. It was around the time that I was using the chest press and marveling at my own weakness, and the guy with the giant steroid body and tiny little head walked by. I suppose the sight of him made it suddenly occur to me that half of these people belong in a zoo. Like if aliens ever come, they should stick a majority sampling of the individuals frequenting my local club into cages and give them some gym equipment and leave them be.

• Like the skinny Asian guy who does all the weights crazy fast, as if in some sort of ‘bad form’ speed competition.

• Or the old man that wears the tiny short shorts and then groans really loudly every time he lifts a weight so you’ll look at him.

• Or the lady who wears the slacks and button-down shirt and lifts free weights.

See? Look at the gathered crowd. And in the rain, no less. People love performance art! Or naked guys sitting in plastic bubbles. Either way.

Anyway, all these human oddities got me thinking about performance art. You know, where someone stages some kind of odd event – be it twenty people hula hooping at once, or the individuals mulling around Grand Central station becoming suddenly, eerily quiet all at the same time – in the name of art. Speaking of which, can you imagine being the guy wandering around Grand Central the day that happened and NOT realizing what was going on? Definitely an end-of-the world ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ moment, if ever there were.

At any rate, while musing on my own potential as a performer of the absurd, I decided that if I ever had the opportunity and the government funding, I would have someone build me a zoo habitat, and I’d hang out there for a couple weeks. I’m thinking a part land/part water habitat might be nice. Something like what they build for a hippo or the penguins, only not so cold. I could swim some laps, or maybe play with a ball.

That's what I'm talking about.

A couple times a day, they could bring me my food in a bucket, and toss individual shrimps or Chicken McNuggets into my mouth. I’d act either ferocious or friendly at my keeper’s approach, depending upon my mood. If you were in charge of my maintenance, you could never be sure if I’d hug you or try to swipe you with my paws (hands).

Once in a while they could introduce a new object into my habitat to keep me entertained and watch me interact with it, like a cardboard box or an old, discarded Christmas tree or a Nintendo Wii. Or maybe bring my dog by for a visit, and we he could kick my @ss at tug-of-war (like he usually does, only without an audience). Heck, bring me a Bow Flex, and I could do some unimpressive weight lifting or approach the machine in fear and awe like the monkeys with the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And, of course, if you ‘accidentally’ fell into my cage, I would attack you with extreme prejudice. But remember: I am a national treasure, so you can’t fight back.