Saturday, November 28, 2009

This is your brain on turkey... (and stuffing, and potatoes and pie. LOTS of pie.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps
Crossed eyed Mosquitos and Bow-Legged Ants
The Show is Free, Please pay at the door.
Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.
I come before you to stand behind you,
At this round table with four square corners,
To tell you something I know nothing about.

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced one another,
Pulled out their guns and shot each other.
If you don't believe my lie, it's true.
Ask the blind man over there- He sees everything.




I'd say this is a well thought out post to give you a little giggle on the monday after a long holiday weekend but I'd be lying.

In other words. I don't have enough brain power to come up with anything of my own. So instead I've graced you with the ridiculous tale of Two Dead Boys that my Husband's family likes to tell. The copious amounts of food that I've ingested since Thanksgiving has created a(nother) layer of fat around my brain which valid thoughts cannot get through. So I'll leave you with one more boy, this one very much alive and very amused. Turns out that shaking out fabric can be added to the list of things that can amuse small children. Why do we buy kids toys again? Anyway, try not to crack a smile during this video, I dare you. I'm not sure it's possible.

Baby Laughing from Melissa Bonnice on Vimeo.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Survey Says- Stripper

I'm beginning to think I've chosen the wrong career. For one, teaching is a lot of work. I'm not really big on a lot of work. I'd much rather be paid lots of money to do, well, nothing really. Secondly, I really really love high heels. And I mean high heels. All of these...




are on my Amazon wish list and they don't even brush the tip of the iceberg. All of these have me drooling over my keyboard. Did you notice the search terms there? Yeah "Bordello Shoes." Don't worry it's a line of shoes, I don't actually specifically search for hooker shoes, they just happen to be what comes up when I find something I like. Another thing that should probably have me looking elsewhere for shoes? The other people who buy these tend to be...different. Which is fine but it tells you something. Fairly often the reviews are made by men. And not "I bought these for my wife" men. Cross dressing men. NEWSFLASH Oh my god you guys I wan't kidding when I said the other people who buys these shoes are different. I was looking for a review I saw last night to show you guys when I came across this little gem:

"My slaves love it when I pace in front of them with these on. The best part is that they're easy to clean - if you know what I mean."

WHO WRITES THAT?! And yet I still love the shoes. I'll admit it, they're stripper, and apparently Dominatrix, shoes, but at least they aren't clear and have goldfish in them or something okay?
But the biggest reason I should be a stripper, the reason that would send me home with thousands every night?

Creepers dig me.

Not joke, I attract the craziest guys out there. Also? Old guys. I was at the deli the other day and the guy who was getting my cheese gave me the package and a slice for me and then said "Goodbye hun, see you tomorrow morning!" in a low sort of voice and winked. My husband was confused. I was too. I don't even know what that means, but it was strange. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have eaten that piece of cheese either. but my ability to say no to even the sketchiest of food is a whole 'nother blog in itself. i also didn't share the cheese with my husband despite his protests. It felt too much like betraying my elderly deli man.

So I just need to lose a shit tonfew pounds and work on losing the few scruples I have left and I'll be golden. Seriously, what do you guys think of the name? Golden.... Rod? Or Destiny Diamond? Deysi Lexus Candy Cherry Roxy? Or maybe I can work a few places and have different names. I even have the Shoes picked out already.




P.S. If I go with Golden I'm totally wearing these.

Friday, November 20, 2009

♫ I had Christmas down in Af-rica!

I have another confession to make.
I've listened to Christmas Carols already. And I liked it.

I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet and yada yada yada but I couldn't help myself. There's a station here in Boston that I have in my presets that starts playing them November 1st. I'll say this though, I have only listened sparingly. I can't bring myself to go full on Christmas before Thanksgiving but I learned the hard way last year that being a scrooge about when is and isn't appropriate to be in the Christmas Spirit kind of ruined the holidays for me. I became a full on Christmas Nazi. Outrage at the Carols on the radio. Indignation at the premature arrival of Santa and decorations at the mall. Full on refusal to acknowledge Christmas until December 1st. Any you know what happened? I never got into the spirit at all. I never really got excited and the Holidays were entirely anti-climactic. Which was extremely disappointing because I love this time of year.

And now the more I think about it, I fail to see where my horror stemmed from last year. Why spend the time and emotions trying to downplay christmas and fit it into a little box? Christmas is something that should be fun and enjoyable. Not something to be dreaded and acknowledged only when December is really and truly here and it can no longer be ignored. As a kid I spent months building up to Christmas and I never regretted it, so why start now? And although I made this decision weeks ago, Anissa's stroke has only cemented it for me. You never know what could happen to yourself or anyone else in your life and I don't want to miss a single bit of joy because I'm being jaded by popular culture. Christmas has been commercialized yes. There's no denying it and there's not much we can do about it but in reality it's only as commercialized as you allow it to be. If you see the Carols on the radio and the decorations everywhere as an evil Consumerist plot to get you to spend money then that's what they'll be. This year I'm choosing to ignore the consumerism as much as possible. I will be grateful for the Carols being on the radio already and sing along with them like I did when I was little. And I will enjoy the decorations because they are pretty and are big bright reminders that a wonderful time of the year is nearly here. I'm looking forward to Christmas for what I love about it and not being a grump about some of the hassles that come along with it. And you know what? I feel merrier already.

And one quick thing before I go. I say Happy Holidays and always will. Not because I want to be PC or because I'm afraid to offend anyone but because I see this time of year, from Thanksgiving to New Years, as the Holidays. Christmas is a single day and I think the season encompasses more than that. I don't not say Merry Christmas but I like Happy Holidays. And I find it extremely offensive when people get angry about me saying it. Also, while I celebrate Christmas, there are other lovely holidays that happen around this time as well and I see no reason why they shouldn't be included in the season simply because I don't personally celebrate them. So there. Hmph. ;D

P.S. The title is from the best Christmas Carol ever by Straight No Chaser - 12 Days of Christmas. Go listen to it!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

#PrayersforAnissa

Driving home tonight I was damning that I didn't have anything to post about. I wish I still didn't. As most anyone who reads this knows, Anissa, from Aiming Low and #FreeAnissa had a stroke earlier and is now in the ICU. I barely even know her and yet I feel extremely thrown by this. Because I don't feel like I barely know her. I met her twice and I've read all her stories and even if I don't "know" her I know her. She's smart and funny and bright. She's so full of life and energy and to think of her in the ICU seems unfathomable. I keep checking twitter hoping the next post will be the one I want to hear. That instead of all the uncertainty and fear, there could again be the joy and supreme laughter that Anissa brings. And all I can think of is how spamming twitter saved her account and I want to be able to spam someone or something with enough #PrayersforAnissa that everything will be fine. I feel completely helpless, and I'm not even really her friend. Even knowing that no amount of tweeting and hash tags can change anything I want to update every moment until Anissa's name fills the Trending topics bar. There's not much I can do besides this. But instead I'll pray because that is what I can do. I'll pray until I've spammed God's inbox full and he makes her all better just so he can stop hearing from us. Because goodness knows if sheer volume can change the sway of things then the people rooting for Anissa's full and rapid recovery have got this in the bag. Because that's Anissa, she's fucking awesome and anyone who's been around her knows this.

And so, because Twitter can't help us now, I'll take a page from Anissa and end this with
"f.r.o.G…fully relying on God"


Anyone interested in Helping Anissa and her family can find more information here.
Page is getting lots of traffic so I'll post here too to save it some.

As you may have heard, Anissa, our beloved friend and leader at Aiming Low, suffered a stroke on Tuesday afternoon. She is in the hospital right now, in the ICU.

More than anything, Anissa needs your prayers and positive thoughts but to the many people in the Atlanta area who have offered help to the Mayhew family, we have set up a form for you to fill out so we can have everyone’s contact info in one place (please be assured your information will be kept private). If you are NOT in the Atlanta area but still want to help, you can also leave your information on that form.

Things that would be helpful right now are gift cards to restaurants and gift cards to the movies or to Blockbuster (to help keep the kids occupied) and gas/hotel gift cards for her extended family. We will be setting up a PO Box on Wednesday and posting the address here along with any updates. Please don’t send anything to the hospital or the Mayhew home. If you have questions, please email helpforanissa@gmail.com

We ask that you please respect the Mayhew family’s privacy by NOT calling the hospital and we thank you all SO MUCH for your outpouring of love and support for Anissa and her family.

With thanks and love,
The Aiming Low Team

If you would like to send something to Anissa and her family, we have set up a P.O. Box.
860 Johnson Ferry Road 140-184
Atlanta, GA 30342

Thursday, November 12, 2009

♫ These are my con-fe-shuns!

Just one confession tonight actually. And it must be the the two drinks I've had, or maybe it's all the Hip-Hop I'm dancing to (badly- think dying animals) around the kitchen as I bake, but either way I don't tell this people unless we're already good friends for fear they won't talk to me ever again. So here it is.

My name is Melissa. And I hate chocolate chip cookies.

It's true. And the part that usually kills people? It's the chocolate I hate. I hate chocolate chips. I hate them in cookies and I hate them in ice cream. They ruin everything. I put them in the same category as raisins. The "Stay the F*ck out of anything I'm eating" category. And whenever I make Chocolate Chip cookies for my family? I make a bunch of chip-less ones for me. They're amazing, so delicious without the chocolate to ruin it. The only way chocolate chip cookies are edible is when the chocolate is melty. Chocolate in general is only edible when melty actually. (Raisins on the other hand have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.) So thats it. I hate chocolate chips. I undertstand if we can't be friends anymore. But before you walk away forever consider this. I totally give away any chips I find in my cookies. Thats more for you!
So just think about it okay?

Monday, November 9, 2009

Stuck between a Hobo and the Evil Spider of death.

I'm an arachnophobe.
However, I am both more and less arachnophobic than others who fear spiders. It's spidery movement that freaks me out the most, spiders running give me full blown panic attacks. Even thinking about it makes me twitchy. As long as they don't move and aren't on me, I can deal, sorta. Actually, I have this sick compulsion to watch them, and in the case of the huge spider of death that recently took up residence on my back porch, photograph them-a lot. The watching them is purely self preservation, if they move I'm not having them sneak up on me and bite my face off, I'm out of there.

One of my most horrifying spider moments happened recently while I was driving my mother home. As we were on the highway, I had a spider in my dashboard. As in behind the plexiglass, running all over the gauges, being backlit by the lights? Yeah, insert panic here. Only the fact that the thing was stuck behind the glass stopped us from dying in a fiery crash. Pulling over wasn't really an option since we were on the highway in a tunnel and my mother can't drive standard anyway. So I had to keep driving, both hands on the wheel, near the dashboard, and I couldn't stop watching it. My mother was sure that my constantly flickering eyes were going to kill us but I assured her that if that thing found a way out and crawled up my arm as we were driving, there was no hope anyway. (And it was one of those white/green ones, the super nasty ones, you know which ones I mean right? Ew.) So I kept driving, eyes going from road to spider and back again every .3 seconds and I'm getting hysterical, I started laughing and crying at the same time and started hyperventilating, it was bad. So we finally get to my mother's house I drop her off and try to get home as fast as possible so I can be free of my own personal little hell when the thing disappears. Never to be seen again. But it really only made me panic even more because the thing obviously found a way through the vents and is going to be blown into my eyes and kill me, right?

Anyway.
Then comes this weekend when this (Warning: There is a bunch of my big nasty spider pictures there.) decided to make it's big nasty home on my back porch. He is like, the mother of all nastiness and evil. Well, not really. I have seen bigger nastier spiders which ran off the dock over the water to eat me alive, but that was in Maine. Maine is woods , it's supposed to be full of big nasty spiders the size of pancakes, you expect them there. There are reasons I don't live in Maine. I live in Boston, a big very urban city, not woodsy, not full of big nasty spiders. Or so I thought, I want a refund. But at least He was away from the doorway and I never caught him moving and I could just use the front door. My sister in law and mother in law both suggested they could shoo him away with a broom, to which I told them in my very calm and loving way "F*cking hell no!" Because then he'd get mad and come wait for me and ambush me in my bed. This is a well established fact.
So this leads me to tonight. When I pulled up to my house, there was a very dirty, very homeless looking man on my front porch. Usually I just give homeless people a few bucks and go on my way but what the hell was he doing on my porch?! I was sure that if I tried to go in the house I'd end up clearing out the basement for a hobo apartment because I don't know how to tell people no, or be mean. That's a lie, i tell friends and family no and am mean all the time, I don't know how to do those things with strangers. Creepy strangers in particular. I once spent over an hour talking to a 40 something year old guy who lived in his mom's basement and wanted to invent an insulated rolling backpack that could carry 4 gallons of milk for people who didn't have cars and happened to buy four gallons of milk at a time. Like him. I told him I thought he was on to something. So obviously there was no way I could start up a conversation with this hobo on my porch, he'd end asking to come live in my bathroom or something and this isn't even my house. That left the spider. I manned up walked and back there only to find that rather than being to the right of the door, he had built a new web! Anyone care to guess where? Across the door! OF COURSE! And not only that, he was in the middle of the web-Moving. And yet, it was either duck under the web and run or have a hobo using my toothbrush. So I did it, I ducked, I ran, I screeched and brushed off every inch of my body once I was inside. And it's a damn good thing the door was unlocked because I would have died on the spot if I'd had to stand there. But then? Then my mother in law decided that was that and she swept him away. So now I'm going to wake up after my husband leaves at 2am and have the evil spider of death chew my face off.
Think I can trade for the hobo?

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Reason #473 why I probably shouldn't reproduce.

The other night I went to bed at 11pm, not because I was tired but because I was simply too scared to stay up by myself. Pathetic right? It's even worse, I wasn't scared of someone breaking into my house or something equally plausible, no what started my tangent was this. I'd put the picture here but I know I'll end up coming here ( I look at my own blog I know, but we've already determined I'm pathetic.) at 2am on day and scare myself again.
I've been like this all my life. Ever since I was five and I snuck into the living room and watched ten minutes of The Leprechaun. And I don't care what anyone says that thing is scary. He killed a man with A POGO STICK! This fear was only compounded due to the fact that my aunt (the same aunt who tormented me about my muffin boots and piss puddles - we begin to see a trend here) is one of those crazies who loves horror movies. She's 8 years older than me and was always watching them and detailing how the creatures were going to come and get me. We had a back hall in the house we lived in then and this hallway had stairs leading down to our ultra creepy basement. Seriously, no one in my family was okay with that basement. The door that closed off this hall had a window in the top half which, combined with the stairway to hell, made it the perfect place for my aunt to torture me. She'd get me to go out in the back hall for something or other (I was a particularly gullible child, she also convinced me to split my easter money with her) and then proceeded to slam the door shut and tell me that "Freddy/TheLeprechaun/Zombies/etc are coming for you, they're coming right now. Can you hear them? Oh my god they're coming up the stairs! they're gonna get you!" At which point I'd be in full on panic mode, screaming and trying to claw my way through the door until she was laughing too hard to hold it shut anymore. I also have an issue with aliens so of course there's a story for that too. Her room was on the second floor and I was never allowed up there without her permission, which I never got. So when one night she called me up there I was so ecstatic that I ran right up the dark staircase without a second thought. Only to come face to face with a fucking alien at the top of the stairs. Yeah that nearly ended with a trip to the ER as I tried to run backwards down the stairs as I screamed at the top of my lungs. She had taken a Pooh doll, strapped it to the top of the vacuum and put a hoodie on over it. Which, come to find out, makes a pretty convincing alien silhouette to an eight year old. Yeah, she got me with the two more times after that too. ->Gullible<-
So you see you can't really blame me for being terrified of monsters and aliens or really creepy lawn decorations made with human bones. (Who fucking does that?!)It's not my fault. And it won't be my children's fault when they're the same way because their Mom told them that the only way to be safe from monsters is to pull up the covers, be really still and don't make any noise and for christs sake don't let any part of your body hang over the bed. Because I could tell them that monsters don't exist but I don't think they'll believe me when they see me get all panicky after a horror movie preview. So instead I'll share my own tactics for staying alive, the same tactics I used the other night. "run like hell, don't look behind you and get into your bed as fast as you can. And when your husband asks what the hell is wrong, tell him about the monsters and beg him to comfort you. And when he ignores you and rolls over? Pull up the covers, be really still and don't make any noise and for christs sake don't let any part of your body hang over the bed.

P.S. I have employed that technique for many years and while it has most assuredly saved my life from monsters, cats jumping on my bed out of now where has definitely scared years off my life.

P.P.S. This is also why, despite the fact that I have no siblings, I don't really think of myself as an only child. Only children don't have to put up with this shit!