Really, this posting — after forever — was just so I could link to wordle.com. Baby or not, I am still good at wasting time!

I was rooting around in the fridge the other day and found a pair of my underwear.

That is so confusing. On so many levels.

*I was going to include a picture but I couldn’t find any of underwear in refrigerators. It’s a boring world we live in.

This has got to me one of my favorite headlines in a long time!

Here’s the link:  http://www.komonews.com/news/local/42916587.html

(I don’t have any pictures of exploding squirrels, so this post is without photo…)

-shelagh baird

It’s Friday and there may as well be tumbleweeds rattling down the hallway around here for all the action that’s not occuring.  I don’t blame people; I don’t like working on Friday either (I like it slightly more than working on Monday, though). 

I am feeling generally unfocused and thought maybe if I tried to pound out something profound about the inane minutia of my mediocre life, I might be inspired to recharacterize my current state of being to something other than bored. This is not happening; rather, I am pissing myself off. 

This is a very wankerish posting.

One of the rules of this particular engagement was that we were allowed no editing or self-censorship (as if I’m capable of that anyway), so some of these are… stupid, I guess is the best word.  Also, we solicited additional input from friends, mainly Maia, so some of these are from her. If you are prone to brilliance and have anything you’d like to add, please send any and all suggestions my way.

The list (from newest to oldest):
The Revenge of the Iguanas
Knockin’ Boots
The Yellowing Bruises
The Yellowing Bruisers
Red-Faced and Raucous
The ‘Roid Warriors
The Rough Striders
Pissin’ on your Rainbow (vs. The Rainbow Urinators)
To Hell in a Cuntbasket
Two-Peckered Goats
Performance Enhanced
The Ass Sneezers
Hat-Trickin’ Heathens
The Sound and The Fury
At Least We’re Not Accountants
At Least We’re Not Ash Holes
Drive-By Shooters
Oh Shoot
The Drive-By Kickers
The Abattoir
The Dropkick Cretins
The Avuncular Bibcocks
The Defenestraters
Cosmic Farce 9
Death Cab for Futbol
The Artists Formerly Known as Socca Khan
Don’t Hate us Because We’re Beautiful
The Mighty Pugilists
Fear Itself
The Sisyphean Fury
Flaming Ding Dongs
Lickin’ Our Boots
We’re Your Daddy
The Wayward Warriors
Out of the Gutter
The Salty Balls
Cosmic Juggernauts
Raiders of the Womb (Womb Raiders)
Destruction Incarnate
The Red Plague
Raging Beavers
The Indomitable
Dominators of the Universe

Please note location of vaj in relation to organ...

Apparently, it is possible to remove my kidneys through my vagina.  I cannot express how disturbing this is to me.

But it’s been done, and this samaritan seems unfazed by what can only be deemed profoundly distressing. 

I have three particular points of contention with this article, and then I will let it rest:

1. This does NOT sound like a less-invasive procedure
2. NOTHING about this procedure is equivalent to getting a tooth removed
3. Enough said:  “But the tube touched the vagina. And the bag touched the tube. And the bag touched the kidney”

I just injured myself in the bathroom at work. I have blood all over my wrist and zero recollection of exactly how I just attempted to flay myself.  This is not the first time I’ve had non-drunken injurious mishaps in bathrooms.  What I don’t understand is how these things just happen to me.

For those of you who missed it…

And here’s the text of the annual letter:

Amigos,

My year was good. The details are mostly unimportant, so I am going to refrain from hammering out a tome of trite dribble about how Oly learned to listen (untrue) and how I learned to be an adult (also untrue).  Instead, I am using this opportunity to impart some (likely flawed, probably superficial) etymologic knowledge. Consider it a Holiday gift.

I have done my research and was pleased to discover that the first commercially-produced Christmas card (London, 1843) featured small children heartily imbibing wine. Though I am no longer a child—physiologically, at least—my own first commercially-produced Christmas card (Seattle, 2008) features me, merrily (this being the season for merriments) clutching a mason jar full of the kind of hot chocolate guaranteed to induce the holiday cheer.  It’s not wine, granted, but I am confident it would be likewise deemed unsuitable for small children.

I am taken with laughter and the things that inspire laughter, and to this end, I spend a considerable whack of time (daily? Weekly, at the very least) contemplating hilarity and trickery.  This led me, organically, to the delightful word, gargalesis.  Gargalesis is a mild butchery (evolution?) of the original Greek, gargalismos, meaning forceful tickling. It is the more aggressive counterpart of knismesis, or cosquillos in Cuban Spanish—that is, the light tickling of a feather…or something. It feels too x-rated to continue discussing in a family holiday card.

The tickle came into etymologic existence sometime in the early 1300s, though its exact origins remain clouded in obscurity, and we’ve been “excited agreeably” and “pleased, happy” ever since!  I am not ticklish, not even a little, but I like the word, and I like watching people squeal when they’re subjected to gargalesis. And I laugh when people fail to inflict it on me!

May you be tickled heavily and lightly, metaphorically and physically, in work and in play this new year.

All my love,

Shelagh Ayan & Oly

(www.marriedtothesea.com)

Thus said, I vow to write something less trite than futile excuses… soon.

I wrote my holiday card about laughter. Laughter is more important to me than IPA.

I promise drinking this stuff is a Very Bad Idea.  I tell you because I learned this simple (and obvious?) lesson the Very Hard Way during Tet in Hanoi, 2004.  I shared a liter of this stuff with a Dutchman and a tiny Vietnamese guy who seemed to be taking great pleasure in single-handedly exacting revenge for the “American War” on me.  (Please bear in mind that the Fall of Saigon, nee Prey Nokor, now Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, occurred exactly four years and three months before I breathed my first; like most Vietnamese, I am innocent of these atrocities!) 

Suffice to say, I spent the ensuring three days in a vomitous throe but not before I was able to fire off this gem of an email to, oh, EVERYONE in my address book. When I say ”EVERYONE” (in all caps to denote my absolute humiliation; really, I had a hard time living this one down), I include grandparents, aunts, uncles, bosses (current, past), old professors, friends of my parents, friends of mine who have more common sense than I, children (children of my friends?).  I sent this (verbatim) to no less than 100 people:

I know you want to hear it soooooo…..
yes, I can’t see I’m so drubk fo rthis weird new’s
party.  but the rrosj

(The italics are mine and were entered today, approximately four years and ten months after that email was sent out.) I did not sign it because, apparently, I was incapable of such skilled dexterity of finger and nimbleness of thought.  A few days later, when I emerged from the trauma of bruising my forehead on the back rim of countless third world toilets and several futile self-administrations of effervescent codeine (I now count spewing fizzy narcotic puke out your nose one of life’s most special unpleasantries), I managed to send out this flip (but appropriately sheepish) email to apologize for polluting people’s inboxes:

holy hanoi…
now we know why they don’t like drunks playing with computers.  Anyway, y’all missed one hell of a fiesta
- Tet.  The Vietnanese drink this vile and insanely potent rice wine with dead cobras in it.  Apparently,
it’s supposed to be something wild for the male libido but what it does to little white girls is just plain
ugly.
That aside, Vietnam is incredible.  It’s a lot easier to travel and function in than China was, I think because we can actually decipher the signs and menus, even if we don’t quite know what they’re saying.  I did have the misfortune of having to choke down the better part of traditional Tet dish – sticky rice, fish paste and something porky or beefy.  Slightly wretched.
Anyway, we’re headed off to the mountains to tonight to freeze our asses off and check out the minority
hill tribes.  I’m pretty excited. more later, hopefully from a more sane perspective.

I believe a friend of mine tried to replicate this experiment last week and I wish I had spared him the agony. I fear for those amongst us who are not as stout of liver and short of brain as I, so I share this with you as a means of warning. Don’t. EVER. Fucking. Do. This. You will regret it.