This is awkward, isn't it?

It's so hard to blog again after a long absence. You feel obligated to post something really awesome. Something that will make up for your neglect and make your 2.3 readers love you again. I struggled, I really did. "What do they want?" I mused. "Maybe...an excessively cute music video? An amusing yet shockingly true blog? An in depth analysis of why, precisely, I find it so disturbing to be unable to identify every soloist in "We Are the World?"

[On a side note, this is when I thought about writing a book titled "One Dozen Outlandish Lies, or, Twelve Reasons I Haven't Updated My Blog," but then I realized that if I could come up with those twelve reasons, I wouldn't be mulling/mulling/angsting in the first place.]

But finally, I have found the perfect post-worthy thing: here it is.

Read. Take your time. Really enjoy it. It's worth it.

How was your day, P&G?

Productive:

Phoning It In

LOLHamas.

One! More! List!

Sanity: a mere memory. I am tearing my hair out today due to the following:

1. Firefox keeps crashing.
2. My grandmother died this morning.
3. I am out of cheese.

Sadly, I'm rating all of these things at pretty much the same par for frustration and misery. ARGH.

Real updates are for people with cheese.

Awkward Silence

I have no words for the bizarre dreams I had last night. Seriously, they were just... I really, really am beginning to be disturbed. Let's go with a list:

1. Road trip with the members of N*Sync. What? Wait, what?
2. One-night stand with that guy who was married to Jessica Simpson. Turns out he's a foot fetishist and a bad kisser and lives with two other inquisitive roommates.
3. Horrible farm equipment accident that involved penis amputation. There was a lot of blood. Oh my god.
4. An endless supply of dirty laundry. (Which one of these is not like the other one?)

So, yeah, I slept poorly.

In other news, I'm stuck at home ALL DAY so I can supervise the furnace/AC replacement. The goal: actually work on the old novel somewhere along the way.

Tragedy; or, Not My Fault

I had some fabulous potential topics to blog about yesterday. Really, they were quite brilliant, and I was quite excited to share my brilliance with the interweb, so you can imagine my disappointment on discovering that my internet connection was down like a cheap whore. Alas! The interweb was to remain unenlightened! Tragedy!

I'd post yesterday's strokes of brilliance in their entirety, but I think the magic is lost. Instead, you get a one-line summary of each of the three posts that I might have made yesterday.

1. Ghetto resume, e.g. That's Just How I Roll (Experience), All Up In My Grillz (Education)
2. An in-depth analysis of the kind of friendship that results in the compliment "If I had to have anyone's pee in my sink, it would be yours."
3. The percentage of women in the average Brown line car with no/severely-reduced pubic hair as proportional to the car's proximity to Lincoln Park.

I know, you're just devastated that none of these will ever go beyond a one-line summary. I think you know who to blame; remember, Comcast = $5 whore.

Phlegmatic

In Which I Tap Into My British Roots And Discuss The Weather With My Invisible Friend
or
The Start Of Every Conversation In Chicago For The Next Twelve Hours

Goodness! This is quite the weather, isn't it?

I know, me too. I was nearly blown off my feet leaving the train this morning!

Well, yes, but it's Chicago, so we really should expect it. Doesn't make it any more pleasant, though. This part of town is always so much windier with the lake right there.

I saw that guy, too! Wind-resistant umbrellas are just no match for Chicago.

Mmhmm. I agree completely!

April. April!

Well, yes, but still. That's no excuse.

These are the days that I wish I worked at home.

Indeed, indeed. Well, I have a meeting across the street, so I have to dash. Once more into the breach, eh? Wish me luck!

The End (OR IS IT??)

Everyone Deserves A Cop Out Now And Again

I'm sitting at my keyboard, exhausted from my completely ridiculous day, and I have no idea what to write.

I wrote an entire post this morning about today's Science Times, but when I reread it the whole thing just came off as prurient, so I deleted it. Fool! I should have hit publish and be damned. At least then today's post would have content!

What does this post have instead of content, you ask with that unflatteringly smug smirk that implies you've caught me in some sort of oxymoron? I have the opposite of content: I have a YouTube video.

Of course all bloggers are contractually obligated to include YouTube videos in their posts every once in a while, so perhaps I'm just being sly and getting in my quota early.

Or maybe I really don't know what to say here, much like Hugh Laurie in this song from the sketch comedy show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. ("Nice segue!" "Thanks, I worked hard!")

An Open Letter

To the Gentleman Sitting Across from Me On The Train This Morning Who Obviously Dressed To the Left,

I didn't mean to stare, and I tried not to be obvious about it, but I was quite distracted by the empathic panic I felt for your current, past, and future lovers. I can see that you weren't purposely drawing attention to yourself; your pants, on most other men, would have been entirely modest. And while, of course, it is possible that you were receiving an additional boost from an entire package of tube socks, your casual demeanor and lack of obvious narcissism indicated to me that the contents were entirely god-given.

It was purely bad luck that you happened to be sitting under an advertisement for pistachios that touted the tagline "Grab our nuts."

I thought I was doing quite well adopting the thousand-yard-stare of the iPoded commuter, but I was considerable disquieted when you stood up to ready yourself for exiting. Was it entirely necessary, I wondered, for your hips to twist in quite that direction? While I was glad to verify my original deduction of 100% organic, I found the free range aspect slightly alarming.

Please, sir, consider adding a bit more discretion to your morning routine. While I am strong of heart and lung, I have noticed several ladies of advanced years on my morning commute who might not be equally able to cope with such a revelation.

With Affection,
P&G

Dammit John

Phrases for my every mood, courtesy of a three-minute-long comedy sketch:

Frustrated
Damn blast and double damn!

Incredulous
By God here's a turn-up!

Romantic
You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same agenda.

Compassionate
That must have hurt, hurt like hell on a jetski.

Determined
You know as well as I do there's no such word as "a bit late for all that."

Pressed For Time
Tell him any damn thing you like, just buy me some time!

Wistful
Amsterdam's too obvious. Marjorie was never obvious. That's why I loved her.


*90% of the content for this post was stolen shamelessly from A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Because original thinking is just not happening today.

I'm Famous Now

I've never before been google-able. Of course I've checked— and don't look at me like that, I know you've done it too. Job interviews and all of that: one always wants to be sure that future employers won't turn up those pictures of you drunk off your ass at a college party wearing skimpy lingerie. (Not a randomly chosen example; they really exist! But are not available on the internet, as far as I'm aware. Thank goodness).

Back to the point! A friend recently informed me that I am, in fact, now google-able, so of course I went ahead and tried it for myself. And behold: there I was, the second result, right behind some woman who wrote a travel guide to Venezuela. I am so internet famous!

I owe it all to my place of employment which, being a rather famous institution, is linked extensively by the rest of the internet. Thanks, internet! I feel so loved.

I'd also like to thank my parents, without whom I would not exist, and my friends, without whom I would be a much more boring, sober human being. I couldn't have made this happen without your love and support! And- I wasn't going to announce this now, but I just feel so moved- since I'm famous and all now, I'm going to go ahead and adopt my African baby tomorrow! Contractural obligations and all: you know how it is. I'm taking country-of-origin suggestions— you can hand your vote to the nearest usher. Fingers crossed for somewhere with a fashionable genocide!

Stay cool, internet!