Here’s a link to a before/after photograph that you will surely find more interesting than this post. I wish this type of comparison was available for all the crap we face on a day-to-day basis.

I have nothing of value to discuss today because my brain has pretty much been out of commission since Saturday, when my head started to fall off. Yesterday it completely fell off, and my brain activity flat-lined. I’m working on regrowing it, but these things take time.

So I have no exciting stories to share.

Except perhaps that I took my migraine and muscle relaxer medication last night, which is my drug cocktail of choice when I can no longer deny the burning sensation behind my eyes and the muscles in my neck being sucked up into the base of my skull. When I first experimented with this cocktail, I thought it didn’t affect me. Which, quite honestly, would have been a miracle since the scent of coffee turns me into a human pogo stick which thinks its trembling is indicative of an impending flu, and licking the rim of a bottle of beer turns me into the girl who thinks it’s important to continually inform everyone that she is, in fact, drunk (ya, THAT girl). I thought it didn’t work because I’d take it and then go to bed and wake up still all cockeyed. But then one night I took it in desperation and stayed up. A couple of hours in while playing cards in the dark with a friend, I realized that my hands were tingly, and I was clumsy in trying to rearrange my cards. So it turns out the cocktail works if I stay awake long enough for it to take effect before fitful sleep paralyzes my muscles in an un-relaxed state.

Anyway, why is it a story that I took the cocktail last night? Because I am akin to something between a drunk and an unsteady toddler (or perhaps both, according to Johnny Depp) when I take it. I walk into walls, I fall asleep mid-sentence, I am absolutely impossible to rouse (burglars take note), and I can’t make recognizable words come out of my mouth. It reminds me a bit of my alcoholic roommate from the dorms who would fall asleep perpendicular to her bed, face down, feet poking straight off the side with shoes still on. It was impressive – I could have a party and she wouldn’t wake.

So I get home last night and have obviously planned a low key evening, because how crazy can you get when your head has fallen off? And the boy sits down to watch a James Bond. My laundry is held up by the line of roommate laundry, so I determine to stay up long enough to see my stuff into the dryer, which will also allow the cocktail to set in before I go to sleep.

Unfortunately I think I fell asleep four different times in his lap during the course of the movie. And we’re talking DEEP sleeps (see: above). In between the stupor naps, I managed to accomplish much: I walked into the bathroom door jam, the bedroom mirror, and nearly ate it down the steps to the laundry room. And then I finally asked the boy to handle the rest of the laundry for me and collapsed into bed.

When he came to bed I (surprisingly) woke with a start and attempted to ask if he’d remembered the laundry:

werhoudwssss?

wait. hold up a second.

harmounzeeeeee?

ok. concentrate.

djoo restart th dryyyyyyyr?

Yes, he did.

Perhaps this should concern me. That I literally cannot make word-shapes with my mouth. Or that my brain cannot fire whichever electric pulses transform thought to language. Either way…kinda scary.

But my point I guess is just that you should all be jaw agape, shocked and impressed that I can even form one coherent sentence, let alone (however many I’ve written here and am too lazy to count). I mean, honestly, I think you should be giving me a standing ovation. Let’s hear some applause.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I was very bad this weekend and I didn’t do any of the 1,435 things on my To Do list, which had been on the previous week’s To Do, then got put off to this past week’s To Do, and then got squished into the weekend, and then I got headache-y, so please boo me now. Bad girl. Baaaad girl. So now I must hop skip double time.

So for you, I give you some belated Mothers’ Day videos:

in case you also like Joe Geronimo:

and, more importantly, in case you live under a rock:

Which reminds me that I must interject and laud the boys who write these songs for a moment, because I have giddily listened to this one approximately five different times this weekend (should I be embarrassed about that?) and it’s been stuck in my head the rest of the time. What’s so exciting about really nastily-facial-haired guys sleeping with their friends’ mothers, you ask? To answer that, I must take us back a moment.

When I was around the middle school age, I listened to the rock station. My love for Tool was burgeoning and my tastes were skewed enough that I didn’t consider it hard rock until it was the kind of “music” that had no melody line and where no lyrics are written because the whole song is screamed. At this time, when every little thing still has the potential to embarrass, I had a love for hip hop as well, and I had to keep it under wraps. ‘Cuz I was a rock girl.

Then I got to be a few years older and I didn’t have to hide it anymore, I just liked hip hop. And these days hip hop is one of my favorite kinds of music. But even now, I generally stress that I like conscious hip hop. I like music with an intelligent (or at least intelligible) thing to say. And I like hip hop with talent. I love the Roots, old Common Sense, Talib Kweli, Zion I, Kanye, and loads more.

I’m old enough now that I don’t really get embarrassed so much anymore by silly things like taste in music, but I’ll admit, I still don’t heavily advertise this: where I don’t generally like talent-less top 40 pop music, I secretly LOVE talentless top 40 hip hop hits. I love bass that threatens to reprogram your heartbeat. And I also love old-school hip hop.

I just love to ghetto booty shake.

There. I said it.

In and of itself this is not a problem. The problem lies in the fact that I am a hippie nerd girl. I don’t advocate buying 24 karat gold grills that are not replacements for real teeth, but are just a “fashionable” sheath for them. I don’t advocate derisive talk about women or assuming that paying them to shake their ass two inches from an HD video camera is all the plot a music video needs. I don’t advocate buying $8,000 reverse spinning rims for your blindingly shiny and hazmat orange HumV.

These are things that are not in line with my values. And yet confound it all if I don’t start to shake my own ass when your music comes on. It’s a cruel, cruel plight. Woe is me. I am hopelessly in love with a world in which I do not belong.

Sure, there are plenty of places to dance that are filled with people like me. But they generally play funk or something comparable. And funk is fun. Sure. I can do that. But it’s no ghetto booty shake.

There are places where I could probably find a club that is my style. But where I live currently, the ghetto booty options are either:

1. Really skeezy and dimly lit with cheap drinks, sticky mustaches, and breasts struggling to escape their tube top confines.

or

2. Swanky and modern with the young professional crowd in mind and lines maintained for publicity out front even when it’s 40 degrees and the club is empty inside.

In either case, whoever my dance buddy is and I just find ourselves carving out a section of the dance floor and going at it. And in either case, can you imagine how ridiculously out of place I look?

I mean, you’re talking to the girl who wants to start a club that you’re supposed to wear pajamas to (no, not lingerie) so you’re comfortable and don’t have to worry about dress code. You’re talking to the girl who wishes they’d open an early bird special club so I could get on my booty shake AND get some sleep.

Speaking of which, was this supposed to be a joke? Is this supposed to be a bad idea?

Anyway, so that’s the background on my plight. And then here come these totally nerdy white Jew boys (I get to say that because I’m both white and a Jew) who are musical GENIUSES and they make music in the ghetto booty style but with silly lyrics that make fun of the values that make us squirmy so that we can love it guilt free.

It’s possibly the best thing to happen since sliced bread.

It just eliminates that awkward part of a night out on the town where I suddenly have an out of body experience and look down on myself thinking:

Really? Are you really earnestly giving your all to a self-ass slap because the song told you to? Seriously?

Neurotic Moment 1

You know when you’re concentrating realllllly hard on doing something correctly and the act of being so very serious about what you’re doing and so very committed to doing it right zeros you in to the point where the slightest distraction can scare you out of your skin?

I was going to get a cup of tea before I settled down to write something earlier, and the mug was NEARLY full of hot, tea-ed, creamed and sugared yumminess, but I thought I’d put just a touch of cold water in to get it to a drinkable temperature a smidge faster. So I place it under the cold water tap of the water cooler, and get it as close as possible to the spigot so the water doesn’t have far to fall. You know, to minimize splashing. And I push ever-so-slightly on the water trigger, and a little bit trickles out and it’s just the perfect amount and then:

GWWWWW OW BOBBLE!

The noise of a giant air bubble in the water bottle frightens me so from my intense concentration that I slam the mug against the back splash of the cooler and spill it everywhere.

Nice. Just really superbly done.

Neurotic Moment 2

This evening we went to watch some friends play in a band. I happen to carry ear plugs in my purse at all times (perhaps that in and of itself is neurotic moment #2 and I should now move on to #3). This is because:

1. I was born 87 years old. We know this. It has already been discussed.
2. I am already deaf. I do not feel a need for new depths of deafness.

So, I have these in my purse because I never remember to bring them to a concert, and impromptu outings to concerts are a fact of life.

So the band’s about to start, and I pull out of my purse a tightly packed baggie with a bit of white stuff in a corner. It’s folded neatly over itself a number of times, and bound with a rubber band. Cute little crack baggie.

Except that white stuff? It’s my earplugs.

So, I am aware of this and sometimes I wonder whether someone will try to boot me out of the club for suspicious activity because they look over at the wrong time – when I’m carefully unwrapping my baggie. But that’s fine. I don’t ACTUALLY carry crack on me, so this wouldn’t be a problem.

Except tonight we’re at the boy’s place of employment, and I’m thinking…what if one of his coworkers looks over at the wrong time? Not that they’d necessarily care if I had a bag of weed, but to flaunt it so indiscreetly – it’s rude and puts their establishment in danger. But what if they felt obligated to let me get away with it because I’m dating a coworker? And then they’d just stew and hold a grudge against him for no reason?

Yes, the answer to your question is that I do, in fact, think this needlessly hard about nearly everything. The answer to your second question is yes, it is, in fact, exhausting.

And so here I am, nervously pulling my package out of my pocket, eyes darting back and forth to check for possible surveillance, and my earplugs have BECOME a narcotic for the moment as I try to jam my hand in the bag before anyone notices…

Conclusion

And that is why I am considering joining a cult. Or at the very least a zealot-ous sect of some major religion.

Ok. So it is getting old because it really should be no big deal. Fine. But since everyone else already weighed in and talked about it and talked about people who were talking about it et cetera ad infinitum, I’m going to have my go as well.

Here’s the thing. I am totally on the liberal train. I adore Jon Stewart. It’s fun to watch him deliver a good punch to Liars and Evil (occasionally and dangerously considered synonymous with “Conservative”). And I’m pretty sure there is some Evil happening with this Cramer guy; indeed it’s hard to think otherwise with the fabulous videographic dirt that Stewart dug up.

But it doesn’t mean there’s a halo on the other side of the table.

Why?

Well, for starters, it’s really easy to kick someone on your own show – you have all the prep materials and home field advantage. But I will concede that this is just one of the ways of the world. Fine.

Still, how can you make someone sit and watch embarrassing footage of himself looking like an asshole in front of the whole country, and then when he attempts to stand up for himself (however misguided his attempts may be), chide him for making this all about him when it isn’t. That’s a really cheap shot.

And the whole schtick about being a snake oil salesman who sells his goods as properly labeled snake oil is equally disconcerting. Labeling yourself as snake oil would mean that you are sure to convey to your audience that what you sell is false. Yes, the Daily Show is an entertainment program. But, at the same time, it is doubtless that Jon Stewart would be embarrassed if he found he had reported a fact that turned out to be false. It is doubtless that he knows the information he broadcasts is believed. He is aware of the fact that people might rely on his reporting as credible, even if the reporting style is light on its feet. Don’t try to tell me Jon Stewart thought of his conversation with Cramer as anything but serious. It’s the mother lode of cop-outs to then turn around and absolve yourself of any responsibility by saying that you are only joking. And we all know how I feel about taking responsibility for things.

What do you think?

Ice nine!