OMG! Martin Van Buren makes me LOL!

The entire drive back from my vacation, I was sweating this blog. Knowing that I had only recently resumed the great "grow a pair and write every day" experiment meant I had better have plenty of topics on the line upon my return. So I took to texting myself ideas and quotes. What this didn't yield was any idea on which I could write more than one sentence. What it did yield was a moment of great pleasure when really weird phrases popped up on the screen of my Treo. Not to mention the even greater pleasure when I forgot I'd texted myself and stumbled across those messages later.

Anyway, since I think you're supposed to wait a week after returning from vacation and an hour after eating before blogging, I thought I'd better ease back in by, simply, sharing my most recent self-texts. I thought I'd build in some reader participation, too: see if you can identify which phrases were uttered by my husband and which were uttered by 80's glam rock outfit Faster Pussycat.

"So, Martin Van Buren...well HE had a very troubled presidency."

"There's no one home in my house of pain..."

"This Miller Chill reminds me of the story of Akbar the Great."

I overuse commas

And, occasionally, misuse them, to boot.

Egregiously.

I just wanted to point it out before someone else did.

"I'm the king of rock, there ain't none higher"

I just realized I tend to overuse the *needle on the record* bit in this blog. I have a hook. I'm a Sucker MC and I didn't even know it.

F@#$ing Blogtastic

The whole idea of this blog was to write every day (well, at least every week day). I thought that by simply forcing myself to crank out a paragraph or two each day, I'd suddenly be swimming in ideas AND discipline.

Guess what hasn't been the plan it was cracked up to be?

This is exactly why I was never good at journaling: that feel-good lynchpin of educated, artsy womanhood. I sit down with some cutesy blank book (with a pressed flower glued to the front cover or reproduced Lichtenstein print or something) and I it sounds awkward, contrived, and self-conscious. Now, I sit down to blog and it sounds awkward, contrived, and self-conscious...but I can't throw it out or bury it in my bottom drawer under this afghan my grandmother made me, affectionately known as the "Black Power Blanket" (red, yellow, green, and black yarn; I think she was trying to make a statement about the apartheid...it was the '80's after all). Now the world can read it. Well, two people can read it. Fine. My brother-in-law can read it. And my husband and sister when I whine enough...or refuse to hang up the phone, leave the room, or stop poking him/her in the spine until he/she does.

All week I've had this little thought bubble hovering over my head, "I really should blog." But then I decide I've nothing to say and the thought bubble turns to floating cartoon question mark. Then I silently chastise myself and get fed up with myself for doing so...just who in the Hell do I think I am? And the question mark is replaced by a little swirling funnel cloud.

I repeat: *sigh*

Then I remember everything going on in the world and feel stupid for having blog fatigue. There's famine, sexism, Darfur, exploding meth labs, Sanjaya on Idol, and stupid amendments about defining marriage as between a man and a woman (one of these failed this morning in the Indiana Assembly...a much more pleasant surprise than the fact that it was 78 degrees yesterday and is currently snowing). Mind you, the fact that I'm worried about the proverbial bigger fish doesn't mean I feel any better about being a blog failure. But I don't want to write about anything important, I guess...I want to come up with some more self-involved crap.

So, I'm going to go brainstorm some and get back to you.

Bring me the hedgehog of John the Baptist

Like most people who wish for talent and inspiration but avoid the "heavy-lifting," I scribble down ideas while driving home, in the middle of the night, on napkins, etc. Shockingly, these gems tend to live and die on pink Post-Its. Inevitably I find myself walking the aisles, listening to NPR, or flipping through book reviews and thinking "Curses! I should've thought of that/was going to write that!" Then I worry that I've been stricken by that Helen Keller disease where I don't realize that I'm stealing other people's ideas. And, no: I'm not being glib ("Of course, she didn't know she was plagiarizing...she couldn't see it/hear it/etc."...I'm talking about The Frost King, people.

(Wow. No wonder I'm not famous: that last sentence struck the perfect, rare balance between being boring and pretentious.)

So, I jot down ideas in the hopes of coming up with an essay or article for some beloved editors who have been kind enough to run some of my work in the past. Lately, though, my random scribbles dead-end. And, since said beloved editors have ceased to send me assignments or buy my pitches, I'm treading creative water. Anyway: in keeping with the themes of self-involvement/pity and lack of ambition, here are some of the more random notes-to-self. RIP, mediocre ideas.


1. "Bring me the hedgehog of John the Baptist." I stumbled on this note while I was cleaning out my desk last Fall. At first, I thought I was having a religious experience. Then I remembered my mini-Dachshund waking me up in the middle of the night with her stuffed, squeaky hedgehog in tow, beady little eyes all fierce and furious. Believe it or not, I actually climbed out of bed to write this one down. Several reliable sources have confirmed that this line is, neither, funny nor interesting.

(I maintain, though: Salome sounds like salami. Wiener dogs are salami-shaped. I think there's life in this idea yet.)


2. "My night at the sports bar on the least important night in the history of sports." To jog my memory as to the details behind this note I actually had to Google "ice skating cut partner face blade." This phrase is now up for grabs if anyone needs a name for their Emo-ska band.

One night my old man--is that your husband or your dad...because I'm going for "husband" here--and I went out for beer and wings one night and found every big screen tuned in to the free skate at the Four Continents Figure-Skating Championships. Now, this is Indiana. For every skewed understanding of Hoosier country, if you think sports bar patrons watching figure-skating signals despair, you're spot-on. But after the Colts Super Bowl win and before March Madness? A bit of a No-Man's Land. Anyway, during the free skate in question, a Canadian skater clocked his partner across the cheek with his skate blade. It was horrifying. And replayed ad nauseam. And what did the crowded bar do, sports fans? Cheered. Sweated schadenfreude. Trash-talked our Canadian brethren. Inexplicably chanted a few smart-alecky rounds of "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

And then the network cut to talk of Nascar pensions and golf highlights. Further hilarity from the peanut gallery ensued.

A funny enough story, for sure. But I gave up fleshing out the idea when I realized that, outside of baseball, my relevant sports know-how is limited to my eighth-grade obsession with figure-skating and a battered VHS tape of the "Battle of the Brians" at the '88 Calgary Olympics. Yes, we taped it. Over HBO's midnight showing of Dr. Zhivago. So there.

Besides, my husband assures me that the guys in the bar were a funnier. Love means never lying about your spouse's comic prowess.


3. "Whatever happened to that one, blond, villainous guy from every '80's movie?" His name is William Zabka. You might remember him as overbearing bully boyfriend/martial arts master Johnny from The Karate Kid, overbearing bully boyfriend/champion diver Chas from Back to School, overbearing bully boyfriend/dancing machine Greg from Just One of the Guys. Oh and fun fact: he was nominated for an Oscar in 2003 for the short film Most. But, anyway, Entertainment Weekly beat me to the punch. And the free gift-with-subscription--a three-cassette set of super '70's sounds--they sent me in 1989 does nothing to ease the pain.