Be yourself... or Batman.

Genie said it to Aladdin, and I guess that all worked out in the end. But what if you're a writer and hate the way your name looks on the top of a page? It's dull and bland. It's got no flair. What's a girl to do? Well, use a pseudonym stupid. Fine, jerk, I will. Crap, I don't know what name to use. I'm a writer, not my mother, what name should I give myself. We're just not meant to name ourselves. Just look at skier Picabo Street. Her name is peek a boo. No joke. I read it in a magaziiiiiinne oh oh. b-b-b-benny and the jets.

So, I hate the way my name looks on top of the page. It sucks. It's a perfectly good name, sure, but it's nothing brilliant. It's not memorable. I don't stand out from the crowd. People will NOT remember it, or pronounce it correctly for that matter.

Then I read this article on MSN. It's my homepage. It was about people who use assumed names. Not spies, actors and such. Their given names sucked so they used different ones. There was even a blurb about someone who tried with their actual name, bombed, used a pseudonym and is now wildly famous.

So it was by divine providence that I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon of the court at Camelot did- wait, wrong story. Barnes and Noble posted this really funny pseudonym generator. I used it and that children, is where writers come from.

But herein lies the dilemma. If I have to be someone else to be successful, am I really successful? How do I split up my ePersonality? This blog for example. Possibly not suitable for a children's book author, but it's me. And I'm good enough, and if I'm not, then I have to make myself right? But it's just a name. What's in a name? A rose by any other name blah blah blah...

So I wonder... Keep the name my mother gave me or the one with pizazz I got from Barnes and Noble?

Or be Batman...

Am I a bad mother or just an exceptional crazy person?

So, in case you didn't know, I'm a writer. Not insofar as success is concerned, but that I put words on paper and think the world needs to read them. Narcissist much?

But anyway, I just got my first peer review for this story I wrote once when the girl pulled effing Zebra Cakes out of her bed. You know Zebra Cakes right? Little Debbie snacks. White cake, white filling, white frosting, just enough brown striping to make it a politically correct snack. I mean, we can't have any racist snack cakes up in her'. So I thought, "STORYOMG!!!111" And that, children, is where stories come from.

I liked this so much, I sent it off to professionals for their professional assessment. Turns out, it's shit. But that's neither here nor there. The point I wish to make at the present, is that the person reviewing my manuscript as a peer, said something about "a neglected child hording frogs in her bed." Neglected?

So I posit this question to you, dear reader:

Am I a bad mother or am I just quite exceptional at being a neurotic narcissist with delusions of grandeur?

And as a side note, can anyone ever read/hear the phrase "delusions of grandeur" without thinking of Han Solo? Seriously.

Writers are, by definition, self deprecating narcissists. And I am, as previously mentioned, a writer. So (get your math hats on) If A=B and B=C then C must certainly be an asshat. Is asshat one word or two. Asshat? Ass Hat? And what if it's plural? Asses hat? Ass hats? Or just ass hat like moose? Boxen. Squirrel!

I mean I can barely get through a day without somebody flashing something inappropriate. For instance, today while trying to take a shower, The Girl got told on about three times for various things, not the least of which was flashing her vagina to the living room. The Boy had a friend over. It was not awesome. Also, there was salsa on the floor. Like smeared on the floor. Fan-freaking-tastic.

And just now. Just now, I had to tell her to go back to her room. She could take her Easy Bake oven spatula with her. It's not heaven, you CAN take it with you, so GoOOOOOO!!! AHHHHHH!!!

Now I want to yell about Easy Bake ovens. Seriously, who wants a whoopee pie the size of a nickel baked under a lightbulb? They taste like crap too. SMH FML OMGWTFBBQ Ugh...

Oh mighty slayer of electronics!

That's right bitches! Fear me!

I am a disaster with electronic devices. Seriously! I got a swanky new iPad for taxes. Yeah, it's a holiday. But I got this cool iPad cause I had an iPhone and if you have one iThing, you have to get more iCrap. So iDid. Then iHappened. Well, it wasn't all me. The girl helped. By our powers combined we will...

She launched it off the arm of the couch and it shattered into a million tiny dead hipster dreams. Sad iPanda.

Then there was the printer debacle. I killed two in as many days. I'm telling you. I am an evil mastermind. So here's the deal, it seems you can't get all excited and PRINT ALL THE THINGS!!! Because, it turns out printers can't hold ALL THE PAPER... I  had no idea you couldn't shove an entire ream of paper into a crappy little printer. It freaked out and died. So we got a new crappy little printer. And what did iDo? In my infinite wisdom, I again tried to LOAD ALL THE PAPER!!! It DIED ALL TO HELL!!! They get paper jams. Paper Jams!!!

And last but not least... my sidekick in inadvertently rendering me off the grid decided to fling my laptop from the arm of the sofa... I feel like I should learn a lesson... But if they didn't want us to put things on the sofa arms, then sofas shouldn't come with arms. KTHXBYE.

This is maybe the second or third time she's knocked this poor laptop off of something... But it's still trucking. Though, the corner of the casing is starting to come off, some of the plastic is chipped, and my left button for the touch pad is a bit wonky, oh and I killed the cover trying to pry it off like a Neanderthal instead of, oh, iDunno, just slide it off like you're supposed to.

It's cause I'm an electronics slaying gangster and shit.

I hate trends

I hate trends. They're stupid. This stuff really wasn't cool when it came around the first time, it's definitely not cool now, guy with nut hugging skinny jeans holding hands with the girl with the collared, sleeveless, button-down shirt in a dumb print that ties at the bottom. It's extra long at the buttony part just so you can tie it. Anyone else have one of these damn things?

It was terrible. I always ended up wearing mine with those stirrup leggings. You know, the ones that have the big ole elastic strap for under your foot. That's the reason we ladies of my certain age seem to fear the stirrups on the table at the lady doctor. It's not because their gonna shove a mag lite and a garden shovel up there, it's some mad Vietnam-style flashbacks of those pants. And they're not fooling anybody. We all know you have sock suspender thingies built into your pants. We can see them.

 

 

Not. Fooling. Anyone.

 

But back to trends, there's one I'm really looking forward to. I've noticed the trend for trends is moving closer and closer to GRUNGE!!! I could rock the hell outta that! All my pants already have holes in them and I didn't have to pay extra for distressing! I still have a closet full of crappy t-shirts, and have you been to a thrift shop? Flannel ahoy!

 



I've actually seen it peeking out of the celebrosphere.

Soon it will filter down to us peasants and I will be BADASS! YEAH! Who says moms can't be cool? I already sometimes forget to bathe. It would be no problem for me to stop brushing my hair. And Nirvana is cool. I'm there.

A brand new outlook on life or at least a new life aspiration.

I might be there already, but I have so much more to aspire to.

I was thinkin', shaving my legs sucks. Once when I was a kid, my first step mom told me that the reason we shave our legs now is because prostitutes in the Old West used to shave off said fur off their gams. You know, like smooth for his pleasure. Yeah, cause that's all a roughed-up, old, gnarly, grizzled cowboy wants is smooth, lady legs.

Anyway, I was commiserating with Number Five today, and as we were eating Fruit Loops out of the box with our hairy legs kicked up on her table to see who had hairier legs or hobbit feet (I win!), we were talking about hair removal. We were talking about ripping it out with molten wax, using a "laser",

 

 

 

or just continuing on with our normal routine of using an extremely sharpened slice of steel to cut hair off, I dunno, like half our bodily surfaces. Totally safe right. That's when I had the idea! The idea that's gonna change my life. I totally thought of it when I was looking at my pits. Cause pits are stinky, and hairy pits are stinky, and squirrel, and you know who has stinky, hairy pits?

 

Scummy hippies!!!

 

 

 

Plus, taking care of hair like a scummy hippie is free!




Also, if you want to keep reading, I'll throw you some Existentialism with Ashley.
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So, those hippies rocked harder than anyone. They totally lived life like life was given to you to live, not given to you to waste away on computers, she says while typing away at a computer. But I was wondering, are we hurting ourselves by reaching broader audiences easier. What is there to strive for, to live life for? Where do ambitions come from now? And what's next? If someone in Bangladesh can read my blog about hippies, where's my ambition to reach a wider audience, to "get my message out there"? Then I think about all of the brain power we waste on these idiot machines and how, essentially, our lives are stored and lived out in megs of stuff or yaks or rams or something, but basically that we can smush our entire lives, our whole being, into a teeny tiny computer chip the size of a finger nail. Whoa! That's heavy. I don't want to be a computer chip full of compressed data though. I want to twirl around and spread my arms out and soak up the sun, you know, all that scummy hippie stuff. And I realize that when I say "hippie" what I really mean is the romanticized version of hippies we're all fed now. I'm not an effing retard, I know that it wasn't always sunshine and roses, but by god the romanticized hippies sure seemed to enjoy... everything.

Dear God! The lactation of farm animals!!!

So... this evening, the hoods wanted chocolate milk. Fifteen minutes and a lot of whining later, I got up and made it. Then it was amazing! Dudes, chocolate milk. Like whoa.

That brought on a few problems. Yeah, I have problems with chocolate milk. I might be Communist.



 



 

Anyway, we used to be vegan for like a year or two and in the process, I got really snooty about milk. Things like milk is an unnecessary part of a daily diet. And, you wouldn't go suckle a cow would you? Or even, that cross-species and that's wrong. Plus, have you ever breast fed? Ouch. Imagine that for. ev. er.

But the more pressing issue is umm... well... it's something I share with the fictional and awesome Dr. Leonard Hofstadter.

It gives me a tummy ache... It's not cool. Though there was a perfectly timed fart aimed at the kid when she asked what was wrong. I said, chocolate milk makes me fart. She said it makes you fart? I farted. You just can't ask for much more than that out of the universe can you? A glass of chocolate milk and a well timed fart... Paradise.

The economy hits you right where it hurts... the tooth (fairy).

This morning, I heard the funniest story ever. Seriously, it is, I can't make this stuff up funny. I actually had to make sure it was true.

This little girl I know from the boy's kindergarten class got a dollar when she lost her first tooth. That's the going rate at my house, but this little girl doesn't live at my house. So, this six year old little girl looks at her dad, and says, "A dollar? The tooth fairy's a broke bitch." Swear. That's what he said she said. No foolin'. So he just looks at her and is like, "We're in a recession." I'm shaking my head because at this point, it's already the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But wait, there's more. When she lost her next tooth, the "Tooth Fairy" left her a fiver. She goes up to her dad and says, "She's getting better. Are we still in a recession?" Er. Mah. Gerd.

Through all of this, I'm thinking about the boy's experiences with the tooth fairy. The first time, she forgot... But she left a really nice note and a dollar the next day. And not just any dollar, a gold dollar coin because the boy was convinced that the tooth fairy brought gold coins. We may have been in a pirate phase. Regardless, it was an excuse for me to run around yelling, "Dubloons!"

When I was a kid, though, my grandma worked at a bank. My mom decided to capitalize on this by giving me foreign currency to perpetuate the whole tooth fairy travels the world nonsense. But what I wanted to know what what the eff was I supposed to do with two dollars from ARGENTINA?!?!?! All my friends are getting cold hard American currency and I'm over there like, I could buy a newspaper if I were in Argentina... I'm pretty sure I also scored some defunct German currency. So, if anybody's got a time machine and aspirations for world travel, I have some money you can use to buy a local paper.