01-19-05: snotty snotty

I have acquired a bit of a cold. I feel perfectly fine, with the exception of 685 metric tons of boogers within the few square inches between the end of my nose and my brain. It's amazing how this stuff accumulates. If my body would dedicate even half the time it spends generating snot to some other cause, like, gee, I dunno, not getting sick in the first place, or making my boobs perkier, or making me stop saying "totally" or "retarded" or "gay," imagine how rockin' life would be?

When I was little, I used to have nosebleeds all the time, and I had to have my nose cauterized 987213987 times. I remember once I was in 2nd grade and my folks brought me to this doctor who fired up a frikkin' bunsen burner (I am not exaggerating) and heated up a thin metal rigid wire to until the tip was glowing red-hot. He then dipped the tip into (again, no exaggeration) a bottle of purple material that said (I am not exaggerating) POISON with a skull-and-crossbones symbol on it. As a second grader, I knew that this was not a good thing. I was a pretty smart kid, ya know.   The doctor told me to hold still (!) and then fried my the inside of my nose-- YEEEAAAAAGHHHH!!!   Then his office phone rang, and the F-er TOOK THE CALL. While he's yapping on the phone, I was writhing in pain from having a red-hot poker shoved up my nose, trying not to cry because that would be wussy or something, and quivvering in terror knowing that any minute I had to go through it again for the other nostril. That was the longest phone conversation in history... I just sat and stared at that flame and the bottle of poison and thought, "Dude, this is just so not cool." Yeeeeghk.

Later in life I had to get it cauterized one more time, and my doctor was this french dude with a thick accent. He had this really neat tool that vacuumed the boogies out of your nose. It totally rocked, and dude, I could seriously use one of those right now. Anyway, the way he explained the procedure to me is a permanent .wav file in my head. He said, "Now Jeeeel, I em go-eeng to tek dees tool here, and ah em go-eeeng to plehs eet eeen your nuhze, and den I em go-eeng to re-muve de moo-cooz from your nuhze. Ok-keh? I em go-eeng to re-muve de moo-cooz from your nuhze." The good news is that cauterization techniques had progressed in those years, and this time, he just shoved a cotton swab with orange-scented battery acid up my nose. I remember going up to pay the receptionist and totally passing out on the waiting room floor. Tres élégant.

When I was younger, I called the nasal mucosa "booger snot." Eventually the modifier "booger" was dropped, and it was just referred to as "snot." Then my mom decided that "snot" wasn't a very ladylike word, so we changed the word to "knot." This made Don Knotts very funny to me and my brother.     I remember one time whispering to my brother, "Pssst... Don Snotts" and we fell apart on the floor like that was the funniest thing that had ever been uttered. (Funny, I am chuckling out loud over this right now.)

Also, my family used to call farts a "Mickey Mouse." When someone in my family would ponk, someone else would invariably question, "Allright! Who made a Mickey?!"   This may explain my extreme distaste for all things Disney. For the record, I always knew this was stupid, even from a young age, and I would never give into it. I don't know what I called it as a kid, but dude, I didn't dare say that stupid thing.

Anyhoo.

It is snowing today, and this is making me totally giddy and bouncy. It's sticking, and I guess we've got about an inch now. Choir has been cancelled for tonight, so I've got nothing else better to do than to unpack from my Ninja Trip (not to be confused with Linda Tripp) and check out a mysterious DVD sent to me from my SanFran/Montreal compadre, Soren. Hmmmmm. The DVD simply says, "SIMON.   For Jill." So I'm not sure if it's audio or video or what, but I love me a surprise, so I can't wait to dive in and see what it is.

In other news... I just had to give a phone interview at work; we need a technical writer and this chick submitted her resume. I love giving interviews, fooling these people into thinking I'm passionate about business process improvement. I use words like, "leverage" and "key performance indicators" and "best practices" and "operational framework" and "turnkey enterprise solution" and "buttface."

In other news... Last night Trainor and I rocked out on his badass Triton coming up with loops, vibes and ideas for the incidental/mood setting music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Somehow we got talking about mexican food and got off on this 45-minute tangent about El Tapatio (a mexican restaurant here in Delaware). We came up with this story about how El Tapatio is this mythical Mexican character who rides a black stallion, wears a cape and strikes terror into the hearts of the peasants, leaving behind only a silver cornchip. We came up with theme music for him, music for an action-packed chase where he's outrunning a train on his mighty steed, and dramatic music for when a rich land-owner comes home to find his house on fire-- he whispers "El Tapatio..." and then falls to his knees and shakes his fist and cries, "EL TAPATIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

We later decided that El Tapatio was really just a zitty 15-year old kid who rides a big-wheel with a plastic donkey-head on it; but he still strikes terror into the hearts of the peasants because of this reputation he's built by making up these horrible stories and watching them spread throughout the villages. Whenever something tragic happens in the village, the kid whispers, "Could it be... EL TAPATIO?" and the whole crowd is terrorized and runs for their huts. But later we cut to the scene of El Tapatio sitting in his bedroom doing his homework, like, some lame diorama of the various North American climate zones, or a 500-word essay on the Alamo.

Anyway, we were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe, and I got a charley horse in my abdomen... which is now known as The Curse of El Tapatio.   Of course, eating at the restaurant El Tapatio also gives me another kind of abdomen cramps, but that's probably just because I forgot to take my lactose-intolerance pills. ;-)


I would just like the record to state that I have the best friends in the world, and ninjas rule.

I would also like everyone to know that when my mother reads this, she will be shaking her head and sighing... she might even say, "Ooof." Surely she is wishing she had raised me unable to read or write. :-)


Lastly: Today for lunch I had a kick-ass bowl of Italian Wedding Soup from Lamberti's and it totally rocked my socks off. (Really. I have no socks on now. They're totally gone. Honest.) I loves me the free lunches. Ohhhhh yeaaaaah.

Okay, buh-bye.



|