Year: 2011

Go Ahead. Bet me MONEY This Isn’t Real.

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,
You KNOW I'm gonna wear these to Walmart. And to church. And then probably to Hell.

There is a website called TamponCrafts.com. It is an entire piece of the internet, accessed via valuable broadband, that is dedicated to making kitschy crap out of tampons. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

I want you to picture the scene where I send my child to school with a diorama of the first Thanksgiving made entirely out of tampons standing up in a cardboard shoebox. Or where we patiently arrange the tampons to represent the eight planets in the solar system (yeah, I was totally on board with kicking out Pluto). Or how we make an Inuit igloo out of the cottony middles, cutting off the strings to weave friendship bracelets for Field Day.

Then I want you to envision the school calling Child Welfare on me for using insertable feminine hygiene supplies to help my daughter with her homework.

I will freely admit that my real problem with TamponCrafts.com, besides the obvious shunning of the Instead plastic cup, is that I didn’t think of it first. Go ahead, give me a glue gun, various sequins, and a box of Tampax, and I will prove to you that I could come up with some really cool shit. Only no one’s gonna pay me to blog about it.

But the tampon-slash-doily site isn’t really the only missed opportunity on cyberspace. I really, really, REALLY wish I owned this one website whose URL I came across purely by accident, I swear. This one sticks in my craw so badly that I can’t think about it without wanting to take off my earring and cut someone:

DiscountStripper.com. Go ahead, click that link and see where it takes you.

Yup, there is a website devoted entirely to the tear-away spandex garments, f***-me pumps, and shiny tension-mounted poles (shut up, that wasn’t a dick joke) that strippers apparently need for their daily 9-to-5 jobs (pm to am, that is). Do you know what kind of money there is to bed made in French maid outfits with Velcro tabs? Or 120mm stiletto pumps that are still safe for walking the stage several times a night?
Instead, I caved to the pressure from my second grade nun and made this site, lorcadamon.com, a perfectly white-bread kind of website where no one has thong panties that rip off in time to the soundtrack from Boogie Nights. The joke’s on you, Sister Catherine, I fully intend to have my own herd of male prostitutes available for escort duties on my new site, herdofmanwhores.com. I have to pay for all those tampons and glue sticks somehow.

I Got Mugged on the Train to New Jersey

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I have spoken about my trip to New York for so long that the rest of you have probably grown a little tired of being jealous of my awesome life. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not all White Album martinis and library cards. No, I made the mistake of falling asleep on the train ride back to my hotel and when I woke, I realized I’d been robbed.

One of my contact lenses was missing.

Somehow without the other passengers noticing (or maybe they did notice and they all fell prey to Awkward Bystander Syndrome), the thief pried my eyelid open and took my contact lens. Fortunately, the approach of the train conductor scared him off before he could get the other contact lens.

Here is an artist's rendering of my contact lens in case you see it. REWARD: the other contact lens.
Here's what it will look like if my contact lens develops Stockholm Syndrome and helps the bad guy kidnap other contact lenses.

I know you might be wondering, “Is there really any street value in used contact lenses?” And I would have to say the answer is: “I don’t know.”

And though you might doubt my story, I will tell you that this HAS to be the truth. The only other explanation is that the contact lens migrated to the back of my eyeball and is permanently stuck there, melting into the surface at this very moment and causing eyeball cancer. Somehow, I would rather believe that a street person actually stuck his fingers in my eye and took it to wear like an invisible monocle.

Really, How Much Can Posting Bail Cost?

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If you are a follower of this blog, or even if you’ve accidentally clicked on it because you thought I might be married to Matt Damon but you’ve started to notice that not all is right on this website, then I want you to close your eyes and imagine what exactly could happen to me if I’m left to my own devices for an entire day in New York City. And I have a credit card. And half a sandwich in my purse.

I got to enjoy an entire day after my latest conference because my flight wasn’t until 6:00pm, so I used it the only way a freakishly skewed person like myself knows how: I went to the library.

Yeah, I said it. I had a day to kill and a really amazing credit limit and I went to the library. But the fun doesn’t stop there, my friends! I also saw the world’s largest Toys R Us (I’m sorry, Toys R Us, I realize your corporate branding is very important to you, but I can’t make my letter R turn around backwards like you do). I walked around Times Square a little bit, I saw the Empire State Building—twice, because I got turned around and ended up back at Penn Station—and went to the world’s most expensive flea market where I helped one junk dealer fix the antique piccolo he was selling because he couldn’t get it to play.

I did almost get kicked out of the library and maybe arrested and banned for life for trying to obtain an illegal library card. I wanted to fill out the form to get the card, but the only address I knew in New York was my parents’ first apartment when they got married.

SWEET LIBRARIAN: Yes ma’am, I’d be happy to help you get a card. Just fill out this form and sign here.

ME: Sure! Then I get my card?

SWEET LIBRARIAN: We’ll issue a temporary card today and then you’ll get your permanent card in the mail.

ME: Oh. So I can’t have my official card today?

SLIGHTLY LESS SWEET LIBRARIAN: No. That’s why we issue the temporary card today.

ME: I completely understand. But is there some way I could maybe give you a self-addressed, stamped envelope so my official card can be mailed to me?

IRRITATED LIBRARIAN: Do you happen to have a self-addressed, stamped envelope with you?

ME: No, but I could run get one.

SUSPICIOUS LIBRARIAN: I don’t think we’ll be able to do that.

ME: Um, does it matter that I don’t know my apartment number? I just know my street number. It’s the really tall building on West 75th Street.

IGNORING ME LIBRARIAN: Please fill out your form completely.

ME: Okay, okay. Jeez, it’s not like anyone wants to steal the books. This is the Fort Knox of libraries!

BITCHY LIBRARIAN: I’ll have you know, that we lose approximately 300,000 dollars’ worth of books every year to patrons who don’t return the books!

ME: Oh yeah? Well, you let those losers have a library card! See what knowing your complete street address will getcha???

Then she reached under the desk and tapped a button, so I left. But this isn’t over. I know people who know people and I am totally getting that library card. Bee-yatch.

I found the library! on Twitpic

Don’t Make Me Quisle You

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Even as a youngster, I was a bad ass.
On a really good day in the right near-dark ambient lighting with the help of a team of highly trained ninja-like beauticians, I can pull off…cute. Hello Kitty shoelaces would help the illusion, but a pair of patent-leather blood red stilettos would just confuse people. I would look like I had stolen someone’s shoes. This isn’t a self-deprecating blog post or a dig for followers to jump up with nice things to say; I’m really fine with this. I’ve been trying to veer toward “cute” since the day I was born.

The hardest part was back in junior high school. All of the kids were adorable in kindergarten, got a little bit awkward looking by middle school, but junior high school and high school were where the girls started to look pretty, then beautiful, then by college they were working in the realm of stunning. I got stuck somewhere between adorable and awkward.

That’s pretty much why it makes people laugh when I threaten to roundhouse kick them, sweep their legs out from under them, and pin them face down on the floor. It’s really bad when it’s an inmate I have to threaten, because he usually starts laughing. Luckily, once he’s doubled over holding his sides, that’s an excellent time to knee jab him in the face.

So I’m amassing an entire collection of words that sound just cute as a button but that can really screw you up in a monumental way. Darkle is a cute word, because it sounds like a nice word an older person might say instead of “urinate.” It really only means to make something darker, but if I were going to darkle you, it would be by using my mind powers to take away your eyesight. Dark now, isn’t it?

Another great one is quisle. Quisle (quiz-ul, not qwy’le, we’re not Celts) means to betray you in a terrible way. Can’t you just see the Godfather bringing in someone and having him shot right there in front of him, but first telling him, “You have quisled me. You quisled the whole family. I bring you in, I take care of you, and you repay me by quisling me? Make him disappear.”

And the mac-daddy cute-but-badassest word of them all, extirpate. It means to kill you. I completely picture my middle-aged soccer mom self, all five and a half feet of me, looking the gigantic bad guy in the face and saying, “I’m gonna extirpate you like no one has ever been extirpated before!” I totally envision my little fists on my hips when I say that.

Hopefully he will pass out from lack of air while doubled over laughing at me.

Hollywood, You Lied to Me

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

There had better be a Starbucks there when I crash.

I am not ashamed to admit that every so often I get so wrapped up in a good TV show that it becomes nearly a medically diagnosed obsession. I have given up tickets to concerts, passed up camping trips, and even secretly skipped an obscure relative’s wedding (oh c’mon, we all know what a fruitcake she is, surely this won’t be her only wedding!), all because I was going to have to miss a new episode of my favorite show.

Netflix saved my sanity—and all future Christmas dinners with obscure relatives—by offering complete seasons of TV shows on disc. No wait, on streaming. No, back to discs. Nope, it’s streaming, I’m sure of it.

Even better, I’ve learned that I don’t have to actually watch shows on any given network time slot because I can just watch the entire series from start to finish without ever having to suffer a rerun or cliffhanger. So when I saw the show LOST being advertised on Netflix, I decided to never watch a single episode until they had pulled the entire series off the air, then I was going to watch all of the episodes at once while on vacation from work or the next time I’m laid up in bed recovering from hernia surgery. It made complete sense at the time.

Alas, it is not to be. I won’t be watching so much as the opening credits. Here’s why.

I’m currently typing this from somewhere over a stretch of land fairly close to Detroit. I’m in the smallest of passenger planes, wedged amongst a college guy who yells loudly while playing Angry Birds on his iPhone, an older woman who hasn’t stopped coughing since we left Atlanta, and a man who does not understand that the armrest marks the official border between the Land of His Seat and my own Seatopia.

I saw the commercials for LOST when it first came on the air and I am here to tell you with full authority that there are never that many beautiful people on one airplane. They lied to me.

Am I the only one who thought it was kind of strange that the survivors washed up on the island already haggard and stubbly, like they hadn’t shaved that morning before heading to the airport just in case they were going to be marooned on an island and wanted to look the part? And as the season wore on, why were all of the gorgeously stubbly-faced hottie men STILL stubbly faced? Unless someone had snuck a communal razor in his carry-on bag and the bag magically washed ashore, how were these men not sporting ZZ Top beards?

And is no one else worried that by the middle of season three the lone fat guy was still supremely overweight? Was he eating the extra cast members? Shouldn’t more people have been disappearing off the island as he struggled to maintain his Rubenesque figure?

Nope, the reality of airline travel struck and I’m done with pretty people masquerading as actual TSA passengers. It does kind of explain the government’s rush-job to develop, “I can see you naked through your clothes technology,” but that’s a whole other channel you’re not going to get me to watch.

I’m Going to New York and You’re Not

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Don't worry, while you're staying in Newark these gentlemen will watch your car for you.

Thanks to this really cool website who lowered its standards enough to let me write stuff on their news feed, I’m going to New York. More specifically, I’m going to this really cool, really hip, NEW part of New York called Newark. I’ve heard really awesome things about it.

According to everything I’ve heard, they’re really into safety there, which is why there’s barbed wire all over the place. The vending machines even have barbed wire around them, and it’s to make sure that when you go to get yourself a soda, it doesn’t just take your money and not give you a drink because someone has stolen all the sodas from the machine.

There are these really cool parking lots all over Newark, and people are paid to just stand around the parking lot and watch your car for you. All kinds of different people, which makes me really appreciate their sense of equality. The parking lot owners don’t discriminate on the basis of looks, because even the most hardened of criminals can find gainful employment working for the parking lot people.

It’s really cool how all the women feel super safe in the city, because there are always women just walking around. They’re not even doing anything, they’re just walking up and down the sidewalks, talking to people in their cars, calling out to each other. It’s really great.

I am a little bit concerned that I haven’t been able to find any libraries or museums in Newark when I looked on Google, but that’s okay. They’re so close to New York that there’s probably no point in building ANOTHER opera house. They choose to spend their money on these really quaint buildings called Shelter. Shelters are everywhere in Newark, which is practically like that poem on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, where it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” The whole freakin’ city is one big welcome hug!

Probably the best thing about the whole new part of New York is the name. NEWARK. Like, New Ark. It’s Biblical! It’s the New Ark, like the one where Noah rescued all the animals, except New Ark is going to rescue all the people who wear all of their clothes at the same time and push their groceries in shopping carts everywhere they go.

It’s got to be just the bestest city in the whole world, and I get to go there this weekend! It’s okay if you’re jealous, I’ll bring you back a souvenir. One place I saw even sold friendly balloons in the bathrooms and syringes are available, like, EVERYWHERE, just in case a diabetic shows up and forgot their kit. It’s gonna be so neat!

Today’s Agenda: Blackmail

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I was flipping through a catalog of cutesy home items, mostly out of boredom but never because I ever intend to own a cookie jar in the shape of a pig that oinks when you open the lid. I did, however, find one item in the pages that I absolutely cannot live without, and for that matter, I can’t believe I’ve lived this long without it.

A blackmail organizer.

I had no idea that I could actually purchase a wall-mounted wooden shelf complete with individual dividers that would help me keep my extortion in nice neat piles, organized not only by first letter of recipient’s last name, but also by month that it is due. I hate it when Christmas rolls around and I get behind on mailing out my letters demanding payment to keep quiet about how drunk someone got at the office party or who was caught doing the nasty at the church bake sale.

Because I’m not an idiot, I quickly realized that there was a space missing between black and mail. Further proof of the error was the purplemail organizer just below it. Even more sadly, if we’re going to allow an error like that to slip through, why couldn’t we also have a spelling error so that I can actually have a blackmale organizer? I would totally pay money to have Dwayne Johnson come to my house and put everything I owned in nice neat piles. I have a sick feeling that The Rock will not be showing up to do my bidding, shirtless or otherwise.

Tell me you wouldn't have this man over for some light housework.

Do us all a favor and proofread, you bunch of douche canoes.

File That One Under “Oops”

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

These picture doesn't mean anything. But it made me laugh.

HaHa! (cue the rest of my evil laughter…I don’t really have a good evil laugh so this imaginary soundtrack will have to do.) It’s 10:33PM where I live, and you’re thinking, “Oh my goodness! Lorca didn’t post anything today! And to think she was so committed to #NaBloWriMo! She must be DEAD or drunk. Someone send either the paramedics or some strong black coffee to her house STAT!”

You are so melodramatic. The truth is, I simply forgot. That’s what happens when you start the day by getting one kid to school and the other to a field trip in the next city, still manage to make it to work on time, pick up both kids from school, come home, make dinner, write three articles, LIVE BLOG A PRESS CONFERENCE IN HONG KONG, arrange two interviews, clean up some Dachshund urine, bathe the kids, get them to bed, write another article, take a shower, and go to bed.

Suddenly, you sit up in bed and scream, “I didn’t say anything funny on the internet today!” And we all know how my husband loves to be jolted from a sound sleep by a woman screaming weird-assed remarks. And you had the nerve to tell people I was drunk. You should be ashamed.

And That, My Child, Is How We Use the WHOLE Deer

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Guess what happens when they can smell you from a mile away?

I live in Alabama and I am married to a man. In most cases, that simple little one-plus-one would equal three and a half months of the year ruined by the ruthless stalking of fluffy prey like a caveman on uppers. Yes, I am a deer hunting widow from October 15th through January 31st (it’s physically painful that I know these dates); this is in addition to being an SEC football widow from mid-August through the SEC Championship game in early December, followed by a National Championship game in January if God loves us enough.

I actually don’t mind the deer hunting whenever it actually results in a deer that we can eat. Aside from the several deer that my husband has missed and an equally significant number that he has shot and never could find (because it’s easy to get really, REALLY far away with an arrow sticking out of your side), I would be a whole lot more supportive of this habit if actual meat was the prize at the bottom of the box.

The time spent away from the family perched in a rickety aluminum tree stand for countless hours every weekend during the season isn’t what really hurts me, though. It’s the pee. Yes, I said it, there is a pee problem. Not mine, or my husband’s (well, technically it’s his problem).

In order to hunt deer you have to have a lot of pee, presumably the kind of pee that will attract other deer. Usually doe pee is involved, although if you’re lucky you can get your hands on doe-in-rut pee, the kind that will drive those bucks wild with lust and wanting. Where do you get such liquid gold?

At the pee store. Duh.

Yes, my husband BUYS pee. He PAYS for urine. With actual MONEY. Somewhere along the way I forgot to inform him that if there is anything in my life that I feel we have way too much of, it’s pee. My own pee notwithstanding, there are two children and a dog that have been happily bringing pee into my life for years, and I’ve only just in the last several years gotten all three of them to the point that they can take care of their pee on their own. Little bottles with labels like Doe-Eyed Gold and Buck Bomb have graced the shelves of our attic with the hunting equipment for far longer than I can think about without throwing up a little bit in my mouth.

I finally managed to cure my husband of his obsession with purchasing store-bought pee: like a good wife, I supported his hobbies and interests by usually getting him some hunting-related device for his birthday. This year, I bought him a little camouflaged canister about the size of a soda can that hangs from a tree and dispenses…pee. On a timer, even. You simply hang it in the woods near your tree stand, set it to go, and while you sit safely above ground (and away from all pee) this little contraption sprays doe pee all over the ground to draw the bucks to you. It’s like taking pee from a baby.

Only I bought the wrong one and this one wasn’t on a timer. It was motion activated. He walked near it and the mechanical Pee Fairy doused him from the top of his international orange hat to his Cabela’s all-weather snake guard boots. Happy birthday, dear.

We’ve Reached the Halfway Point! (In other words, you’re almost done.)

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I could make my yard look like this if I wasn't an idiot.

It’s October 16th. I’m halfway through the month and have written more blog posts in the last fifteen days than I usually do in three months. I can’t honestly say I’m BORED with the process, but I’m certainly ready for something shiny to come along and grab my attention. Like a Mercedes. Those are scrumptiously shiny, although I wouldn’t know since people who actually own those kinds of cars don’t like me to stand too close to them for fear that I’ll scratch them or drop the already sticker-shocked value.

I have a long history of reducing the property values anywhere I live, mostly because of my nasty habit of just not giving a damn. The grass gets mowed when I can no longer see the dog in it (and I’ve owned a German shepherd). I also purposely constructed these little rock walls around my property so I can just drop a live fern, plastic pot and all, inside the devious little rock wall and no one knows that I can’t landscape to save my own life (well, fern) because I can throw it away—pot and all—when I let it die from neglect.

So it’s a little bit amazing that this blog hasn’t died from neglect yet like the sad little yard ferns. Even more jaw-droppingly awesome, about forty people every day have nothing better to do than read this blog. I’m going to have to fully endorse smoking crystal meth to you people. I am seriously a little bit sad, albeit “give up my firstborn child” grateful, that you keep stopping by here.

In the meantime (meaning, “As this blog gets dumber and dumber as the month of October wears on,”) please keep in mind that this whole month of rambling stupidity is all in preparation for a very serious month of writing THE GREATEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN BY A HUMAN BEING. That’s because L. Ron Hubbard’s books don’t count since he’s not a person, he’s a reincarnated alien or something. Thanks for watching!