Some of them try to rhyme but they can't rhyme like this.

Have you ever wondered what I do on my days off?



Here I am singing "Jump" by Kriss Kross with Toffee, one of my guinea pigs. Notice that my dog gets up and leaves at 1:20. I guess she doesn't like my flow.

Emotional Muppets

Floyd of "Muppet" fame sings "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." To quote one of the youtube comments, "I can't believe I'm saying this... but this muppet performance is actually touching."

In which all I do is talk about Death Cab for Cutie

I don't think it's any secret that I really like the band Death Cab for Cutie, a four-member band from Washington state whose new album, "Codes and Keys," came out in May. I saw them on Palladia's Storytellers last night and the lead singer reminds me of one of my ex-boyfriends, the one who could have been tolerable if he wasn't still living with his parents at the age of thirty-five. Anyhow, ignore that, let's talk about some of these videos. Instead of saying things like, "Here is a video that was well-done" I'm going to say what I personally feel about all three of them.

This first clip is their video from the new album, "Codes and Keys," called "You Are A Tourist." The guitar is pretty catchy, but my primary observation can only be understood once you listen to the chorus.



I also really like the confetti because my Mom used to send me these greeting cards and you'd open them up and a bunch of "funfetti" would fall out of the card and get all over the floor and on your clothes and I'd be like, "WTF MOM." She was getting me back because at one of my birthday parties one year when I was a kid we got a magician with a name like Franny or Frodo or something and he had a giant balloon and said rhetorically to my mother, "I hope you have a good vacuum cleaner" and then popped it and all of this crap fell everywhere. I was still finding pieces of confetti when I was home for the weekend after I left for college. She was pretty livid, but looking back on it I think Mom must have done something to piss him off. At least it wasn't the clown who arrived at my 5th birthday party drunk and spent the whole time on our house phone cursing out his wife.

Now let's observe another song, this from their 2005 album "Plans." According to lead singer Ben Gibbard, this song is about a couple who move to South Florida and really hate it. Those of you who know me understand how relevant this is, and the song is just really catchy to boot. If you put The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on mute and play this song it's pretty much the most hilarious thing you'll see this summer other than The Green Lantern. "There were churches, theme parks and malls, but there was nothing there all along."



Lastly, this is from the same album as above and is called "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." There are two versions of the same video, but this animated version with the rabbits is pretty hard to track down. As an animal lover, I fall to pieces when I see this video, and there's something about prey animals that have really healed me - I have a hamster and 2 guinea pigs that helped comfort me after Mom's death in December, and I also love rabbits - in fact, the first book I read after Mom died was David Lindsay-Abaire's play "Rabbit Hole." Prey animals are always on the lookout, always anxious, like me. But to win their trust is monumental.

I am getting my first and last tattoo this September, on my hip. It is going to be the drawing you see at 3:02 seconds into this video. I feel lonely a lot. When I'm lonely I can always look at it and remember that there is someone, whether it's in heaven or here on earth, looking out for me and protecting me, and that we will meet again.

It's Doomsday, Doomsday, gotta get down on Doomsday. Everybody's looking forward to the Rapture.

When people ask me when I'm gonna start having kids, I point out that I don't want to start raising children in a world where people like Rebecca Black are running around loose and getting down without any supervision.

My husband and I went to church today for the first time in years, and it was the first Protestant Christian service I've ever attended (I was raised Catholic). I had this strange feeling that we were going to walk in and our skin would start to simmer and we'd be smited, even though I'm not exactly sure what "smited" means. I am a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic cousin of Elizabeth who failed to restore Catholicism to the United Kingdom and may or may not have killed some people. And my husband was born in Ireland where they're so Catholic that it's improper to slap a baby on its ass if it's born without crying, so instead they just tap you on the shoulder repeatedly until you start to show signs of being vaguely annoyed.

In any case, the service was interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. I was both relieved and disappointed that the pastor didn't prepare a sermon on that 5/21/11 End of the World thing, and wondered how many pastors DID. Now, I kind of want to get one of those "May 21, 2011: Judgement Day" shirts because now they're collector's items, like the Super Bowl memorabilia they make with the losing team's name on it. I guess everyone stockpiling groceries has amassed another twenty years of toilet paper and Chicken of the Sea. It's always touching when I see perishable people eating nonperishable meals. And thanks to you all, the canning industry has seen no plummet in its rates of unemployment during the recession.

The end of the world doesn't bother me because there isn't necessarily anything we can do about it. I would also be thinking selfishly for saying it would be any worse than what the earthquake victims in Japan experienced, or the farmers in the American South and Midwest whose homes are floating on the Mississippi or blowing in the wind. After all, some of them must feel like it's the end of the world, especially if their family and friends have lost something, too. In the same way, the end of times will only be the end of the world as we understand our relationships within a materialistic dimension. It would be on a bigger scale, but I didn't see any ad campaigns in Vicksburg, Louisiana. Nobody in Reading, Kansas was on the news talking about May 21, they were talking about losing all of their belongings on May 22nd. The world's not over, and we can smile. We act as if something other than tragedy can make us just as grateful to be alive.

Not everyone was laughing.

Gulf of Mexico, Trademark BP

Since I was on the subject of governors the other day, my own governor, Florida's Charlie Crist, declared a state of emergency in Florida for that, you know, HUMONGOUS OIL SPILL that's destroying the Gulf of Mexico and threatening to be more damaging than Exxon Valdez (I originally typed "Juan Valdez," the Colombian coffee cartoon. Which probably means that if *I'm* too young to remember the details of Exxon Valdez's spill at 27 years old, then a lot of you probably need to review your history on this disaster too). Although it looks like the majority of the damage will occur to the Louisiana coastline (which, thank God, has never ever had anything horrible at all happen to it, especially in September 2005), other states will be affected.

I live on the Gulf of Mexico. I love my gulf, the warm water, the animals.

Most of you are sick of seeing the CNN reports or constant updates and are probably becoming aggravated by the spill, so some writer from the South like me doesn't need to inundate you with any more information. Instead here's a video I took of dolphins at the Gulf Coast Visitor Center in Everglades City during a boat ride among the 10,000 islands. These are real, wild dolphins from that Gulf of Mexico you see on your TV with the big black oil spill graphic.



I can't help but look at them and wonder where God is in all of this and why we need this oil. Obama was in Arcadia months ago praising them for their effective use of green energy. Now we can't think of the word "hybrid" without thinking of "sticky gas pedal." We don't need any natural disasters in this country. We seem to be doing a great job destroying things ourselves.

comfortable: no need to bend down

Finally, a solution for those of us who despise the simple act of removing our shoes, and want to waste more plastic than we already do, there is the GaloMat, a shoe cover dispenser so that you can lose all of your friends by your total disregard for their comfort. Why cover just your couch in plastic when you can shrink-wrap the human body?



Too busy to watch the instructional video? Here's an eight-second, uncomfortably to-the-point clip of the Step-O-Matic.



I wonder if it works for dogs.

Crazy Cavies Pignic!

On Saturday February 27th we attended the Crazy Cavies' 2nd Annual South Florida Pignic, held in Coconut Creek, FL, in Broward County, about an hour and 45 minutes from Naples. After waiting in a long line of cars there for a rugby game (why play rugby when you can play with piggies? I'll never understand sports) we found the Elfin Shelter, where a good amount of guinea pigs (also known as "cavies") and cavy slaves (also known as "humans") met to meet other owners, play with guinea pigs, and most importantly, support the Crazy Cavies Guinea Pig Rescue, a non-profit, no-kill guinea pig rescue run by Jeremy and Tracy Henle. This is the first time I've met other guinea pig owners "in the flesh," after being on some of the online forums, and the first time my guinea pigs, Toffee and Tribble, have met other guinea pigs since we got them in September. It was pretty cool to meet other people who are as much in love with cavies as I am, to ask questions, to meet other pigs, and to see mine interact with them. We arrived around 1 p.m. with our piggies, a towel, and the hope that Toffee and Tribble would enjoy finding out that they weren't the only 2 guinea pigs in the world, as they originally thought!
After Tracy made sure Toffee and Tribble were in fact female (since there was a pen for females and neutered males, and a pen for males, as one Toffee and Tribble is enough for us!) and were okay, we placed them in the pen you see here, pink for girls, of course. Our piggies got to eat real grass for the first time ever, since I've been nervous about letting them out to eat River Reach's probably pesticide-treated grass. Not to mention, uh, lizards. After Toffee and Tribble sat in the corner glued to one another for about five minutes, they slowly moved out to meet the other piggies. Strangely enough, Tribble (who is Abyssinian - or, to those who don't know cavy-speak, basically means "crazy, poufy hair") hung around other long-haired guinea pigs, and Toffee stayed with the short-haired guinea pigs. I think they were in shock that other piggies looked like them! "She has short hair like me!" "I thought I was the only one with rosettes!"

Above, you'll see Toffee (on the right) happily chomping on grass with her new short-haired friend.


And Tribble meeting some fellow Abbys. Tribble is the one on the left looking right at me as if to say, "Hey, my Mom's taking a photo! Hi Mom!"



After an hour or so, the guinea pig conversations turned to current events. Toffee (3rd from left) grabs the microphone as the Guinea Pig Panel addresses the Toyota company about their Hybrid recalls. "We want answers! And then we want hay!"


But the girls weren't the only ones having fun. This is the boys' pen, if you can't tell from the blue grids. I was able to grab a few photos of the boys as the day was ending and Toffee and Tribble were the only girls left in the Female pen. As I told Tracy, "These are mine, so I don't think I have to worry about them getting along!"

What made me very happy was that every guinea pig there was obviously very loved and very well taken care of, since our society has become so inundated with movies like G-Force and shows like Wonder Pets where a guinea pig in a cage too small for a hamster hangs out with a duck and a turtle. There were a lot of kids there with moms and dads who were more knowledgeable about guinea pigs than they were when it's usually, sadly, the other way around.

Once it neared 4 p.m., Ed looked up at the sky and Jeremy agreed that it was time to take the pens and tents down as it was about to pour. I joked with Ed (who was born in Ireland) that you can always trust an Irishman to know when rain is coming! Little did we know that the winds were about to blow almost everything off of this table, as we all floundered to put things away before they went flying.


Some of the raffle prizes which, had it not been for the remaining attendees, would have gone flying like a rugby ball in the wind! I tried to help, but mostly panicked saying "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod" over and over again.

Toffee, Tribble, Ed, and I had a wonderful day at the Crazy Cavies pignic and we wished we came earlier! We met some fabulous people who I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with through facebook.

Now, it doesn't matter if you're in Florida or France, this guinea pig rescue is wonderful and deserves all of the publicity it can get, because what Tracy and Jeremy are doing is amazing and many of the guinea pigs they rescue would be long-dead without their selfless love and dedication. But what many people who don't have guinea pigs don't realize is how expensive it is to keep them: bedding, hay, pellets, veggies, medication, and time: it all adds up. Please donate to the Crazy Cavies Rescue by clicking here. Even something as small as $5 can make a difference and help keep this rescue running. If you live in Florida, and have been thinking of adopting a guinea pig, please do it through Crazy Cavies and not through a pet store! Although mine came through a pet store there is no question in my mind now that I'm more educated on guinea pigs than I was when we got them that if I could do it again, I'd go rescue all the way. But you live and you learn. These are healthy, happy pigs fostered in a loving environment, and they deserve it!

Thank you to rescue runners Tracy and Jeremy for a fabulous day and thanks to those like Jeff, Jessica, Anna, and other attendees whose names I'm forgetting (but it goes to show what a good turnout they had!). You were all fabulous and I hope to see you at next year's Pignic! Wheek wheek!

If You Ain't Got No Money, Get Your Broke Ass Home

Here is an article from Naples News about George W. Bush and our former governor, Jeb, speaking at my city's Town Hall the other day. Tickets started at $200 but if you wanted to get a super-posh seat where you could actually see their heads, it was $550. Which is a shame, cause I've had this wad of $1,100 in cash burning a hole in my pocket lately so I guess I'll just have to put it toward that new purse.



I still can't believe that R. L. Stine was there. I'll refrain from making a "Night of the Living Dummy" joke.