But Soft! What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

It is the east, and Trivia Weekend is the sun.

Coming to 89.9 WWSP on April 17-19 is "Trivia 40: Here's ooking at you, Kid", a fifty-four hour trivia extravaganza. This raw display of mental muscles is not for the weak of heart (or the weak of liver, come to think about it). I will be staying in Stevens Point proper for the weekend, just so I can be a little more snuggly with the vibe that is trivia weekend. It's the world's largest trivia contest, so for all you road-side attraction fans...this does qualify as a weekend-long roadside attraction where people do phone-in responses as well as city-wide scavenger hunts. And since Easter will be a fond memory by the time Trivia rolls around, wouldn't you like to have a little extra in the way of scavenger hunting? I know I do!

For those of you who have been so cruelly parted from Trivia by time, distance, or inclination, I would like to mention that WWSP has online streaming radio here:

http://www.90fmtrivia.org/

You might just want to scroll through the team names, because they are generally a hoot. The team I'm in is called "This is why we can't have nice things." It's not "Gene Autry's Ninja Warriors" (actual team name: http://members.tripod.com/~ganw/) but it's appropriate and always makes my roommate and me laugh.

And as a hint for the newbs: The first question always has something to do with Robert Redford, and Belt's (Home of the Big Cone) always has "Trivia Mavens" on their sign.

Seriously. Always. So here's to the first Trivia that I plan to attend since Trivia 33: All in the Family. Let's hope that Trivia 40 is even better...or at least that it isn't a tragedy.

Maybe a Bit More Sleep Is In Order

Oct 15 2005

I caught myself in the process of putting deodorant on my toothbrush.

I'm amused by the porn subject lines in my inbox (sexy baby and bad erection).

I'm beginning to think I should have gotten up even earlier.

I'm almost enjoying the flavor combination of orange Listerine and my beet flavored organic toothpaste (This is a total lie. Combined, they taste much like the pall of the grave...with a citrusy tang.).

I'm wondering what I should go as for Halloween this year. I'm tired of being a witch, a devil, or wearing black vinyl. Well, I still like wearing black vinyl, but I'm tired of it being my standard Halloween costume, capice?

Suggestions are welcome, because if I'm trying to brush my teeth with Secret Invisible Solid, I might not be in the best mental position to make a decision this important.

Lovies!

Note To Self

Jun 9 2005

Stop with the prunes.

I mean, really.

Don't you remember the last time?

You know, when you were chained to the toilet for about 3 hours?

When you peed, except it was brown and came from your butt?

Don't make me tell you again.

Toys

When this blog says "recently," it actually means May of 2006. Sorry!

Recently, Ness posted a blog commenting about the toys of our childhood. I, being a slacker, didn't leave a comment until I was verbally beaten about the head and neck for not posting. I told her that I would torture her with something , and I feel that I have succeeded. As a matter of fact, I was so proud of the level of torment I threw at her, that I decided to share it with all of you.

Yes, I can tell that you are awed by my unadulterated goodness.

So here begins my post about my personal favorite childhood toys:

This is an absolute no-brainer.STAR WARS ACTION FIGURES!!!

My God, what would my brothers and I have done all year long if it weren't for those little pieces of plastic that held all of us in such a trance. We would pile fallen pine needles into stages, corridors, whatever it took to give us an excuse to have some kind of conflict that could only be solved by a battle royale between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

We would dress the part, too, in the winter, with my hair pinned into giant croissants placed with care just above my ears, in a white nightgown, my eldest brother wearing a long scarf tied in a knot as a sash, trying to do the weird growly noise (which, to this day, is the easiest way for any man to impress me. To do the Chewbacca growl is the epitome of assured masculinity and virility in my eyes.) and look as though he would indeed tear out an arm and beat you with it.

My other two brothers were Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, respectively...although it never did come to blows, to my obviously understandable dismay. I was Leia, dammit, and I wanted some BLOOD!

And where would the world be without WEEBLE WOBBLES? Man I loved me some Weeble Wobbles. Especially the little tree house play set with the slidey slide. God, hours of fun in the back yard on the sand pile.I could actually go on for a lot longer, because, really, I grew up in like the Golden Age of toys, if you ask me...From Hot Wheels to Mr Potato Head to Etch-A-Sketch.

We didn't have Candy Land, but my cousins did, and so we would go to their house and play games over there....Candy Land, Chinese Checkers, Monopoly (where began the lifetime of hatred I feel for that game), Superman, and, of course, War. Not the card game. I hated playing war with my family, hated it with an all consuming passion. This had nothing to do with my purely pacifist stance in conflict, but, rather, reflected my earliest encounters with gender stereotyping. I was a girl, so I had to be the nurse.

For those friends of mine who are indeed, nurses, this may not seem like such a terrible thing, but to me in my 5-9 year bloodlust, this was tantamount to being horsewhipped with barbed wire. There is no thing on earth that I think could possibly compare with the boredom of waiting for my brothers and cousins to get tired, and play wounded so they could get a little rest so that I could play, too. Wow, that sounded so sad. *sniff* But really, it was what it was, and I didn't hate it too terribly or I would have found something else to do.

Little Golden Books...need I say more? I loved them with a passion that wouldn't die. I think I knew I read too much when I hit about age 11 and my mom would yell at me to get out of my room and get my nose out of a book. If I was particularly bad (which occasionally I was, believe it or not), she would threaten to burn all of my books. At that point, she usually got me to heed her.

There is, however, a penultimate toy that we all had as children, and it's one that you really don't run into that often any more, and I think it's a shame. In this world of PS2, Xbox, and portable dvd players so little kids don't get bored while Mom is driving to the store, the toy that I notice as missing more and more often is a very simple one. It's called "imagination". I don't think that we, as adults and children, take enough time to turn off the tv, pause the computer game, go outside, and play games of "What If?."

I think there is something to be said for the ability for people to ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES. When I was young, I heard that only boring people get bored, and really I do hold this to be truth. I notice that as I age, I think back most fondly on the simpler things that I enjoyed. I remember "Pong" like it was yesterday, but better than that I remember the little arrow plants my brothers and I would pick and throw at each other while playing "Chiefs."

I think that if "imagination" was something that was sold in a box or a bag,I would love to buy all of us some.
Lovies!

Inner Peace

There is that whole school of thought, the one about positive thinking, which I have been trying to explore in my life.
I have been trying to do away with the things which make me less than completely happy, joyful, complete. This has been a long process for me, because I have been learning some fascinating things about myself, and more than how fascinating I am, because, really, I think we all knew that already.
For instance, I seldom feel happy or fulfilled unless I am saying really mean things while stabbing puppies with a rusty nail.
Few things make me sparkle with happiness like talking about particular cartoon character being sodomized by a dog, and laughing at the misfortunes of others is what puts the bounce in my stride and the sparkle in my eyes.
Once, while pointing out the shortcomings of others, I was quite honestly so overcome with joy, bliss and jubulance that I started to tear up. Something about making sarcastic comments are what help me get out of bed in the morning.
The books I have been reading have been reading on the subject have ben very helpful, actually, and I recommend them freely. Without those books, I would still be pretending to be nice.
I have been able to find the manners which society has shackled me with, and dispatch them readily. Now I am a more focused, concentrated and distilled villainess. I have kicked my "naughty" quotient off the charts, from Mister Roger's spinster sister, the one with all the cats and the books all over the place, to something more like Sheri Moon Zombie in The Devil's Rejects, only with more bathing, a bigger ass, and a smidgen more common sense.
Oh. And I'm a brunette right now.
I guess the upshot of this posting is to suggest that by reading self-help books, you can truly become what you have always wanted to be. The thing is that I always wanted to be Ava Braun or the Bride of Frankenstein. Without the suicide and horrible death. I guess, more like that one chick who killed all those guys on the highway, that they had that movie about, but without the killing, the Death Row sentencing, the prostitution, or the lesbianism. Or the dying at the end.
You get the idea.