Fantacrap (adj): a combination of Fantasea and Crap

The last time I was this embarrassed I was rinsing a dirty plunger in the bathtub at a friend's apartment. But that was lifetimes before the Shedd Aquarium's new show Fantasea.

Before the Shedd calls me a family-fun hating monster, let me say in my defense, "Shedd, I don't get any special joy out of nicknaming your new production Fantacrap. The show isn't even open yet, and you can bet when it does there will be dozens, if not hundreds, flocking to the internet to bash the show you've called Fantasea. Besides, Shedd, if you're going to get criticized, wouldn't you rather hear it from someone who loves you?"--At least, that's what my Mom always said to me...

Fantasea could have been interesting, if it were kept under an 30 minutes, ditched the Disney/Sea World feel, and was altogether redeveloped. The one thing Fantasea has going for it is, for the first time Shedd audiences can go to the Oceanarium and see several animals, including the dolphins, do tricks. (Yes tricks... because if you try to tell me that a sea lion tugging a rope with the word pull on it is a "natural behavior", I'll go from embarasse to ashamed.) Every other element in the show is working against Fantasea, from the colorful seaweed hoola dancers, to the out of place Mary Poppins-type characters with umbrellas suspended from the ceiling, to that poor young girl who's planted in the audience with her "mom".

The emcee of Fantasea had asked everyone in the audience not to discuss the show because it's official release is still a few days away... so I won't give any more spoilers, but I cannot say this enough: The show is embarassing! It's embarrassing to watch he Shedd Aquarium endeavor to put on a Disney-esque performance and miss the mark completely, becoming a corny production with no value in entertainment, education, nor otherwise. I don't have kids, and I can't tell if any in the audience were buying the show, although my boyfriend swears he saw one 2-year-old roll his eyes.

Fantasea completely undermines the great and interesting things going on at the Shedd. It's a shame Fantasea reached the point of expensive lesson to be learned, when any dopey focus group would have axed it in pre-production phases and helped the Shedd avoid what will certainly become a big black eye.

Do you know "good" pick up lines?

Add your pickup lines to the comments section of this article I wrote for Denver Six Shooter.

Pickup lines are the frisky, bastard cousins of the Hallmark's Valentine. They're the one- or two- liners that could get you laid, but more likely get a drink thrown in your face. I asked dozens of people from six different Capitol Hill bars for pickup lines, and this is what happened.

Buffalo Wild Wings Trivia

The bad mood began when the DJ announced a competitor's team name was "Multiple Scoregasm", which clearly trumped our team name, "Scoregasm."

"Yes, that's right," said the DJ (i.e. Wade). "There are two teams who have the word 'Scoregasm' in their name."

How humiliating!

Things continued to go down hill as I displayed unjustified confidence in topics I should really start considering lessons in the Golden Rule. On trivia of "Name-D-Year" variety, I should be seen and not heard.

Yet I'm not completely useless at bar trivia. I jumped up quickly at "What is the largest organ of the body?"

At the DJ booth, a regular stands, looks at me, and says ironically:"Blah blah blah largest organ in MY body."

I laugh a sarcastic, "Har, har, har" giving him the three elbow jab, and I remembered something that happened last Halloween.

My boss's son wanted me to print him out pictures of skeletons. I printed on, and he comes up to me and says, "No! Not a girl skeleton! I want a picture of a boy skeleton!"

"Kid," I says, "that's not a bone."

He looks at me incredulously... made me second guess myself.

In the midst of this internal dialogue, I return to my seat and continue to do piss poor at Buffalo Wild Wings Trivia.

Disney World Marathon... check!

"No!" in response to: "Are you ready?"

Maybe I shouldn't be so brutally honest to the staff of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, but honestly, I was not feeling very ready to run that marathon.

But Sunday rolled around, and I showed up, started, and I finished the Walt Disney World Marathon! It was my first and last.

Kyle and I met with my parents in Florida on Thursday, January 8th. We had a few great days hopping around parks before my 6 hour run/walk on the 11th.

Some things to note

• The altitude made a huge difference! I ran the first 18 miles wihtout getting the least bit winded.
• Running stinks! One should only engage in running to save one's life, and often that decision should really be weighed more carefully.
• I walked from 18 to 25. Although my cardio system felt great, the altitude didn't save discomfort from ligaments and muscles in my feet, of all places.
• Disney has characters throughout the course. Many racers stopped to take photos, I did not.
• I spent almost 30 minutes in line for port-o-lets along the way.
• During the race I ate 2 bananas, 2 cups of honey, and probably drank more than 2L of water.
• I finished the 1/2 marathon in about 2 hours and I crawled through the second half to come in at 6hrs.
• No injuries. No joint paint. No major muscle soreness. I crossed the finish line on my feet, and each of the succeeding days were pain-free, with only slight stiffness in my shoulders.
• Goals accomplished: (1) completed the race, (2) didn't get hurt, and (3) won't be in a state of recovery for any part fo the following week.

Now onto a bigger and better 2009, in which there are no marathons, but plenty of chocolate cake.

How Amazon.com Users Describe Products

Paranormal Romance.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "No shit! I just tagged about 50 items on Amazon.com with the phrase 'paranormal romance'." Well, you're not alone. Of all the phrases and words in the English dictionary, "paranormal romance" is the 6th most popular adjective that comes to the minds of Amazon.com users when they want to describe Amazon products.

Nearly 42,000 products on Amazon.com are tagged with the phrase "paranormal romance".

Tagging is the Web 2.0 practice of labeling items with keywords. As far as I can tell, the theory is to "tag" web content with keywords to improve search engine rankings.

I was initially shocked to learn that 42,000 items exists on Amazon.com that are worthy of the tag "paranormal romance". Then I became shocked at the number of common terms that get used less than "paranormal romance". Here's just a couple:

• "Book" only had 32,000 tags.
• "Disney" owns 14,000 tags.
• "Christmas" gets a nearly 13,000 tags.
• "Toys" and "Sex" (not one phrase) each get fewer than 9,000 tags.

Please feel free to not believe one word of this, and check out the Amazon.com Tag Map for yourself. Hover over the words to get stats on the number of tags for each of the "popular" phrases.

The Walrus (a poem)

Let's all be on the outside,
Who we are on the inside.

Let's go to the Walrus on Tuesday,
Dressed as your spouse.

Shame what?
Embarrassed, huh?

Fall on your face while dancing.

Queue up with the other guys,
Glazed over eyes,
Waiting to put their "drink order"
Into the waitress.

Respond: "I am a robot."
When a stranger says,
"Someone drew lines
And wrote numbers one through six
on your back."
Respond: "Robots don't sing."
When the same person
Asks you to duet Meatloaf.

Do the monkey on stage as
Your new best friend
What's-his-name
Sings "Baby Got Back".

"Unchained Melody", "Eclipse of the Heart", "Big Booty Bitches"
An entire genre of songs use
Lyrics such as mlaah la la la.
Dhaaa.

When you're asked if you'd
Like another Cherry Coke,
Feel free to say, "No thanks.
I'm driving."

Because here at the Walrus,
Singing karaoke with the mic
Parallel to the floor
With your eyes closed,
Here at the Walrus
We are all
Openly retarded.

An omen of better times to come

Acupuncture: My deeper sensation

Today I got stabbed in the back with a needle, and I immediately was reminded of having my teeth drilled at the dentist. It was my 2nd acupuncture treatment.



Magic Ingredients

Acupuncturists do this thing where they light herbs on fire and stick them to your body. When you feel the heat, it gets removed. The herb is called Moxa (possibly misspelled).

On my first acupuncture treatment, I was told that I was going to get Moxa in my belly button. To disperse the heat evenly and prevent burning, my acupuncturist was going to put salt into my belly button. I immediately envision some magical Chinese salt that you have to buy from the same store where that kid picked up Gizmo from the movie Gremlins. Limited edition, thousand-year-old salt from the bottom of an ancient sea. And as I'm in the middle of this imagination frenzy, my acupuncture gal begins to pour into my belly button the salt from none other than a standard blue Morton Salt container... I felt a bit like a cake...

Today there was Moxa, sans salt, all over the place and lots of it! I don't know if the Moxa was a compounding factor or what, but there were plenty of "deeper sensations" today as well.


Deeper Sensation

When you hear about acupuncture, maybe you're used to hearing phrases such as "really works" or "balances energy". What you do not hear tossed around is "deeper sensation".

I owe my deeper sensations to luck. I've always been curious about acupuncture, but my curiosity has never motivated me to open up my wallet. My first two visits to this acupuncturist have been pro bono on account of my going to a health fair to get my cholesterol checked and getting my name picked out of the magic acupuncture hat.

Anyway, the first visit my acupuncture gal was prepping me on what to expect. She said, "You're going to feel a pin prick, and then you may feel a deeper sensation."

"What is a deeper sensation?"

"Well, it could be a dull pain, or like a shock of electricity..."

"So you're telling me, something bad."

For that first treatment, she had drawn four X's around my ankles. These were the treasure map to the points she intended to jut a needle into to aleviate the following symptoms: stress, cold extremities, and mood swings.

First needle goes in and out, and there wasn't much in the way of a deeper sensation. Second needle, things stay boring. Third needle, starting to yawn. Forth needle, a huge rush of energy from the needle point shooting out my toes. (Days later, I recounted this to my mom who thought this could have been a "hit nerve". I've been wondering about that, and decided that it was somewhat different: Pinching nerves leave a pain after you remove the simulus. In my case, the needle came out and the excitement was immediately over.)

Anyway, this "deeper sensation" left me on an "acupuncture high" until at least the following day. I felt drunk, to be quite honest, and that evening when I was talking with my friend Kara, I found myself more eager to laugh than usual--quite a feat, because Kara is generally funny anyway and this was definately a heightened experience.

So today I had my second treatment.

One point in my back and I mistakenly thought my teeth were getting drilled. A point on my calf and I thought I was standing on hot coals. Probably 4 deeper sensations in all, all somewhat unpleasant, and this was with about 10 points.

Also I got stuck in the stomach. I didn't like that very much.

Flying Puppy

Question: What's worse than phoning your boyfriend at midnight-thirty to say that you have abandoned you room because no one is around to save you from the gigantic moth that slipped into bed with you?

Answer: Re-branding the nemesis from "fluttering menace" into a "flying puppy."


"Just trap it with your hands," he said. "It's soft."

"I don't care what it is," I said. "I tried to capture it with the tupperware, and it just started flying around!!" (Truly an outrage.)

The problem with moths, more so than other bugs, is that they're just as clumsy as I. Flies are easy to shoo out of the open door or window because they have a predictable trajectory. Moths, on the other hand, are all willy-nilly, and I find myself imitating their behavior, wiggling around as if I had no bones.

Let's be honest, I don't do well with other bugs either.

In college, I had two carpenter ants in my apartment. I had moved all of the lights into the affected room so that I could see their every move. It's debilitating. Like being a child that saw a scary movie too close to bedtime. In the end, I bought very hard soled shoes and mashed the ants into the carpet. Then I covered their little carpenter ant corpses with a desk.

One time, that same year, I had a big spider in my apartment. I was on the phone with Walter at the time, and I started panicking.

"Walter, what should I do!"

"Turn off all of the lights and hope it goes away!"

"Will you come over and kill it for me?"

"God no!" were his exact words.

Fastforward to two years after the carpet ant/spider apartment, and I was living in an apartment with straight up roaches! They were nice, because although very gross, the adults were very secretive. You never had to look at a live moving adult roach in my apartment. Just the little baby roaches would hang around in the sink, and the remedy was simple: Turn on the hot water, dump a cap full of bleach into the drain, and spend the night at a friends house for about a week.

Earlier this month there were two big wasps in our apartment. Wade lured them toward the screen door by turning on a nearby light. Then he crawled GI-style toward the screen door and slid the door open without getting so much as 4 inches from the ground.

It was pretty impressive, and luckily for me, his demonstration on how to rid the apartment of a wasp occurred before he left for his DJ gig. So when the second wasp was in the house and I was alone, I had the survival skills to get it out the door. Then I had the common sense to close all of the doors and windows and turn on the AC.

Well, I've procrastinated long enough... its time to leave the lights on in the hall, build a fort out of my blankets, and get some sleep.

beat that!

I had a friend in college who maintained that her father's dream was to have a photograph of her and her mother wearing matching floral dresses.

Pee-Wee is still great after all these years

Kyle and I got drunk last night and went to a showing of Pee Wee's Big Adventure really late. And you know what? It was just about as fun as going to the theater to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show! Except, you know what? The script is actually very funny!

I recommend to you and anyone you know to get drunk and watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure on the big screen if ever the opportunity arises!

There's my plug. Also, I love Tim Burton and Danny Elfman!

900 miles to be ditched, straight up!

So did I tell yous that my friend B. got engaged? She got engaged two days before my marathon, and of course she's all excited... Anyway, she called to tell me, and then asked me to be her maid of honor.

Anyway, I knew I'd be going home for vacation for a long time, and so a month ahead of time I call her up. I had one day (Friday) that I would be in Chicago and then my fam and I were going to drive to Minocqua, WI, for the rest of the week. So, two weeks before she gets engaged, I tell her that I'll be in town and she "pens me in" to spend all morning and afternoon Friday together. The original plan was that we'd go to the beach downtown, as I'd land at 9 in the AM and then at 5 in the PM, I'd ride the train home with my friend W and hang out with him for dinner.

So then she gets engaged, and one week before I'm supposed to fly in she calls and says, how about we go looking at banquet halls for the reception instead, which sounded like fun because I'm always getting asked to be in wedding parties but then the b2b never wants me to help with anything... which is a mixed blessing of course, but I was still pretty excited to go look at halls with her and be on the inside track a little...

Now it's Thursday at 7PM Chicago time, and I just finished with that lab accreditation BS, and we were out having a drink. B calls and I say I'll call you in 15 minutes. We're about to leave. I call her back and she says her fiance's cousin invited her to a "cross-town" ball game (Cubs v. Sox) and she was going to go to that instead. She's saying, you know how hard those tickets are to get and how expensive they are and blah de blah de blah. And I'm sitting in the bf's car heading into Denver and all I can think is, " This is an OUTRAGE!" She says, let's hang out at night instead. I say I have plans with W. She says, can I hang out with yous? I say, call me tomorrow. And hang up.

Of course I'm LIVID! B is NOT A DIE HARD BASEBALL fan!! She doesn't know any of the players. She doesn't watch the games on TV. And I'm flying in from across the country, her fucking maid of honor, and available for one day only! To really tick me off, I start thinking, I could have called my uncles and made plans to have lunch with them. I could have called my cousins and said I'd drop by for an hour in the afternoon. But I cleared an entire afternoon for her, and now it's 10 pm Chicago time, and I can't call anyone!!

So I curse and curse in the car with my bf, inventing all sorts of great fun expletives. I eventually get disappointed as I'm realizing that my bf is not joining in on my curse-a-thon and that I have no way to get home from the airport tomorrow morning. I call my dad and say, "Dad, you'll never fucking guess what B did!"

He says, All right, let's have it!

I say, We've had plans to hang out tomorrow for longer than a month, and she just called me NOW to say she's going to a cross-town game instead.

Dad says, What?!

I say, yeah, what a bitch!

He says, Yeah what a fucking bitch!

I say, she doesn't even pay attention to baseball and I'm flying across the country for one day only and she's going to a fucking ball game!

Dad says, Fuck her. Fuck her.

I say, This is an OUTRAGE! A Mother Fucking OUTRAGE! And you know what else? She just asked me to be her maid of honor and we were on the phone 2 times earlier this week talking about hanging out and she was telling me all about how she broke it to her other close friends that she's not having anyone else in the wedding party!

Dad says, And then she pulls this shit?

I say, Yeah, what a bitch!

Dad says, Fuck her. Fuck her! We'll pick you up from the airport and eat omelets and we'll go to the Japs for dinner.

(God bless him!)

The good thing about all of this is that I was planning to check on a bag so that I could bring her birthday/house warming (she and the fee-fee-poo are moving in together) present--it's a liquor carosel that holds 6 bottles of booze and dispenses a shot every time. Now that she was a confirmed huge fucking bitch, I didn't need to bother with checked baggage. Which was nice.

Anyway, I fly in and I end up having a very nice little day with my mom and dad (which was a moot point as we were destined to spend the next 7 days together anyway), and then I have a fabulous time with W, bitching about her... and at 1030 at night she calls and says she wants to meet us up.

Then I'm torn, right? If I were living in town, I would perpetuate this squabble for months and months until I'm satisfied, and then we could just meet up one evening and everything would be fine. Now I'm half way across the country, and if I'm going to hold this grudge, the route toward resolution is much less certain. I was trying to weigh these things with W earlier, because I knew she was going to call. W enjoys conflict and agreed that I should keep up the grudge. But when she calls, he says, Just have her come out. Now that she's making effort you've lost all the awesome upper hand. So she comes out to A BOOKSTORE reeking of booze, and wants to show off her ring and talk about the game, which "her side" lost, and I was feeling pretty righteous and smug having chosen to wear the other team's hat.

Anyway, she was acting all happy to see me and I was like, ho hum, and not intentionally either... but maybe just because I was ho hum...

It really makes you realize who your friends are, you know? I mean, I have guy friends who are religious about baseball, but I'm 100% certain that if they were presented with cross-town tickets when we had plans and I was flying across the country for these plans, they wouldn't go. W, for example, hates bars, and only goes to them when the Sox are playing, and I KNOW he wouldn't go to a cross town game if it meant canceling plans.

Fast forward to coming home from family vacation. I totally carried two frozen Chicago-style pizzas on the plane and invited my roommate to my boyfriend's house to eat them that night. At the bf's house my roommate notices the same liquor carousel I bought for B's birthday and says how cool it is! The next day I go home and give my roommate the boxed-up liquor carousel saying,"I was going to give it to B for her birthday/ house warming, but now she can just suck my ass!"

Then we got drunk and took out a sharpie and crossed out all of the kind words on the birthday card I had bought for B, so that all that was left was "Birthday". (Obviously leaving "Happy" on it would have been highly disingenuous...) I still haven't sent that card to her, but I'm thinking more and more that I will. Afterall, she's a bitch.

Birthday, B, Birthday.

Landscaping at the Art Museum

I went to the Denver Art Museum with Kyle last month, and they have greeters at the front door who tell you about the new exhibit. Without fail, these people are foreign. So the guy says they have a new temporary "landscaping" exhibit. Well, I was perplexed. What are we going to see? Lawnmowers? Weedwackers stacked to look like lawn mowers? Nope. It was a LANDSCAPE exhibit featuring french impressionists. Blah-zay!

Gay-dar by ring tones

Picture a morbidly obese man walking down the street with the smallest possible dog. The dog, as I imagine it, has little stumpy legs that give the impression of fluttering as it scurries to keep up with its owner. This vision appeared to a co-worker when he was flipping through ring tone options.

The ring tone, a fruity little number with (literally) bells and whistles that inspired visions of fat men with dogs waddling about town, was the ring tone the coworker chose. It is this same ring tone that, for others in the office, proved once and for all: The ring-tone-coworker is gay.

I'd say it was a Sherlock Holmes moment, but for these coworkers, there is no mystery to explain to Dear Watson. There was no real "Aha!" moment. The ring tone's evidence of gayness is too obvious to require further discussion. Like police who had all the evidence to a murder. The suspect was put in jail. Then they found the murder weapon in the suspect's pocket. Clearly, we're not surprised.

It's as obvious as finding a fully intact dead body with a name tag on its lapel that read "Hello My Name is Jimmy Hoffa". It couldn't be more obvious if this corpse would animate to slap your face silly if you or the medical examiner try to say he might be Paula or Jusef instead.

Yep. Gayness is now worn in your pocket in the form of a (bad) musical alert. Finally, a gaydar system that actually works!

Excerpt from an old email

I searched my gmail for the term "Borders" because I all of a sudden had an urge to buy a book with a 25-40% off coupon. Instead an email I wrote, titled "yo mama" popped up, and it included this little ditty.

Here are funny things that happened to me today:
1. I went over to Dufek the Designer's cube to talk work, and of course, I was there for 25 minutes laughing about whatev. And he pulls out this book called "Why did Grandpa die?" and then he opens the front cover which includes the inscription: To Abbey and Sarah Love G'ma and G'pa. And we laughed and laughed at the following: (1) Is G'pa distributing presents from beyond the grave and (2) Was G'pa alive when he and G'ma went over to Borders and G'ma said, "This looks like a lovely gift for the girls." Did G'pa agree? or (3) Did G'ma, with a wry smile and slanted eyebrows, sneak it into a shopping cart and say "Oh nothing" when G'pa peered in and asked, "What have you got there, Ma?"

Simulated Nausea

Wade and I are ready to flight the crap out of that flight simulator!

(P.S. That green thing in my hand is a straight up barf bag!!)

It was a suggestion that initiated growing excitement: "How would you and your roommate like to try out the flight simulator?"

At first, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. A video game, at what, Chuck E. Cheese? No, Kyle assured me, a for real simulator that commercial airline pilots train on before they can officially say: "Uuuuuh. Folks. This is your. Uuuuuuh. Captian speaking." How cool is that?

I was the first to fly because, well, I'm a lady! (And I'm sure it didn't hurt to be dating the flight simulator operator/maintenance guy.) I was trying to be a safe pilot. Keeping the plane level. Bank right. Bank left. Then Wade took off from O'Hare Airport, and we were zooming all over. Climb quickly. Dive hard. Ducking inbetween the poorly rendered buildings of Downtown Chicago.

On my second go, I was a little more adventurous: Diving under the Golden Gate Bridge. Wade and I yelled at each other as I pulled us up, just 10inches from the water. He tried to pull a loop-de-loop, and the thing felt so real as it stalled and fell back to Earth, I just about got sick.

Pretty awesome time!

Casper the Humping Dog

I was talking on the phone late Saturday night, when a leg of my chair fell through the deck. I lost track of the conversation for a few seconds, but even when I got back on track, I was pretty disheartened. Having your own weight push a hole through solid wood is not a good sign.

I was playing accomplice to my roommate, who was dog-sitting for his cousin, and I wouldn't have been outside had not said dog, Casper, become enamored with my leg and desparately tried to mount it over and over. And over again. He would come at me, make a play, and after I pushed him off and yelled, he'd make one lap around the couch and try for the other leg. I'm trying to flirt here, and this is just too distracting!

So I go to sit outside and break the deck, and I thought, Good job fat ass. Then I pulled the offending chair leg from the hole just to inspect it a little. The chair only slid about one-quarter of the way through. And then I, perhaps because I got anxious that the gravity and the chair would conspire against met, moved the chair over to one side, and switched to another for the remainder of the conversation.


I found my roommate and immediately confessed. He was unphased but said he'd make sure to tell his cousin. With that out of the way, we sat in the basement watching Heroes. I sat next to him on the couch, and then began round two. In vain and desparation, Casper the Humping Dog was trying to persuade a threesome. He'd play for my roommate, get rejected, walk behind the couch, and make a play for me. Between this and the bad acting that is Heroes' first episode, those two hours were the longest of my life.

When it was time for bed, we tricked Casper the Humping Dog into his kennel. Then, four hours later, we awoke to his barking howls. My roommate let the dog on the deck, and we cashed in a couple more hours. Of course, when we went to collect the dog, he was busy, digging out the rest of the hole I exposed the night before. I pulled him away, and chunks of deck fell off of his paws and snout. While I stood in shock, Casper made one more attempt at my roommate.

And that's how I got humped by Casper the Humping Dog.

Bustime Entertainment

About the time the man--covered in every color paint (blue, green, red) and wearing shorts that were so short that the legs of his boxes showed out the bottom--walked on the bus, the pair behind me began talking.


First they catelogued the people they knew who looked at them and thought they had it all. "But people never think about the time I was kidnapped and held for ransom," said the man.

"You're right," said the woman in a it's-a-damn-shame tone.

Apparently the pair was returning from a dream interpretor, which they termed a dream consultant. The woman got all excited, realizing she hadn't told her most recent, vivid dream to her counterpart.

In said dream, said woman and extraneous friend were in a zoo. The woman dream-magicked herself into a pen with a bear and its cub. She began describing some gate, which looked like this:

"Which is just silly, because with a triangle gate, I mean, what's that fence supposed to keep out?" says the woman laughing gently at herself.

"Now, let's not debate the nonsense of dreams," said the man.

"I'm just trying to give you an idea of what the gate looked like." And she went on to say, that the dream consultant told her the bear symbolized her parents and that the three pointed gate only proves Freudian theory of the child, mother, and father being the center of a person's life.

"Yes," said the man, "Isn't that the truth!"

Then, the man said he needed to make a phone call. He got up and walked to the front of the bus where the painted man was sitting. When he came back, he said some mutal acquaintence of theirs was going to the same concert they were headed for.

"He said he wouldn't miss it for the world," the man said.

"I just thought it would have sold out, and he couldn't get tickets," the woman replied.

"Well, I'm sure when he said he wouldn't miss it, he only meant that if there were tickets available, he would get some and go to the concert."

"Yeah," said the woman, "I get it."

The New Job

"Metals don't just go running around naked in solution," was what my boss told me when we were doing a quick chemistry briefing about how the heck his lab equipment works.

Later he made falafel for everyone, and we discussed the fact that Hilary Clinton is unelectable, but Obama is kind of naive. Afternoon conversations revolved around getting one of the lab guys laid with his "gramma" friend. Then we shot tequilla from the "evidence locker."

Luckily for me, I tend to get involved with pretty cool companies. My last one gave us icecream when we participated in fire drills. What's not to like? Keep from dying in possible flames and get icecream. Or don't. Here in the big CO, we get lunches made for us daily. If you can get over the underlying, constant panic of going broke at any time, this job is pretty laid back.

The Things that Colorado Janet Does

Colorado Janet is taking measures above and beyond those that Chicago Janet has taken in the past. Colorado Janet takes figure drawing classes and sketches nude women. Observe!

Colorado Janet goes to the Rocky Mountain National Park, and sees Aspen trees turning yellowy-gold up the mountains. Observe!

Colorado Janet sees Elk. She sees lots of elk.

Colorado Janet hikes to the top of the Tundra when it rainy snows and clings for dear life to rocks as the wind blows.