I know what people like you get up to, and I think it's DISGUSTING.

I'm sorry to all of you whose blogs were once linked on the side, in my blog roll. Blogger is being a turd and wouldn't let me update it, and when I tried re-installing that widget it just went away forever instead. I have complained multiple times to Blogger about this problem, but SURPRISE SURPRISE they're doing nothing about it. :*(

I finally got around to answering Kazehana's questions!

1. Your first car: What was it's name, color, make and model and what's one good story about something ridiculous that happened in it? (e.g. my first car was named Pablo, burgundy '78 vw bug. once swerved up a hill and ran over a neighbor's lawn while driving high in a hail storm.)

My first car was just The Jeep. I think I've already relived most of what happened to that car. The Devil's Tower story is probably the best. 

...but what my friends and I got up to in The Jeep is probably a fun tale unto itself. 

My first two years in high school, I had a lot of older friends--mostly people I had met through a long chain of other people, like friends of friends of friends of friends. I did A LOT of partying. Sex and drugs and rock and roll to excess. But then after my sophomore year, a huge chunk of that group of friends went off to college, and the rest of the group scattered. I started a new school in the autumn for junior year (because I was SO DONE with Catholic school). I knew people at the public school already, so I fell into a new group of friends pretty quick.

But none of them did drugs. Or partied like the world was about to end. Or did anything, really. 

(This was a good thing, as by the end of sophomore year I was probably very near to needing an extended stay in the loony bin.) 

Mum had also cottoned on to some of my more brilliant tactics (like telling her I was sleeping at a friend's house and having that friend's older siblings pretend to be their parents and tell mum over the phone that I was welcome to stay there the entire weekend), and so she curtailed my already limited freedom quite a bit. 

On top of all that, I live in THE MOST BORING SPOT ON THE PLANET. And my friends and I had absolutely feckall in common with the other kids in the area. 

So what's a group of 16/17 year olds to do on a weekend when we had no money, no drugs, and nothing remotely exciting within reasonable driving distance?

We drove around the most populated town centers and screamed SLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT and WHOOOOOOOOORE at all the annoying Typical Bergen County kids. Sometimes we told younger kids to kill their parents, Marilyn Manson style. Sometimes we told the asshole I'm-so-cool-because-my-parents-are-super-rich types to go back to Mexico. We told scantily clad 14-year-olds to put some clothes on. This activity evolved over time, gaining new phrases and in some cases, noisemakers. Like the vintage car horn that came off one friend's great-grandmother's car in the 20's. Or the Crimson Hooter (don't ask). Or the jam band with the Crimson Hooter, a harmonica, and a kazoo. 

You don't need drugs when 4 out of 6 people in the clique are out of their f**king minds. 

2. Who was your first best friend and how did you get rid of them (or if you got dumped, how did they give you the shaft)? I'm talking grade school, people...I want the playground dirt.

I have wracked my brain over this question for like 2 weeks. 

I didn't really have friends in grade school. I hated everyone. Up until around age 7, in my town you were friends with the children of your nanny's friends. I do have a good story for that... 

My nanny was friends with this nice other nanny named Yvonne. Nanny and Yvonne were from around the same part of Jamaica, and so they liked to chat and hang out maybe once a week, which was pretty easy when I was 5 and only in school for half a day. Yvonne's charge was the same age as I was, and also in half-day kindergarten (except David was in the public school). 

David's family was filthy f**king rich. FILTHY. I wish google had caught up to them, because I'd love to show y'all a photo of their house. It takes up their whole side of the street. And it's their second house on that spot--sometime in the 90's, they apparently got bored of their house, so they knocked it down and built a new one. 

Now as you can probably imagine, David was a wimpy, whiney spoiled brat. I hated that child with a passion very unbecoming of a 5-year-old girl in frilly pink dresses who was extremely small for her age. The fact that I still remember this so vividly proves just how much I despised him. 

David loooooooved to show off his masses of the most expensive, most awesome toys ever. Even more than that, he loved snatching them away the moment you saw them, and proudly declaring that they were HIS toys and you were NOT allowed to touch them. 

Yeah well I had enough of that sort of thing in like 2 minutes. I remember being outside by myself a lot at his house, playing on his amazing swingset. I had a strong dislike for most other children, so I was quite happy playing outside by myself. 

But then one day, for some reason, I really wanted to be inside playing with his toys. Of course, peasant that I was, I was *not allowed*. 

L O L.

Employing my skills in cunning and trickery, I somehow managed to get little David out of his playroom (this thing was about 3 times the size of my bedroom, filled with every toy you could think of, and was generally every small child's greatest fantasy). And then little Mich shut the door, and locked it from the inside. 

And I had my way with David's toys while he kicked and screamed outside the door. I gleefully shouted through the closed door that I was touching ALL of his toys, and there was feckall who could do about it. HA!

Nanny didn't take me to David's house after that. 

I never really went in for the whole "best friend" thing. Honestly, I don't think I had anything resembling a proper bff until I met M in high school. I've always been more of a lone wolf. :D

3. Once upon a time there was a world with no television; if you lived then, what the fuck would you have done to entertain yourself instead of hanging out in front of the tube?

I don't watch much television now, to tell the truth. I'd probably do much of what I do normally--read, take lovely walks outside, write. I'd probably either sing or play music (in my head this world is the 18th century) since well-to-do ladies were expected to be learned in singing and playing something like the harpsichord. I would enjoy fashion much more than I do now.

delicious painting by Jean François de Troy

I would have tea parties with my lady friends, and spend lots more time bird watching. And I would probably go to bed early. 

4. What's the most vivid dream you've had in the past week?

I dreamt I could take off my spider tattoo and it would come alive and be my buddy and hang out on my shoulder. And then when I had to hide him, he would go back to being a tattoo. 

5. A Wookie, a Jawa and an Ewok steal a TIE fighter. Where the hell are they going?!

They're part of a massive intergalactic drug ring, and the Empire is starting to crack down on their manufacture of celestial meth. The lab they were using on Tatooine was raided by storm troopers, and they accidentally blew up the lab on Endor, so they decided a mobile lab would be best, hence the stealing of a TIE fighter, because who the heck would expect a floating meth lab hiding in a TIE fighter?

6. Revenge or PRE-venge?

Both. Need to keep all your bases covered. 

I am snowed in! :D 

...but the mf snow has stopped already. So much for the blizzard that was meant to last until this evening. 

♥

I'm unclean a libertine, and every time you vent your spleen I seem to lose the power of speech; you're slipping slowly from my reach.

Ok so I realize that when most people go shopping for gifts for other people they're not considering whether or not the gift recipient is a hoarder. They're just trying to be nice by taking time, effort, and money to get that person something nice. And I shouldn't be looking the gift pony in the mouth.

I overheard Mumsy on the phone with Loud Auntie the other day. Mum had just unearthed a stash of National Geographics (a stash I thought I hid pretty well, actually...) and said: "I really wish people would THINK before they go getting Mich magazine subscriptions!!"

A number of friends and relatives are quite fond of giving magazine subscriptions as Christmas and birthday gifts. If you are a hoarder, or if you know a hoarder, you know why this is a disastrous idea. Most people who read magazines and receive magazines in the mail are perfectly fine with reading the magazine once and then throwing it away.

I could probably build a decent sized house out of all the magazines currently in my possession.

Once in a blue moon (usually under the influence of some strong sedatives), I can pull myself together enough to go through the house and get rid of all the magazines, but ONLY if I'm taking them to the recycling center. I attempted, at one time, to keep a box out in the garage, right next to the spot where we dump all the newspapers. I told the fam that this new box was for magazines and junk mail, because there's a bin at the recycling center for that.

(Junk mail is a whole other problem--non profit organizations will insist upon sending me more address labels than anyone can possibly use, as well as personalized notepads, dream catchers, year planners, magnets, etc. etc. etc., and I am also incapable of throwing those away.)

So the recycling box was a good thing, I thought. I can handle it if we're recycling the magazines and the junk mail. It's the WASTE that upsets me most. Mum, Lil' Sis, and Stepdad all make fun of me relentlessly because I am obsessive about the recycling. (Our town only picks up the recycling once a month or less--generally we have to go to the recycling center and do it ourselves unless of course you want your garage to become completely overrun with empty plastic bottles and cat food cans.)

We're good about recycling plastic, aluminum, and glass. We're a bit lax with the cardboard, but that doesn't make me as crazy because it's mostly biodegradable. Sometimes I find Lil' Sis trying to sneak plastic bottles into her bin upstairs because she's too lazy to take it downstairs to the recycling bin, but usually she's pretty good with that because by now she and Mum are afraid of me.

But for some unfathomable reason, no one can seem to grasp the concept of the junk mail/magazine box. I even caught Mum a couple times tossing magazines and junk mail into the regular bin, the one in the kitchen that is THREE FEET AWAY from the box right outside the door. When I confronted her about it, she was all like "what the hell's the difference if I throw 3 things in the bin instead of recycling them??"

::facepalm::

As cliche as I know it sounds, every little bit does in fact make a difference. And having lived in New Jersey for the past 30+ years, you'd think Mum would know exactly what kind of difference it makes.

See all those pleasant rolling green hills?

Yeah those are hills made of garbage.

You can see that from the New Jersey Turnpike, and after you drive past it your car will STINK for miles.

So I stash my magazines where Mum can't see them, with the intention of gathering them all up on the weekend when I do the recycling. Except I never remember them when I'm loading everything else into the Virus Pimp. Over time (as in months), the magazines pile up. I've got two whole shelves filled with National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, and National Audubon magazines. A while back I started sneaking the new issues into the office, to the little basket in the waiting area. There's like six months worth of them in there.

Big Sis#2 is usually the culprit, at least the last few years. This Christmas, she got Mum Us Weekly (I have no problem throwing those away for some reason) and me Nat Geo and Smithsonian (as opposed to Discover last year). I get the Audubons anyway because I donate to them. And Big Sis#2 is a hoarder, too!! She's worse than I am. She uses the bannisters of her stairs as a giant filing system for like four years' worth of mail. (It's brilliant and it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.) Considering that, one would think that Big Sis#2 would steer clear of things like magazines.

This morning, I forced a huge pile of magazines back under my desk at home, and blocked them from spilling out again by employing the use of my file boxes (milk crates--I have four of them, and they contain everything I've ever written, separated into colour-coded folders).

THIS WEEKEND I shall leave many many post-it notes reminding to me to empty the house of magazines!! Y'all may want to open the betting pools now. ;) I'd say there's a 5:1 chance of me not even noticing the post-its and forgetting all about the magazines for another two years.