New Mythical Creatures!

Some new mythical creatures I would like to propose:

The Basque-ilisk! A legendary serpant that can cause death with a single glance, but which is also Basque!

The Cutie Death Cab! A seemingly sweet and innocuous auto-creature that kills you by making you re-live every sweet memory of past relationships!

The Harp-y! An evil, angry winged witch creature which snatches food from you but instead of a body it has just tight strings stretched perpendicularly to its soundboard!

The Drag-on! Looks like a person, sounds like a person, but insists on telling every story in the longest and most maddeningly redundant way possible as it proceeds to make every story far too long and maddeningly redundant as it it explains them over and over in a way which is maddeningly redundant and far too long!

The Thomas Kincade –o-con! A muted pastel monster which descends like a fog over the land and makes everything seem more ideal and pink than it really is!


(Really Thomas Kincade? You felt that Disneyland needed to be idealized?)

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One of Those.

You know how some of these posts take a really long time to get to the point and then they get to it and you’re all like, “Really? REALLY?! That was the point?” And then you swear that you will never read this blog again?

Well this next one is going to be one of those kinds of posts.

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Incredibly Patchouli-y and Extremely Close.

So if you’re like me, about once a week you take out all of your backpacking gear and lay it on the floor and weigh it and try assembling it into different arrangements and combinations based on the sorts of trips you are fantasizing about in your head … what? You do this too! See, I knew it wasn’t just me!

I don’t have the right gear to do any cold weather camping (because that stuff is SO FRICKEN’ EXPENSIVE!) so I have had to kind of hibernate as of late and dream about the warmer months and the adventures pending.

One of those adventures is called the Pacific Crest Trail. It runs from Mexico to Canada and on the way passes through deserts and mountains and forests and bogs and caverns and meadows and lakes and rivers and snow banks and dells and glens and foliage and underbrush and mountain peaks and … you get the idea. I will never be able to take six months off of work to hike the thing, but a section of it runs through a small town about ten miles east of my apartment. And some days I can hear it calling to me, “Jamie …” it whispers on the breath of the night breeze, “Jamie, come here so I can kill you with wilderness …”

I enjoy the outdoors, but for obvious reasons, I do not trust it.

Well the Pacific Crest Trail is one of three long trails in the United States. It is the West Coast one. There’s one more or less in the middle called the Continental Divide Trail and there is a much storied one on the East Coast called the Appalachian Trail, which you have most likely heard of if you have been keeping up with your news from like three years ago about adulterous Republican governors.

Well the Appalachian Trail is the famous one of these long trails and it runs from Georgia to Maine and along the way it winds through Connecticut … got that? That will be important information later …

Okay, now over Christmas I went to New York State and while there, got to drive up to Connecticut to see the beautiful and palatial house that my sister and brother-in-law are building (the master bedroom in this place reminded me of a studio apartment I almost rented in LA for $800.00 a month).

Well my sister had mentioned that the Appalachian Trail – apparently – ran somewhere behind the house. Well I had nothing better to do so started tromping up the hillside with my brother Kevin the Kinesiologist and his girlfriend. So there we were: in nature. Headed thoughtlessly into the wild. Bounding through fallen leaves and danger, without even a second thought. Dangerously setting out on a perilous journey of dangerousness! Without even a compass, a map, any water, any food, any device or ability with which to make fire or shelter, or to hunt. And only half a Rock Star left! On all sides of us stretched nothing but the primeval and legendarily dangerous state of Connecticut … And then we crested the hill, the chill in the air only hardening our bottomless determination and heroic resolve … but then suddenly, we were on a trail and my heightened spidey senses said to my brain, “Perhaps this trail will lead to THE APPALACIAN TRAIL!”

But then I looked around and saw that the trees on the trail were marked with spots of paint and realized that we were – in point of wilderness-danger fact! – ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL! Excitement! Joy! Goal achieved! Celebration! But then … concern, trepidation, bewilderment.

Our epic trek to track the trail had lasted all of about two minutes.

Turns out that The Appalachian Trail does not run somewhere behind my sister’s house; it IS behind my sister’s house.

From parts of the trail one can SEE my sister’s house.

This began to concern me a little because, come summer time there are going to be so many dirty hippies tramping through there that the place is going to smell like a bongo drum trade show at the Patchouli Convention Center.

This would be all fine and good if it were the West Coast, where people are civilized and demarcate their property lines with tall and beautiful, vista-obscuring fences, but NO! We are talking about the East Coast where no one – apparently – has fences! Hey: Dear The East Coast, here’s a tip: Fences!

Anyway.

In case you can’t tell, this post went off the rails some time ago. The point was supposed to be: LOOK! I WAS ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL! THAT’S IT! RIGHT THERE!




I shall see you again The Appalachian Trail, yes I will …

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Utterly Urbane.

Lest you fear that I spent all my time on the East Coast foraging for acorns and grubs in the dark wilds of Connecticut, I assure you that I was perfectly urbane most of the time. And I can prove it!

Here is a picture of a Lobster Grilled Cheese Sandwich! Which I ate some of on the Westside!



Here is an abysmally poor photo of what the city looks like if you find yourself lost in Central Park after dark and looking Downtownward!



This is that dinosaur in the American Museum of Natural History that comes to life at night and stalks Ben Stiller through the streets! And his dreams!



And this is a Jack & Coke at JFK.

Leprechaun Hackers.

This is neither here nor there and really none of your concern, but the Google search box on my tool bar seems to have disappeared. This is annoying to me because I can never remember how to get the thing back. Interesting factoid: there’s a folkloric Irish belief that if you use your computer for looking up porn then pious Catholic Leprechaun hackers sneak into your computer at night and steal Google.
But that’s just a made up story. Of course. I mean … it has to be, right?

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Missed Connections.

Below I have posted for you a link to an interesting article that seems initially funny and then suddenly becomes less so.

I’m posting it for the funny part.

You have, I’m sure, seen those commercials for Christian dating sites. Well it would appear that those very sites have gotten themselves in some hot water with their own far right constituencies for implying that they know God’s matchmaking plans! You might ask, "How do they imply this?" Well, by saying things like, “Find God’s match for you!”

The irony, of course, is that this is just feckless infighting amongst the hard-core Jesus People and the SUPER hard-core Jesus people. It’s like arguing about the blueness of shades of blue. Just let the poor, lonely Jesus People find love! For Christ’s sake!

I am not always a fan of the Jesus People, but I am always a fan of love (I’m kind of a girl).

Anywhoo, here’s the link: Let Jesus be your Yenta!

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Feed.

I was recently shown this very blog as it appears if you have it as a feed on a Mac, and I have to say, I was completely horrified! The man who designed the Standard Kink site and masked that look over to Blogger did a very good job and I have always been very pleased with the simple stylish work that he did. That being said, when you see this thing on a feed it looks like … well, just words on a white page! The horror!

It was scary because it means that there’s no ornamentation to the words! They’re just … WORDS!

And it was right then that I realized that I desperately needed to up my game.

Which, incidentally, scared me so much that I haven’t posted anything in awhile.

Sadly, upping one’s game is much easier said than done.

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