Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive after having spent four dizzying days in the land of sun, frolic, and $12 vodka martinis with olives the size of regulation volleyballs. All I know is that right now, Minneapolis is looking uglier than a Koosa's ass. (Or a Koosa's face, for that matter. Did anyone actually own a Koosa, or were they designed exclusively for blind children?)

The Minneapolis skyline reminds me of a neurotic's thumbnail: short, jagged, hard to look at. Clouds the color of dryer lint, the unofficial screensaver of June '05, are a fitting backdrop. There are a lot of wonderful reasons to live here, but I'm blanking on the specifics. I think I need another night out in Nordeast!

Right now I'm listening to "Who Made Who" by AC/DC, which is probably the best song off the Maximum Overdrive soundtrack. (Are there other songs on the Maximum Overdrive soundtrack, or is it just 45 minutes of "Who Made Who" with highway noise overdubs?) Strip club imprinting makes it impossible for me to listen to the 4/4 pyrotechnics of drummer Phil Rudd without writhing in my chair. I'm finally getting a stripper pole for my house, which means I'll be bitching about my broken femur in no time. You guys can send me flowers, OK?

Did you hear that? I'm finally getting a stripper pole for my house. Something must have changed in my life, but what?

I'll blog soon. I apologize for the lengthy absence.

In the meantime, here's a tantalizing blind item: Which douchelike black-and-white cat BIT MY FUCKING NOSE last night as I was drifting off to sleep, leaving a swollen toothmark on the bridge of said nose and inspiring unspeakable rage in the victim?

Guess who! Don't sue!

The Rainbow grocery store in my neighborhood is like Russia. There's a pervasive air of desperation, pathos, and general clamoring for spoiled foodstuffs. They only keep three checkout lanes open at any one time, even during peak shopping hours, and the lines snake all the way back to the deli case. I frequent this store because it's a stone's throw from the bricks n' mortar Pussy Ranch, but my patience is dwindling. I bought a donut there this morning and the frosting had calcified into an impentrable saccharine mantle that crunched. Frosting should not crunch.

Enough bourgeoius angst: I had a blast last night with the imcomparable NordEast Blog Lit Club. They got me drunk, they gave me presents(!) and they enabled my strip club jones by taking me to the Deuce Deuce for the latter half of the evening. (A lithe brunette peeling off her Spandex  to "We Are All On Drugs" was a highlight.) All in all, it was a wonderful time and I shall be forever grateful. And judging by the way I feel this morning, forever hungover. WORTH IT.

Tonight I leave for L.A. (movie business fun!) and I'm scared witless or shitless or some variation thereof. Traveling alone is weird. The last time I went to L.A. alone, I was meeting Jonny for the first time. Now I'm returning as Mrs. Jonny. I'm going to miss him the first couple of days, but he's joining me on Friday, at which point we will set up camp at the Rainbow and reemerge on Sunday. Aging hair metal dudes + mobsters + '70s ambiance= fun.

Crush on Michael Showalter persists. Zach Braff exiled to D-list of masturbation fantasies. Just kidding, I never think about celebrities when I masturbate, or any boy besides my husband, for that matter. I think about AMATEURS, baby. The loosey-goosey garage sale blondes with the frayed Wranglers and the Caesarean scars. The gals who, in the space of 45 minutes, graduate from "I've never done this" to "Plug my ass, both of y'all!" Women with acne and underbites. Women with hot tub lung and honeymoon cystitis. Bitches.

I got a video camera for my birthday. Now I just need to find some amateurs. I can't put myself in such a film, because I'm afraid Bill Cosby will appear, point to my jiggling haunches, and make some pithy comment about pudding. I need lean, mean, scrawny AMATEURS with a genuine desire to MAKE IT in Codywood. I will promise them 14k gold, elaborate feasts at Red Lobster, and the finest foreign-made espadrilles Payless has to offer. They will be shaved in the dank, reeking downstairs bathroom that we never use. They can borrow my clothes for the shoot. I'll make them fit with pins and chewing gum.

I really need to get one of those electric knives my dad used to have. I love the sound they make. GRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNGH! Who wants pot roast?

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying right now. Going nuts is like vacation!

Remember when you were a kid and the community pool would host "adult swim"? And the lifeguard would officiously blow his whistle and all the kids would have to scramble out of the pool? And then the adults, clad in their frumpy L.L. Bean SlimSuits and sagging Chicago Blackhawks trunks would rise, groaning, from their towels and chaises and slowly migrate into the pool like parched hippopatami? And once the adults got into the pool and immersed their huge, sun-scorched bodies in the chlorinated water, they didn't actually do anything? Sure, a couple of them would swim laps, but very slowly, as if they craved the monotony of lap swimming without the cardiovascular benefits? And most of them just bobbed there, staring vacously into the late afternoon sun? And all the displaced children watched enviously from the fringe, dripping wet, neglected, wondering why Adult Swim existed in the first place when the adults clearly didn't deserve the pool and didn't enjoy it and none of them even bothered to attempt a can-opener off the high dive? And it seemed like having a swimming session for adults exclusively seemed as counterproductive and pointless as having a cheese-tasting party for children? Because adults don't appreciate pools and kids don't appreciate fine cheeses, and nobody enjoys themself?

Yeah. I remember that.

They should have "Child Swim," where all the adults have to haul their office-flattened asses out of the pool and their brown, shrieking progeny can enjoy the piss-tainted waters in peace.

(For those of you without kindergarteners underfoot, here is the book I am so coyly referencing in the title of this post. That's comedy.)

Seriously, bluck.

Katie Holmes' sweet, sweet mams are wasted on a scrote-groper like Cruise. Have you seen The Gift? She has stealth boobies*, my favorite kind!.

*Stealth boobies: noun. Breasts that look modest and unremarkable in clothing, but are revealed to be surprisingly large when bared. Usage: "Scarlett Johanssen whipped out some major stealth boobies in A Love Song For Bobby Long. I had no idea they were that big." There is also such a thing as reverse stealth boobies, a term which applies to breasts that look much smaller once the bra is removed. Also known as "cheating."

See? Look at that. Who knew?

I mean, I guess it's possible that they're madly in love and deserve well-wishes and blah-de-bloo, but I just feel weird about all this. Plus, the Eiffel Tower is so played out. All the cool people are getting engaged in Turkey.

"Yeah, it's me. Diablo's cat. No, not the incredibly fat one. He's somewhere face down in a bowl of coagulated Fancy Feast. Me, I'm actually svelte by comparison, though the vet described me as 'somewhat obese' during my last checkup. Fuck that vet. Fuck everyone. 

 Try to pet me. Seriously, try it. I'll bite your fucking face off and chew it like a baguette. In fact, when Diablo tried to remove me from this desk so she could write, I meowed shrilly, swatted at her with my ineffective clawless paw and sank my teeth into her tender wrist. Diablo regrets the last four years she's spent feeding and sheltering me, seeing as I turned out to be a total douche and all. But that's okay because that guy she married thinks I'm really cute. I've got him totally snowed. I let him carry me around like a doll (if Diablo tried that, she'd need a blood transfusion within moments). I even sleep on his naked body at night, purring raptly in a sick bestial charade of human lovemaking. Yes, Jon will make sure that bitch never 'accidentally' gets rid of me. Haw! Now I'm off to lick my own anus, bully the dog, and groom myself compulsively. Jon will be home soon and I want my paunch to look its whitest."

Okay, that is not a "farmer tan" on that shot of me below. That freak irregularity on my left arm is some kind of technical glitch. I would never tan in cap sleeves, people. I don't wear a Victorian bathing costume to the beach to protect my frail dermis from The Fun'f Opreffive Heat. Give me a modicum of credit.

I had a kickass birthday, possibly the best I've had in years. I accidentally got chocolate cake on  my new whorish satin camisole, but there's something kind of endearing about that, isn't it? Whenever a baby trashes its first birthday cake, everyone acts like it's the cutest thing since the Olsens got their boobies. So therefore, it should be equally--if not more--adorable when a 27 year-old drunk ex-stripper smears birthday cake on her intimate apparel. I AM BETTER THAN A BABY, PEOPLE. I CAN TALK AND GIVE BLOW JOBS AND DO ALL KINDS OF THINGS THAT BABIES ARE TOO DENSE TO MASTER.

I got delightful gifts from Jonny, of course, plus a bottle of "Voovay Clickot" champagne delivered special from my awesome manager. I'll be popping that open as soon as I sober up from last night.

Ranch Experiment!: I'm growing out my pubic hair. I want to finally try getting waxed and I heard it needs to be pretty long to get a decent grip. I will be doing the wax myself (do not doubt my courage and fortitude) and I promise to document the process with photos of my howling, tearstained face. Meanwhile, I'm displeased with my new pubes. They're unruly and they're black. I've read so many issues of Playboy that I forgot that most people have dark kinky pubes, not the perfectly uniform strips of  bleached golden cornsilk seen on porn stars and titty models. Nobody has that naturally, do they?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I find that after age 21 and the obligatory tequila-soaked campus bacchanal, having a birthday is like watching the odometer roll over to 50,000 in your Corolla. You observe the milestone with interest. You're grateful the car's made it this far, but you don't feel the need to tie streamers to the antenna or anything.

Jon, however, treats each one of my birthdays as if I've just been expelled from my mother's womb on a wave of primordial slime. It's nice! I want to get a sign for our curb that says: "CAUTION: DEF HUSBAND." Because he's so def. He's deffer than the Lep.

So as of tomorrow, I'm a 27 year-old non-gravid Earth female. Ten years ago I was...I don't know. I have no memory of my 17th birthday, though I do remember my 18th vividly. I'm sure I was a very unpleasant teenager. I remember peacocking around in skimpy outfits, drinking, using extremely offensive language, pretending to ass-bang my male friends whenever they bent over and...wait, I haven't changed at all!

(Yes, that is an extremely obese cat lurking behind me. Yes, we've tried altering his diet. No, I don't know why he's that fat. Yes, he's happy. No, he can't effectively clean himself, but the other cat helps out in that regard. Yes, he's ultra-snuggly. Yes, we call him "Jabba the Gutt," "Ham Parsons," "SuShi Fats" (don't ask) and Tummaroo." I love him.)

I want this. Badly. A single-rider private roller coaster would be the ultimate masturbatory toy for a ride geek like me.

I don't know why I love roller coasters so much, but I do. I have books about coasters, I memorize stats, I've made pilgrimages to remote parks. The best coaster I've ever ridden is the Phoenix, a double out and back Herb Schmeck at Knoebel's Grove. The negative Gs will lift your ass right out of that seat. There's only one classic woodie in Minnesota, The High Roller, and as you can see from the sleepy, unimpressed half-smiles on the passengers, it ain't that great. (I mean, I can't even tell if that guy in the front is happy or if it's just gas.) A good coaster should make you scream like Angelina Jolie is pounding your G-spot with a strap-on. Your "O face" should be in full effect.

This ride is fucking awesome, though. Look at that second photo. Glbrrh. I rode that one the day before my wedding; Jonny wisely abstained.