So Says The Mouse In My Hair

Dear Miss Eliza gets Her Toes Pinched

2007-01-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I was in the mall today and I found this amazing pair of pumps for half price in the shoe store. I had to get them. I’m not talking impulse, I’m talking force of nature drawing those shoes to my feet. But PROBLEM: The only ones in stock were 1 ½ sizes smaller than my feet. Sure, I don’t let details get in the way of a force of nature. Gives bad karma, right? But still it’s a little annoying. I mean really, why must a girl suffer so much for her beauty?
- Not So Foot Loose

Dear Footsie Wootsie,
Let me tell you a little fairy tale piece of old wives’ lore. Once upon a time there was a girl who loved her father very, very much. Alas, one day whilst heading to market this father got lost and was kidnapped by a beastly prince of a pirate gang. Mr. Dad decided the only way to get back to his daughter was to weave beautiful stories of the girl and his home, so every night he begged to return to his own kingdom.

Sadly, his narratives worked too well and the beastly pirate prince fell in love with the girl from the stories. He agreed to let the father go only if the daughter would become his captive instead. The father agreed.

(Okay, okay. I know you’re thinking he was a real jerk to let his only child become a captive and suffer while he was free roaming the world. But if you look at the situation pseudo-logically, you will find a hundred good reasons for such a decision. Try it. It’ll be good for you. Meanwhile I need to get back to my lore.)

This is how a week later, a girl stood on the dock waiting to board a pirate ship. However she encountered a problem. The crew wasn’t letting her onto the ship. It is bad luck to take a girl to sea, this is common superstition. But she was afraid of what would befall her father should she not present herself to the beastly pirate prince. And so she bargained with the crew. She would accept on her beautiful but slight shoulders all the bad luck to be encountered at sea. The pirates agreed and the beautiful girl set sail with the crew.

Little known until now what that the beastliness of the prince of pirates was a result from an amazing string of bad luck which all started when he stole a pair of shoes from an old hag in the West Indies. But when he heard that his new captive was accepting responsibility for everyone else’s bad luck, he made her a present of these shoes.

And oh the shoes that these were! The girl fell in love at first sight. Bright silver with exquisitely pointed toes and the most adorable ribbons that wrapped around her ankles. She could not take her gaze anywhere else. But when she attempted to wear the shoes, they were too small. Alas. This was the curse that the hag had bestowed upon the shoes. The woman who wore them would love them and treasure them but would never be able to find comfort in them.

Sadly, the girl was never able to bring herself to let go of the shoes. Not even when they found themselves back in the Caribbean and she was accosted by an ugly old woman who claimed to be the rightful owner.

Well this second “loss” of the shoes so enraged the hag that she cursed not only this woman but all females until the end of time. And so it is that to this very day whenever a woman finds herself a beautiful pair of shoes, they cause her the most beastly pain imaginable.

The end.

- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Goes Shopping

2006-12-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why is it that the entertainment industry gets upset at me for illegally downloading songs and movies? After all, I can go into a store and buy a used CD or DVD and no one says a thing about it. Neither the band nor production company doesn’t see a penny of that money and yet I do not recall ever hearing a giant outcry about robbing the artists of their hard earned second hand money. If the industry really wants to go after someone, they should go after Goodwill. Those whose albums end up on sale there are truly the ones in desperate need of the help that will come from the sale of one of their albums. So why the hypocrisy?
- Mr. Mooch

Dear Filching Moocher,
Well, I should have thought it obvious. Think about which kinds of people believe that what I buy should rightfully be shared with you for less than cost? Who is it that wants to destroy the free market system because capitalists pigs just want to strong arm the proletarian majority into working for the benefit of the wealthy? Who runs a black market as healthy and vibrant as that of the second hand entertainment industry?

The answer is obvious: Second hand entertainment, be it music, videos, or the ever popular book (which I notice that you left out. Shame, shame.) is in the hands of Communists.

As if you didn’t know. The literary intelligencia that frequents these shops are well known to favor Michael Moore (a self described Socialist) over Rush Limbaugh (a true blue Red Stater). And the owners? You know, the ones that stock the shelves? You think they try to associate themselves with the likes of Ann Coulter? Hell, they wouldn’t even touch one of her books. She has cooties. And I’m sure Ann herself would like to tell you that anyone who doesn’t like her is a Commie.

That’s just the book stores. Music stores are just as bad. You ever seen the size of the Country & Western portion of one of these stores? It’s got about five CD’s. Whereas they’re chock full of Rock and Roll (the Devil’s music to begin with) by anti-American bands like the Beatles, (remember Lennon’s song “Imagine”? Don’t try to tell me that’s about capitalism.) The Rolling Stones (“American Woman, stay away from me.”) and Greenday (“Don’t want to be an American Idiot.”)

And what about places that sell used movies? They all started out in Hollywood didn’t they? And Hollywood is very well known for its strong left wing. Black list anyone?

Now the second hand industry’s liberal (aka: communist) bias is just the beginning. It leads to its members organizing. Also known as Organizing. As in, “Singly, we’re just a bunch of small businessmen trying to buck the Big Box system that is destroying down home folks like you and me. But put us all together and you have the Death To Capitalism Workers Union, or DTCWU.”

Of course the DTCWU is in league with the nation’s leading Communist front organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. The two combined are able to wield the Sword-of-Freedom to cut the Bonds-of-Oppression and to guard themselves with the Shield-of-Justice thereby making them invincible against their strongest foe: the Money-Grubbing-Billionaire-Club.

So there you have it. The entertainment industry understand well that if it attempted to insert itself into the second hand industry, the Communists would cut their dick off and run it up a flag pole as a message it capitalists everywhere.

Hope that answers your question.
- Miss Eliza

My Second Millenium

2006-10-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

So I checked my people counter today and it hit 2000. In honor of the party, I'd like to share with you a small portion of terms that people perform searches for which lead them to my blog. No, they don't all make that much sense to me either.

mice smothering me in a dream
job of hair mouse
tree octopus
"got moose" shirts
rohl dahl autobiography books
"PAPER PICKLE CARD"
"moose in a can" 2005
rohl dahl literary agent
prokaryotes and rosebush
"hiccups in the" great
Fake mouse hole for my kitchen
stuffed belly
stephen colbert
Rohl Dahl recipes
In the movie crash what is the name of the drug the mother had used
Reviews of Eliza Dushku's new play.
Sweater Fetish
"naked cars"
underwear pattern briefboy
information on schrodinger and heinsburg the scientists
progector television made in china
kids crafts "valentines day mailboxes"
vegetarian oyster sauce rcipe
"fruit roll-up" demographics
male mouse mounting and pacing
"pie in the face" sexiest
"life of a garbage man"
hollywood hair dew
Float Fairies Postcard
how to hold conversation to females in chat room
sexiest "pie in the face
the eagle has landed and the fat man walks alone
ex-boyfriend enemies spam
The Circularory System
high-octaned person
author + dodo bird, roald
Dear Eliza's Hair Salon
duck duck goose rap video two and one half kids
free south park mr towely wave file
cruel toenails
ways to take hair to school
homemade jello wrestling ring

Well, I hope you found that slightly amusing. Cheerio!
-Miss Eliza

Mis Eliza Bites The Apple

2006-10-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Well, it looks like I have dirty rotten luck. See, whenever I go to bite into an apple, it always has a bruise or a worm, or half of it has been chewed off by a wild animal. And this isn’t something recent. My mom says I’ve always managed to pick the apple that is really only any good for target practice. She says I’ve been at it ever since I was a baby and I used to get sick off the applesauce that she would feed me. How do I learn to pick the ripe stuff?
- Enough with Mac the Knife

Dear Apple Corer-Peeler-Slicer,
Now I was born and raised on a Windows operating system myself, and after years of dedication, I can’t think of one advantage that it has over Apples… except price… and that’s a pretty big advantage. But everyone knows that apples are more fun, and they taste much better with cinnamon and nutmeg, so it’s worth the extra money to try and overcome your truly spooky condition.

You know, my Paddy hit it smack on when he used to say, “A bad apple a day? I hope you got some good health insurance.” Now Paddy is, as usual, self explanatory, so I won’t bother going into depth on this one. Suffice it to say, and your mother would agree, that these bad apples should absolutely NOT be going untreated. Especially not if you have any desire to overcome this handicap. The only way to get through this is to find yourself the best kind of apple there is. That’s right. You want to hook yourself a doctor.

So you eat a bad apple every day. This sends you to the emergency room where you will need to see a doctor. Try and see someone different every day. Playing the field has several logical reasons:

1. That’s just the way dating works. You try out several different electric blankets until you find the one that gives out just the right amount of heat.
2. Think of all those prescription bottles you can add to your medicine cabinet. This should really give your nosy guests some interesting reading for the toilet.
3. Dating is not part of the doctor-patient relationship. So you don’t want him to remain your doctor for any longer than it takes you to meet him. Once the two of you are free of these shackles (because you went to see someone else the next day) then you will be allowed to see each other socially and therefore move to second base.

And once you are emotionally safe and secure with your knowledge that you can pick out the best apple, then you’ll never have to worry about picking a bad one ever again. And you won’t. I promise.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Just Call Me Lara Croft

2006-10-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I am a college student (please don’t hold it against me) with that all-too-common college student problem called Too Many Video Games. Once I get started my brain goes numb (which I guess is the point) and 12 hours later I wake up with drool all over my couch cushions. I wouldn’t mind so much, but it’s affecting the rest of my life. I haven’t been on a date since my girlfriend dumped me nine months ago; I can’t remember the last time I passed in an assignment and I’ve run out of grandparents that I can kill off for excuses to get out of my job. Miss Eliza, is there any hope for me at all?
- This Halo’s Starting To Wobble

Dear Fallen Angel,
Your only hope is that you made it through Psych 100 before this affliction set in. Because, as my Paddy used to say, “The only thing I remember from Intro to Psych is that guy Pavlov and his classical conditioning.”

“But,” you reply, “I’m completely brain dead. There’s nothing left in there to psychoanalyze.” Well friend, fear not. Classical conditioning is so easy, you could teach a dog to do it. (Now that’s my idea of a good pun. I just wanted you to know that.)

Here’s how this works. You are going to need access to music you truly detest. Lets pretend that you hate country music. It’s obnoxious and self righteous and arrogant and you’re from a blue state. Listening to it makes you feel slimy and rotten all over. This is good. This is the feeling you’re going for. Now if only there were a way to associate this feeling with your video games… you see where this is going, don’t you?

Granted, you will have to impose some ground rules.

Volume control: The music must be loud enough to get on your nerves. Set yourself a minimum volume level and stick to it. For objectivity sake, you might even let some third party ( I jest, by third party I really mean second party) set your minimum volume level.

Diversity: A few songs repeated endlessly for a disgusting number of hours on end can make you feel really, really yucky. I would suggest finding one CD (or its equivalent of you’ve got an ipod) and putting it on repeat. Better yet, find one single song that really, really pushes your buttons and play it endlessly. I might suggest “Have You Forgotten” sung by Darryl Worley.

Duration: Constant, of course. The devil music must be playing any and all times that you have your video game going. The point, of course is obvious. Eventually, that hate and pain that you feel for yourself whenever you listen to country music will become associated with the video games. After a few trials, you will be able to despise yourself with only the games. And in order to avoid this discomfort, you will come to wean yourself off such unhealthy activities and have time to focus on doing things that make you like yourself again… you know, like ballroom dancing.
- Miss Eliza

The Return of Miss Eliza

2006-10-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
May I ask you a personal question?
- Mr. X

Dear X Man,
Land sakes, what are you thinking!?! (Yes, an exclamation point, and then a question mark and then a comma ARE required to convey my emotions correctly.) Of course you may not ask me a personal question. I have excellent reasons for my decision, all highly amusing. Let me explain.

1. The question is a cliché. I’ve heard it far too many times in my life to feel that it has any vitality left whatsoever. As my Paddy used to say, “How do you know you’ve got the right words? They have the flavor of Moxie.” [At which point he would stare off to some random spot in the universe with a smile on his face and sigh.] And he was right. As always. Any words crossing your mouth devoid of verve and élan need to be shot. With a very big bullet out of an exceedingly high powered rifle. Such stagnation of language deserves to be left bloated on the side of the freeway in a large congealed pool of blood. Under no circumstances should you show favor to such distastefulness by basing an entire conversation on the topic.

2. I fear for my life. Against all good judgment I’ve ever shown (ok, laugh if you must) this question forces curiosity onto my fragile ears. And we all know what Curiosity has homicidal tendencies towards animals of my persuasion. So this is likely one of those things better left for some other poor advice columnist.

3. If the world knew anything about my personal life, then no one would ever come to me for advice again. I mean, lets say that you had a question. Are you going to ask some agoraphobic binge eater who lives alone with 32 cats and sets her alarm to the Seasame Street theme song every morning? Umm no. Advisees want their columnists composed and together. Face it, you’re not looking for someone who gets her kicks off kitty crack and goes through a case of hunter orange shoelaces every week.

Hmmm, I’m starting to think maybe I’ve revealed too much. Please promise me you won’t tell anyone. I really like this job.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Well it's been a while since last we were in contact. Such is the universe after all. But you'll be pleased (at least I like to think you will) to see that I'm back from my sabbatical and wiser than ever. What? Don't believe me? All right. I'll prove it. Send me a question, any question. I'll answer it for you, honest. You can read that sentence however you choose. Well if you'd like to take me up on this dare you can e-mail your question to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com or just post it in the Comments section of this blog. And with that, I'll leave the issue in your capable brains.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Tag, you're it

2006-08-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Here is a call to arms:

One book that changed your life:
One book that you’ve read more than once:
One book you’d want on a desert island:
One book that made you laugh:
One book that made you cry:
One book that you wish had been written:
One book that you wish had never been written:
One book you’re currently reading:
One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Now tag five people:
- Free! Finally Free!

Dear Freedom Fighter,

One book that changed my life:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. In case you were wondering it instilled in me an insatiable curiosity for all things quantum physics which quickly led me to other superbly enjoyable areas of theoretical physics.

One book that you’ve read more than once:
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (I've read Atlas Shrugged more times, but I find the message in Fountainhead to be more in line with my own philosophies on life.)

One book you’d want on a desert island:
Summerland by Michael Chabon

One book that made you laugh:
The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman

One book that made you cry:
The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis

One book that you wish had been written:
A Moosehead Lake Childhood. Why are all children's books about Maine about the coast? We inland babies have enchanting stories of our own, thank you very much.

One book that you wish had never been written:
If I said the DaVinci Code, everyone would misconstrue my reasons, so I'm going to go with Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

One book you’re currently reading:
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Guns Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Now tag five people:
That would be mean. It's not my thing. So why don't we say, if you feel the spirit tugging at your heart to take up this literary call to arms, then by all means, go to it.
- Sarah Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Pickled Rene

2006-03-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
A friend of mine is in a pickle - he got his license suspended and was pulled over for an expired registration, but won't let me help him monetarily. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Driving Mr Rene

Dear Mr. Driving Range Person,
You’ll want to get your friend out of his pickle. We all know that pickled Rene is not the tastiest delicacy on the market. In fact Mr. Rene is well known to be barely palatable when pickled. Yoou think that pickled eggs don’t sell? You’ve seen nothing compared to pickled Rene. For his own self worth (literally) it is vital that he not remain inside a pickle.

The best way to de-pickle a Frenchman is to remove the vinegar from his circulatory system. And we all know that the only way to get vinegar out of your circularory system is to bribe it into some replacement circulatory system. And we all know that if you want to bribe someone, you need a lobbiest.

The vinegar lobby, while not especially well known, is actually run by one of the more powerful firms on K street. What makes it unique is that no money changes hands what-so-ever (how fortunate for your monitarily challenged quest for aid). Instead the vinegar lobbiests trade something that vastly closer to the heart of vinegar. Baking soda.

From here the details become murky. Perhaps it will comfort you to know that whatever’s going on, it has been fully condoned by not only prison guards at Guantanamo Bay but also by the Attourny General, the Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President of this blessed country.

In the end, your friend has been freed of his pickle. It has cost you nothing, and you have the added benefit of knowing that you’ve done your duty for national security.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Blows a Bubble

2006-02-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I am a blower of bubbles. A gentle way to soothe a harried soul. But it is true that there has been one question on the nature of bubbles that I have never found an answer for. Why do bubbles float out into the great wide hostile universe? Why do they not stay close to home where the air is safe and life affirming?
- Bubble Boy

Dear Bubble Boy,

Once upon a bubble
A bubble came to be
To float upon the universe
Aloft and flighty free

He rafted down a mountain top
He galloped through the snow
He danced upon to river bank
To whither it did go.

And when the sun grew quiet
The breezes tucked in tight
Dear bubble plucked a drop of dew
Close by a fairy sprite

Miss Fairy spied this bubble
And right away she knew
her true love had come at last
to share her drop of dew.

The fairy and the bubble
Were joined in jubilee
Together they did dance with stars
And laugh with rippling sea.

Now if you ever wonder
Why bubbles float away
They are in search of fairies
True loves for every day.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Don't Forget The Popcorn

2006-01-25T13:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I run a major Hollywood studio, and I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed this or not, but we’re not doing so hot. 2005 brought in less money than 2004 which brought in less money than 2003. People just aren’t going to the cinema anymore. What can we do to get people into theaters?
Mirimaxed Out

Dear Harvey,
Where to begin? How about with the sequels. There are 44 sequels coming out in the next twelve months, and the numbers have only been increasing in recent years. Relying so heavily on sequels shows that you suffer from a lack of originality. Yuck. There’s a screenwriter out there picking up your trash as we speak. Do you know what goes on in the life of a garbage man? It’s a fantasy adventure waiting to happen and your garbage man is just the guy to tell you. (And if it’s written by a REAL garbage man, it will be not only creative, but authentic.)

So Rule #1: Each major studio is entitled to ONE, I said ONE, sequel a year, and said sequel must open in theaters before March first.

Next thing you need to do is do away with Oscar season. We shouldn’t have to wait until December to see a quality movie. It really screws with the Top 10 lists. When you get to December without seeing a single top 10 type movie, you’ve hit a snag. Now you’ll have to see at least 10 movies in the theater in one month. That’s more than two a week. And a man’s budget just can’t stand up to that. So he’s going to end up NOT seeing your movie which means he WON’T put it in his top 10 list, so buh bye to that publicity.

Rule #2: One Oscar contender should be released each month. Studios can draw lots to see who gets which month.

Pay attention, this one’s important. Ticket prices are TOO FRIGGIN HIGH. And in case you didn’t catch that, let me repeat myself. Ticket prices are TOO FRIGGIN HIGH. And there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for charging $10 per ticket. Heck, there’s no good excuse for charging $6 per ticket. Not to mention the fact that you have advertisements (the advertising kind even) before the previews start. What, does Coca Cola pay you nothing to put their name on every one of your orifices? Must you still take it out of my pocket? I’m talking about my movie ticket pocket here, not my movie concession pocket. (Don’t get me started on popcorn, I mean that stuff isn’t made of gold and you have to stop pretending it is.)

Answer a question for me. Who in their right mind is going to go to a theater and pay $15 for one ticket and a small popcorn to sit in a freezing movie theater (saving on the heating budget) and watch 10 minutes of ads, 20 minutes of previews and 2 hours of movie when they can wait 6 months pay $5 and keep the movie for a week? (Or better yet, they could pay $25 (which is cheaper than taking two people to a movie) and keep the movie forever?
You’ve got some seriously screwed up wires in your heads.

Rule #3: Ticket prices should be no higher than $5. Popcorn and beverage prices should run as follows. Small: $1. Medium: $2.50. Large: $5.

And I mean it on the garbage guy. He may be dirty, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Chats Up A Storm

2006-01-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My friend told me that chat room were a great way to meet guys. But they’re so predictable. I go into a room and some guy’ll PM me and asks asl. Then: am I single? And then it invariably leads to him trying to get my cyber clothes off. It’s so stupid! How do I get a guy to talk to me about real life in a chat room?
Ageless Sexless and Locationless

Dear American Sign Language,
As my Paddy used to say, "why do they even bother calling them chat rooms?" And he’s right. It’s actually a game room. And since you can’t see their boards and they can’t see yours, lets call it a game of battleship.

Chat Room Battleship: Male vs. Female

Male objective: This should be fairly obvious. You’re trying to sink her thong.

Male Rules
-You are allowed one introductory/come on line before you ask her asl.
-Upon receiving her asl you must ask, "what do you look like?"
-You are allowed one comment on her appearance before you ask if she is single/has boyfriend/is married.
-Steer the conversation towards sex.
-At some point you must interrupt the flow of the conversation and ask if she has MSN?/Yahoo, etc.
-You have won when you enter the never ending cyber sex cycle. Congradulations.
NOTE: 10 points rewarded for each question that she answers appropraitely.

Female objective: As you have stated, you are looking for conversation. In this sense conversation is defined as consistent remarks from each party of at least ten word sentences which utilize a subject a verb an adverb two adjective and 3 words of at least three syllables. So basically, you’re going for depth, wit, and charm.

Female Rules:
-You are not allowed to answer stupid questions. Stupid questions may be defined as those which are boring or over used.
-On half of the occasions in which the conversation stalls you are only allowed single word statements until he starts conversing with you again. (And this uses the definition applied earlier). In order for your wishes to be fulfilled, but partners must contribute equally. This means that he must contribute half the conversation topics.
-Flirting is legal, but must remain strictly G rated.
-Always be polite. Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ when appropriate.
-Arguments are perfectly acceptable, but keep them good-natured. This is supposed to be fun after all.
-Attempt to break convention from time to time. Say something outlandish or silly. You can even go so far as ridiculous. And if ever he seems confused (and if you’re playing the game right, he will) you must not back down from your statement. Instead, back it up. Clarify or expand.
NOTE: 10 points for each stupid question that you refuse to answer.

NOTE TO BOTH SEXES: 100 points deducted if you break off the conversation first.

And now, let the games begin!
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Whither the Weather

2006-01-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why is it that whenever it’s rainy enough to pull out your umbrella, it’s too windy to use it? What could the gods have been thinking to invent such a useless phenomenon?
- Bluster the Sopping Wet Bear

Postcard for Bluster:
Chaos theory tells us that everything exists for a reason. (No it doesn’t.) The mosquito sucks your blood because without insect bites we would not develop immunities to common diseases like the avian flu. The stars are this far away because the teacher didn’t want note passing in the middle of class. It’s distracting. Trees and flowers pollinate so that we can improve our sneeze flinging distances. Wind and rain accompany each other in order to remind us that man cannot overcome nature.

It is a lesson in humility. We always think that we’re more impressive than nature, that whatever happens we’ll be able to adapt and fix and come out on top. But this is nt so, and the umbrella is a superb example.

Sure, it was a grand idea. Man said to himself, "If we could put this sheet on a stick and hold it over our heads, then we can stay dry when it’s wet outside." Ten points to the hero who figured out how to get the best of the rain. But hero, don’t you think you might have forgotten something? Aerodynamics perhaps?

Because the gods have answered your human sized logic with a simple yet elegant solution. "If we push the air around while the rain pours, then their paltry sheets on sticks will collapse into a soaking puddle, and we will remain supreme once more. Man will learn his place if we have to beat it into him with sleet and hail. He thinks he’s so smart telling himself what to do and thinking of his own ideas and fighting us. We’ll show him."

And ever since, man’s umbrella has been battered and tossed and broken by the wind, and he must hang his head to keep the rain out of his eyes. And so, soaking wet with his head bowed low, he must make his way humbly through the storm.
Miss Eliza

Miss Eliza And The Next generation

2006-01-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’m worried. So much of our current knowledge is in mediums that are either easy to destruct or literally intangible. What happens when some day in the future, the screen has become obsolete because holograms are the thing, and our planet is so close to the sun that the surface temperature of the Earth is 452 degrees Fahrenheit? What record will be left of this culture? Of me? Of my dog?
Fear The Future

Dear Future Fret,
There’s nothing to worry about. No matter how far into the future you look you will still find two types of people.

1. Consumers: Where there is life there is consumption. And where there is intelligent life (and isn’t that after all what we mean by posterity? Future intelligent life?) there are:
2. Advertisers.

And as long as there are advertisers you can be sure of finding the esteemed wrinkles that make up the reporters of 60 Minutes. These hard-nosed pull-no-punches investigative reporters will always find the answers, whether the question is, "how safe is your bottled water?" or "just what were our ancestors like?"

Mike Wallace will find out for the future generations just exactly what the lost society of modern civilization was up to. Morley Safer will be able to explain just what the Macarana was all about (and give a sample on-air). And Andy Rooney will bitch about how much air he pays for when he buys potato chips.

But don’t worry. 60 Minutes will not be the be all and end all of investigative journalism. Barbra Walters will be so kind as to shed a softer light on the subject Bob Barker will be there to ask how much the toothpaste costs. Casey Kasem will be counting down America’s top 40 while Dick Clark counts down the last seconds of the old year.

So you can sleep comfortably tonight my frightened fellow. Our culture will live on. And we have advertisers to thank for it.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: The Inhumanity!

2006-01-12T15:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
So I’m in the Bush administration… not one of the big guys, I just make the coffee. But I’m… you know… ambitious. I want to make myself look good, so I’m trying to come up with cool ways to get around this McCain torture bill that just passed… you know, in case this unitary executive branch thing doesn’t turn out to hold water. Got anything good I can use?
[name deleted for protection]

Dear nameless,
Hmmm, how can we get around this issue of being cruel and inhumane? Well, in order to be cruel and inhumane it has to be cruel AND inhumane, so if you destroy the argument that torture is one or the other, you’re all set. So…

Lets start with what it means to be humane or inhumane. Everywhere you go you hear people arguing about humane treatment of animals right? And why would it make sense to be treating animals like humans? So humane can't be describing the animals which means it must be describing the caregivers. So humane must be a description of the one acting, and not the one being acted on. Then if the one acting is acting human-ish, he’s being humane. Well that makes sense.

And what does it mean to be acting human-ish? That would be displaying qualities that are distinctly human, like putting faith in the unseen or paying $15 for snacks at a movie or running a red light. It is showing creativity and imagination, and thinking outside the box.

Therefore, the more creative the form of torture, the more it proves that you are indeed being humane, which by definition means you are NOT being INhumane, (for you grammar nuts out there, a double negative is perfectly acceptable as long as you capitalize the negative parts) so you’re good.

Of course this means you will have to stay away from conventional form of torture, so no pulling off fingernails or toenails or reading Vogon poetry, or threatening of family members (or dismembering of said family members) because those have already been tried and hence, no innovation required, which is inhumane.

In fact (And Bush will love me for this) I’m not even going to go into those forms of torture which would be considered creative because as soon as I name them then you didn’t have to think of them yourself. This means that you are not using your imagination, and are being inhumane, which means you’re right back where you started: the unitary executive branch.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Razor Sharp

2006-01-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My boyfriend’s hair is getting pretty shaggy. And maybe I should be ok with him doing whatever he wants with his hair, but I’m not. It brings back traumatic memories of my dad. He had long hair too. But that’s not traumatic, the traumatic part is that Dad was a circus clown, and I was always scared of circus clowns. As a matter of fact, I still am, and I’m afraid if my boyfriend’s hair gets any longer, he’ll become a circus clown. What can I do?
Girl With the Pearl Scissors

Dear Pearl,
In the boy-girl debate, the subject of change is inevitable. You find things wrong with him and he finds things wrong with you and everyone pretends to ignore those things until, as my Paddy liked to say, "Those elephants ain’t just in the room, they’re sleeping in your bed. A whole herd of em, too. It’s just no good, I’ll tell ya that."

He’s right. Two people simply cannot live with a herd of elephants. I tried it once, and it was no fun. They don’t pick up after themselves. They clog the toilet and break all the good china. (No wait, it’s bulls that break all the china, elephants are great with it.) They create mountains (literal mountains) of dirty laundry. You can’t take them anywhere because they never look both ways before doing anything.

In the end you’re fed up and exasperated and blaming anything elephant related on your significant other, which means that you can forget about a nice romantic Valentines Day, and no relationships has ever survived without those nice romantic Valentine's Days.

And that’s where you’re heading Pearl. To the elephants. You don’t want that. I don’t want that for you. You'll need a 5 step plan to avoid that toilet trouble.

1. Stop shaving. (Don’t worry, it’s not permanent.) At some point, he’s going to notice. (This will take longer than you expect.) At some later point, he will feel distressed to the point where he’ll have to comment on it.

2. When he does, then explain to him (over his favorite dinner) that you were under the impression that he was a great lover of hair, and only wanted to please him. And when he asked where on Earth you got that idea you...

3. hold a mirror up to his head. Laugh at this point, you’ll need to keep things light.

4. In that vein, this is the time to serve dessert: Jell-O. If all has gone right, he’ll grin sheepishly and suggest a mutual shaving party.

5. Take him up on it.

And you’ll both be as baby soft and smooth as a hockey rink after the zamboni makes a pass.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: On The Trail of Truth

2006-01-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Can truth exist independent of reason?
Perry Ponderer

Dear Periwinkle,
The truth is, no. One can only prove the existence of truth by proving its existence. And one cannot have proof without a reason. This is an excellent example. I proved the truth of my statement by using reasons.

But the brilliance is not in the statement here, the brilliance is in the application. Think of all the things you can whistle out of existence based on the fact that they’re unreasonable.

Reality tv cannot exist because it is reasonable that it does not. For it to exist it would have to be profitable and in order to be profitable it would have to be watched repeatedly, and in order to watch it repeatedly, one must find it enjoyable and in order to find it enjoyable one must be incapable of thinking about it and in order to be incapable of thinking about it one must not have a brain and in order to not have a brain, you must be at least a worm, and since worms are incapable of purchasing products advertised on tv, no one is going to make reality tv shows, therefore they do not exist. (This reasoning process also works for Britney Spears)

Corrupt government officials cannot exist because we live in a republic, and if an official is corrupt we will vote him out of office, at which point he will no longer be a government official. Not to mention the fact that since we have no corrupt officials in the government, that means they are all working for the public good, and since our society today is the result of said work, that means that where we are right now is the public good. That’s a comfort, isn't it?

Quantum physics is no longer valid because an object either exists or it doesn’t. It cannot fluctuate willy nilly between the two states. In fact it cannot fluctuate between the two states whatsoever, let alone willy nilly. This means that we require no quantum law of gravity which means that general relativity explains everything that ever existed which means that it also explains the existence of God.

So Perry, look at all the things that you have caused no longer to exist. You are a true genius, and should be widely recognized as such.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Mind Your Mother

2006-01-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My grandmother is very hard to please. It doesn’t matter what I do, but I’m never doing the right thing. I need to lose weight, but I look so skinny. I’d be a great pianist, no wait. Accountant now. Sorry. Did I mention she’s sort of fickle? And don’t even get me started on politics. Because I’m completely wrong there. You see, none of my bumper stickers say anything about Ralph Nader. I wear the wrong clothes. I use the wrong toothpaste. I watch the wrong movies. How can I make granny happy?
will-o-the-widow

Dear Will-O,
Today’s generation is not taught to respect its elders. They know more than you because they’ve been around longer. And who needs to make his own mistakes when his father’s mistakes are still perfectly fresh? Think of all the money you’ll save (on hospital bills and divorce lawyers and therapists) by doing everything right the first time because everyone before you has done the wrong thing for you.

The moral of the story is: Listen to your grandmother. This will have the following consequences.

She will like you more than all of her other future heirs because you care about her and respect her enough to pay attention to her and put your trust in her judgement. You will be her favorite. This is a great way to save money.

She will pay for you. All you have to do is explain that you’d love to attend the college she picked out and wear the dress she picked out, and eat the food she picked out. You want it more than anything. But you just can’t afford it. And then she’ll take care of everything. Of course, if she’s as fickle as you say she is, then it will take rather more time to get something done, but it will be worth it because

At some point she’ll remember you in her will. Which is why it pays to be the favorite. (that was a pun. I know. I’m sorry.) And what does the favorite usually get? Yup. The house. And it’s always nice to have one of those handy.

So you may not get to do what you wanted to do when you were growing up, but on the bright side, you managed not to make any mistakes getting there because you listened to the batty old wisdom of your dear old grandmother. And you get the house as a consolation prize. Now tell me that’s not worth it.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Are you lost? Broken? Missing your batteries? Never had the bateries to begin with? Feeling flat? phony? fishy? Fried? fried fishy? Do you need a good slap in the face? shot in the arm? spilled coffee on the lap? Miss Eliza's here to help. It's jsut lucky for you I'm so easy. All you need to do is send me a question. Just write it on the inside of a computer screen and post it here in the comments section OR e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com and remember, it's like my Paddy used to say. "Ain't no three ways about it, when two will get you there."
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza's Resolutions

2006-01-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’ve been hearing quite a bit of controversy lately on the subject of New Years Resolutions. A lot of people are saying that new Years resolutions don’t work, or that we should just decide to accept ourselves as is. So what do you think Miss Eliza, should I bother with my New Years Resolutions?
Dis Resolute

Dear Dis,
They say that life is about compromise. And since every human is really two humans (you and yourself), this includes you compromising with yourself. You’ll give up smoking but you’ll let yourself have her caffeine binge in the morning. You’ll lose 30 lbs but yourself will put on 25.

That’s what They say. And when did I ever bother listening to Them? Compromise is settling. And no one ever sucked life’s marrow by settling, now did they? But the most important thing you will ever learn is not to settle for yourself. It is the nature of man not to be his best. This means that you can do better. You just have to resolve to do it. And you have to resolve to do it during the coming year (hence New Year). When else do you have to do it?

This is all well and good until you look at statistics. New Years resolutions made in January have a success rate of nil. It’s true. You can look it up in the Guiness Book of World Records. The longest a January declared New Year’s resolution has ever been kept was 4 days 19 hours and 3 minutes. (for those of you that weren’t aware, the record holder resolved never again to watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.)

But if you look at the data month by month, you’ll find that New Years Resolutions made in September have the highest success rate. They last, on average 236 times longer than New Years resolutions made in January. Heck, just waiting until February improves your chances by 55%.

So as my Paddy used to say, hasty equals wastey, time equals mime.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
I made a new Years Resolution to lose 20 pounds. But everyone is telling me that I don’t need to lose weight, I look great just the way I am. My mom especially is worried that I might develop an eating disorder. What can I do?
5’5 and 125

Dear 125,
How brave of you to be so honest with us about this. Here’s how it should work. Obviously outside opinion holds weight with you. But equally obvious is that you want to join in on the dieting fad. But at 125, you probably don’t have all that much extra to spare. So here’s what you do.

You go on a diet. It’s called the December diet. You eat like it’s December. The candy canes, the fudge, those little pink candies with the peanut butter in the middle, the Christmas party food, the Christmas Eve party food, the New Years Eve party food, the Christmas dinner with all the fixings. Eat like that all year long.

By the time you get that negative comment about how much weight you’ve put on, you should have at least 20 pounds to spare. Then you get off the December diet and get on the harvest diet, which is where you eat lots of food that you get from harvesting. So apples and gourds and corn and ham.

And then everybody’s happy. Even you.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Forgot Your Final Yet?

2005-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
This is finals week. And wherever I turn I see evidence that it is finals week. The school newspaper is completely about finals week. There is free food being given out in the student center because it is finals week. My roommate has a clock counting down to the end of finals week. All the bulletin boards everywhere have advice about how to deal with the stress that is finals week. That’s stupid. What I need isn’t to be reminded that this is finals week. I need to forget that this is finals week. How do I do that?
- Final Solution

Dear Finally Solved,
As my Paddy used to say, “The best distraction is a good distraction.” So true. So what’s the difference between a good distraction and a stressful one? You guessed it. The level of stress. And where is the level of stress the lowest? Among people who don’t know what the word means.

There are two ways to interpret that. You can hang out with ignorant think skulled plebeians who get kicks out of kicking people. This is violent and crass. And I know (from the simple fact that you were thoughtful enough to write me a letter) that you are not a violent and crass type of person. Therefore.

The other place that you are going to find people who don’t know the meaning of stress is on a playground. How do I know that? It’s called a playground. See? PLAY ground. A ground for playing. And playing is what you are doing when you are not stressing. So get up a good game of dodge ball or tag. Hide and seek. Hopscotch. Four square. Duck duck goose.

(I’ll tell you, I haven’t been able to get anyone to play duck duck goose with me in forever. You can sign me up for that one please.)

There are rules. You aren’t allowed to play with people your own age. They know what stress means. They’re going to feel it. You throw a ball at a physics student and he’s going to argue that no, it didn’t hit him. At the microscopic level nothing ever touches anything else. You do not need to be reminded in any way shape or form that you’ve got… ugly things to do this week.

Besides, if you play with the younger set, stealing lunch money becomes exponentially easier. (And that’s not stressful at all. That’s why it’s called easy.)
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza's Christmas Budget

2005-12-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I have 3 children under the age of 3. (That is a crazy story, I won't get into the gory details, if you don't mind.) And this is the Christmas season which means that I have to spend 1000s of dollars of them. But you know what this season is like. My heating bill for this month alone is $145 and it costs me over $40 whenever I want to fill up at the pump. So you could say I'm on a budget. This being the case, just how much should I spend on each of my 3 kids this season?
- Santa's siphoned helper

Dear siphoned,
So you've had your kids for what, up to 3 years a piece right? And you'll have them for what up to another 15 years minimum (and don't forget, when it comes to kids it's NEVER the minimum.) You're going to have plenty of opportunities to spend money on them.

Christmas in its current manifestation has become a drain on financially inadequate families everywhere. There's only one thing to be done. Convert to Judaism.

How much money will this put in your pocket? Let's do a little math. You have 3 kids under the age of 3. If you're that type of person, it's probably safe to assume that you aren't done. I'd even go so far as to call it a safe bet that you put another 3 little buggers in your shopping cart before it's all said and done.

Going conservative, that means you have another 21 Christmases to go before they even move out of the house. And another 4 before you don't have anyone left as a dependant. (again, roughly speaking) And Christmas doesn't stop there. You have to get them presensts EVERY year until you don't have years left. We'll be optimistic. Let's say that's 40.

So you will be buying Christmas presents for 40 years. This means that for quite a while you're going to have to put up what $150, $200 per kid? We'll go with $150. You are on a budget after all. This year that means $450, adding 150 a year for the next three years puts your total Christmas expenditures (just on the kids, mind you) at $2700. Plus $900 a year for the next, what 20 years? We'll say 25. That's another $22500 right there.

By that time your kids will be off on lives of their own and self supporting (Ha!) and you can scale back your Christmas budget to $30 per child (you old Scrooge) so $30 times 6 is $180 a year. Still just on the kids. We'll leave grandchildren out of the equation this time. $180 times 15 years is $2700. Which brings your Christmas spending on your children over the course of a lifetime to $27900.

Now when it comes to money I always end up comparing things to school. So that's 4 years of tuition at an in-state public university. You could send one of your kids to college if you didn't have to buy them all Christmas presents. Those Hebrews have the right idea. If only they'd thought of the Chanukah tree we'd all be golden.
-Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Tis the season, is it not? And as we all know the season is one of caring for the well being of your fellow man. In this spirit I would like you know know that I too am seeking donations. Fear not, I seek only donations of questions. You question could very well bring joy and laughter to they who need it the most. If you would like to make a questionable donation, write it down and e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com OR post it in the comments section, which can be found directly underneath this letter. Thank you for your help in this matter.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Yearns For The Day...

2005-12-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I love the 90's. 90's music is so much better than the crap they're playing on the radio today. Even the one hit wonders were better. What can I do to recapture that long lost feeling? Should I start a radio station and just have it cycle through my MP3s? That may cost a lot of money. Help!
Sincerely,
The Spin Doctor

Dear Spin Cycle,
Why is it that when you say "one hit wonders" and "90’s" in the same letter the first thing that comes to mind is "That Thing You Do" and not the Macarana? Maybe this is just another manifestation of my passive aggressive obsessive compulsive bipolar senility.

But I have good news. The matrix (as in The Matrix) is set up to make you think it’s 1999. As long as you don’t mind sharing the energy you generate with a couple artificially intelligent droids, you can just get yourself set up in a little pod in a cozy little corner of a people garden and live happily in a perpetual Twentieth Century while daily enjoying such lost fare as "Larger Than Life" and "Blue."

This will get you closer to your goal, but it isn’t going to hit it dead on. It’s widely acknowledged that music hit its prime (pardon me, its most recent peak, which is not equivalent to the hey day of good old rock and roll) between 1995 and 1997, and it has since been in decline. This decline coincides with the rise of the bubble-gum-slut-clones. A tragedy by all counts.

It is debated whether the bubble gum slut clones or the boy band clones were the actual facilitators of the downfall. Some say that the boy bands in and of themselves were painful but harmless on their own. Others argue that it was this boy band obsession that gave rise to the slut, which spelled disaster.

But the point is that by 1999 this transition was well under way. You want to go further back than the Matrix. I’d suggest a Kevin Smith movie. Go with Mallrats or Chasing Amy, which one you choose will probably depend on your opinion of Ben Affleck, and whether you’re looking to find some Joan Osborne on the radio. (For these reasons… and the fact that I liked it more, I would stick with Mallrats.)

Have a good time, and if you run into me, let me know that I could save myself a lot of stress if I just pick the right major the first time around.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza's Wish List

2005-12-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’m making up a list of things I’m giving to people for Christmas, and I got to your name and realized I have no idea what to get you? Well, what’ll it be?
- Secret Santa

Dear Santa,
There are some Really Good People out there in the world who will answer questions life this with goodwill and altruism. They will say things like, “I want to head down to New Orleans and help build houses for Habitat for Humanity,” or “I want everyone to be able to afford for feed themselves and still be able to pay for heating oil.” Etc. Now, as I already said, these are Really Good People, and these answers are extremely noble and kind, and everything else that is Really Good.

I’m not one of those people. I have things that I need, and other things that I want, that have nothing to do with Katrina or earthquake victims or oil prices (unless you want to give me a gas card.) You could even say I’m a Really Not Good Person, and you’d be right. So with that understanding, here’s my wish list. It really comes down to three categories.

I really do need a new computer. And by need I mean that mine is starting to get really pissed at me for not letting it go gently into that good night.

The rest of these are just to make my life more comfortable or happy.

Big huge pillows
The Perfect Winter Coat. (WARNING: The perfect Winter Coat is a very specific item and I would not advise you to attempt to pay for one unless I’m there to tell you that it is indeed the Perfect Winter Coat.)
Cute pajamas
socks (can be of the very-thick, knee, or novelty variety)
Books: for the list of books to choose from, see my post on why the publishing gods hate me. Or, if you want to make things easy on yourself: a $50 gift card to a bookstore… any bookstore.
movies: Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy or Fever Pitch (The Red Sox fans edition, if you please)
Here’s my attempt at being noble: I want people to stop with the stupid. It drives me crazy. You can do better. There’s a mind in there of your very own that will do whatever. You just have to try it. LEARN and APPLY and THINK and stuff. You’ll be better off. And that will make me happy. I promise that you don’t even have to agree with me. We can have some really fun arguments if you don’t.

Stocking Stuffers:

- I collect shot glasses, decks of cards and chess sets. Or at least I would if I had enough to call them “collections.”
- Mugs. I saw a great one yesterday that said, “I don’t listen to the voices in my head. But they do have some pretty good ideas.” But really, any mug would rock.
- Tea
- Candles that smell like dessert is in the oven… pumpkin pie, apple pie, gingerbread, cookies, cake, etc.

And don’t forget the Christmas cards. If you write me one, I’ll write you one back, ok? Thank you Santa.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: For the Financially Unstable

2005-12-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
So I started trading stocks online and put most of my money into a company that recently announced financial improprieties. Sure I was warned to diversify and I did. I bought half in stock, and half in stock options - for the same company. How am I going to make my money
back and pay off my margin call? And what should I do next tome to prevent this from happening?
Sincerely,
Trading Decimal Places

Dear Trader,
Happily enough, you’re two questions have just one solution. Isn’t that wonderful? The key to the solution is simple. My Paddy put it best. He said, "If it ain’t fixed, it don’t hurt to break it."
I’m sure that from that one saying, the answer has become perfectly obvious. You just have to become One-of-Them. You happen to find yourself in a position of utmost authority in some shining example of one of this country’s leading industries. You plop yourself into one or two financial improprieties.

This will have several effects. The first is that you’ll make an ass load of money (which you can then use to pay off your margin call). The other bonus is that you’ll have a nice inside scoop of when to bail out, and this will avoid your being left out in the brutal world of worthless pieces of paper.

Still, you might worry that being One-of-Them is a selfish, self-centered, self-serving occupation. But don’t worry. If worry anything of the sort, that just means that you don’t know anything about anything, and you should leave judgements on such things to people who do know.

And if perchance that you’re worried about the world finding out about your financial improprieties, you’ve missed the point. Because a week before it did find out, you’d have divested yourself of all your stock (and stock options) and would at the present time be living out the remainder of your days in a lovely country that is not this one.

So good luck on that. And don’t forget that if it works, and you find yourself with more money than you know what to do with, I get a cut for giving you the idea.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza and the Perfect Season... May It Live Always

2005-12-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza
So I'm a Dolphin fan and as you must know - in 1972 the were the only team to ever go undefeated and win the championship. 17-0. What an achievement, especially for a nice guy like Don Shula. And coincidentally, This Friday is the 20 year anniversary that the 1985
Dolphins handed the then undefeated Chicago Bears their only loss of the season on Monday Night Football - preserving the 1972 mark.

You remember those Bears. Walter Payton. The Fridge. Ditka. The bad rap video. Well, for the second time since then another team is threatening the undefeated season. The Broncos in 1998 were undefeated a week before they were to meet the Dolphins on Monday Night Football
(drama) but they lost the week before. Then for good measure they lost to the Dolphins too.

Anyways, the second team is this year's Indianapolis Colts. And they don't play the Dolphins this year. And besides the Dolphins suck this year. And unlike the nasty 85 Bears, there's not an unpleasant fellow on this Colts team.

Short of voodoo dolls and elixirs from displaced New Orleans practitioners, What's a Dolphins fan to do?
Streaker

Dear Streaker,
Good grief, Voodoo would barely put a dimple in this problem. You want to appeal to a higher authority. You’ll need to get the schedule changed. And since pro team schedules were set in stone five years prior to the big bang, that might take some doing.

Fortunately, I hear on the gossip mills that Hercules has been getting a little antsy lately, acting up again. Apparently he owes Hera another labor or two. You might want to put a word in with her. Of course, the key is getting on her good side. You’d be surprised how susceptible she is to flattery. (You ever herd of butter? It’s cement compared to how fast she can melt with the right touch.)

But back to Hercules. If anybody can get this job done for you, he can. That man/god is a type A personality if I ever laid eyes on one. And he gets things done RIGHT. The other day I told him I lost my parasol down a black hole, and he went and got it for me! And a couple years ago when Mom was late for her dentist appointment, He just popped time back a couple hours just to help her out. And do you really think that Einstein thought of special relativity all by himself?

Hercules can save the Dolphins rep for you. Boy if I was a bettin’ woman…
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Can You Spell Overdose?

2005-11-30T16:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza
So I'm thinking about upgrading my weedwacker to a riding lawnmower but I'm unsure how to proceed. Some people say that I should just get a regular push mower since I live in a townhouse and the riding mower might be overkill, but I'd rather spend the money now for the comfort later. I don't want to develop any kind of back problems or anything.
Do you think I'm going overboard?
Sincerely
Juan Deere

Dear Juan,
As my theater teacher once told me, "There’s no such thing as overdramatic." That's the kind of statement that will take you places in life. Why don't I say it again, just for good measure? "There's no such thing as overdramatic." (as my paddy used to say, "If it's worth repeating, it's worth repeating in color.)

Actually, I think it was my pastor that told me that. And you know as well as I do that pastors are always right, so that should hold loads more water than my theater teacher. I think she tried to teach us about subtlety. (If I’m not mistaken, she was an athiest. It just goes to show how clueless they all are... athiests, not theater teachers. But you never know, it might be the theater teacher part that makes her clueless.)

And since my pastor's always right and my theater teacher's going to hell, of course I would go with the riding lawn mower. In fact, I just have a little studio apartment, and my main centerpiece is my knuckleboom loader. (I just don’t know how I’d have gotten by all this time without the hydraulic extend a boom. I tell ya, that thing’s a life saver. And that bypass grapple with 42" opening is just to die for.)

The problem then, isn’t whether or not your taking your mowing too seriously, it's what to do about all those unenlightened folks out there who just don’t understand. Reasoning with these people is useless of course, as they haven’t yet arrived at the Age of Reason (more commonly known as 15, the age where you know the reason for everything). What they do understand is the concept of a free ride.

Let me warn you, "free rides" can get expensive, so charge a nominal fee. It really will keep overall costs down. (and you don't have that Murphy guy of Murphey's law hanging around all the time because you're prepared for the worst. That's what money means in 56 different languages. Did you know that?)

In essence, you want to show them that a riding lawn mower is just as fun as a hot air balloon ride, and vastly more convenient. This isn’t hard to prove. All you need is a little mood music and an impulsive overbearing personality, and some price comparissons to hot air balloon rides, and they’ll do anything you suggest (better yet, they’ll believe whatever you say).

Enjoy the fun, and don’t forget to invite me when you start giving out those rides. I’ve never been on a riding lawn mower. That nuckleboom though, there’s nothing like it.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: The Face That Only a Radio Could Love

2005-11-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I'm trying to break into radio. What's the best way to get my start?
Sincerely,
Ayem Effem

Dear Eh-hem,
A good voice on the radio must be learned. We do not naturally come up with the necessary pomposity and delusional thinking. It takes years of study to mold your brain into shape. Start now. Enroll in seminary.

Preachers have more in common with the Rush Libaughs and Al Frankens of the world than anyone would care to admit. But the things you learn in seminary will serve you well in your chosen profession. How to talk for extended periods of time. How to always be right. How to make other people do what you tell them. And most importantly, How to make them love you for it.

Granted, the hazing systems at seminaries are far less regulated than you’ll find at an ordinary school. It’s a grueling process, but as they say, what goes in comes out so much better. Look at Daniel in the lions' den. Heck, look at any saint that was ever martyred.They go in looking human, and by the time they're finished being martyred, they may look a little worse for wear, but come on. They're saints. Anyway it’s worth it. So surrender yourself.

Now once seminary's over you’ve got your tone down to perfection. All you need to survive in radio is that level of obnoxiousness only found in People-With-A-Cause. So of course, you’ll need a cause. Here are some that are still waiting to be swept into the main stream:

Steroid use among chess players
Apples as a cause of cardio pulmonary distress
Federal aid for Acrophobics
The amount of candy in piñatas

And since any cause worth its name has an enemy, you’ll need someone to hate. Since, theoretically, the point of radio is to get people to listen to you, you’ll need to hate someone that lots of other people hate (and is adored by everyone not in that category) so that everyone will listen to you because they agree or if they disagree they’ll listen to you because they love the way you get their dander up.

Good enemies:

Reality TV
Jesus
Ted Stephens
Julia Roberts
Second cousins once removed

So now you’ve been baptized by fire. You preachiness is at an all time high, as is your self righteouness (thank you seminary). Your tone is dripping with excessively opinionated statements. All you need is a night with a hooker and the papparatzzi (they LOVE threesomes) and you know you’ve made it.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Has Fleas

2005-11-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Lets say that I was to tell you about my friend "Buddy." Buddy has fleas. It’s not my fault. I’ve told him about all kinds of treatments, and every sort of flea prevention known to man, but he just won’t listen to me. Plus he still has fleas, so when I’m around him, I spend all my time killing them. Suggestions?
Flea Ring Circus

Dear Flea Ringer,
As I see it, your problem is three fold:

How to kill the current flea infestation.

This will immediately pose your second problem:

What to do with all those dead fleas.

And once you solve that problem:

How do I keep the fleas from coming back.

So lets take this in steps:

How to Kill the Current Infestation:
Anyone who’s watched even one iota of day time soaps knows there’s only one sure fire way to get away with genocide of fleas. And that is to let them watch television. You see television watching comes in stages: Brain rot, tooth rot, body rot. And since fleas have neither brains nor teeth to rot, television will skip right to body rot.

What to Do With Those Dead Fleas:
Since this is genocide, you aren’t going to want to leave traces of evidence for the UN, the EPA, the ASPCA, the CIA, or the NCAA to find the next time they try sniffing through your trash. You’re going to have to be a little inventive. Food is always a good choice. Stuff them in your mother-in-law’s lobster. Those things have so much gunk in them anyway, she’ll never notice.
Also a good idea, craft projects. Knit a nice blanket for Buddy out of all those carcasses. This will have the added bonus of being a warning sign to a new generation of fleas.

How to Keep Them From Coming Back:
Well new generations of fleas are products of old generations of fleas, correct? So what you want to do is stop those old generations of fleas from reproducing. (Warning to Catholics: you may find this offensive.) What you are looking for is a contraceptive. That’s right. Buddy needs a condom. (I’d recommend the pill, but a condom will not only solve baby flea problems, but will also protect against STD’s.)

And so, as my Paddy used to say, "no rubber, no rub ‘er."
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza's Energy Cost Alternatives

2005-11-27T16:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’m feeling the high energy costs this winter, and I’m looking for some tips on how to deal with them. Ideas?
Poorie McPoor

Dear Poorie,
The most important thing to remember about heat is that it is all in your mind. The temperature you are feeling is the temperature that that your brain is interpreting from body signals. A little brain surgery ought to take care of the whole problem. You get your brain to tell you that you feel cozy and warm no matter how frozen those boogers feel in your nose.

Sure brain surgery may seem like a rather drastic and expensive method of dealing with high oil prices. But think of all the money you’ll not spend on heating oil for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.

And if over the course of life you find yourself living with someone unfortunate enough not to have thought of brain surgery, you can play out this scenario.

You: "What do you mean it’s cold in here? I’m fine."
Him: "Fine? It’s 50 degrees. I can’t feel my toes."
You: "Whatever. If you want to pay for the heat, go right ahead. But don’t ask me to pitch in."
Him: "Fine. Whatever you say, Scrooge."

And think of all the extra lottery tickets you could buy with that oil money. You could increase the probability of winning by 1000% or more easily. Which means in all likelihood that not only will you save a fortune on heating your home, but you’ll also be insanely closer to winning another fortune on top of that.

Doesn’t get better than that my friend. Brain surgery can solve all your problems.
Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
So let’s say you’re lying in bed tonight and you find you can’t sleep because there’s this nag in the back of your head who won’t let up. For the sake of your sanity (which is dependant upon the amount of sleep you get) put that nag to bed. Dash off a letter to Dear Miss Eliza, and sleep in peace, knowing that the answer is well within my knowledge base.

The next time this happens to you, send it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com, or post it right here in the comments section. And rest easy.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Happy Holiday

2005-11-24T16:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I ate too much food for dinner today and now my belly won’t move. Any digestion tips?
- One Stuffed Turducken

Dear Stuffed,
Happy Thanksgiving! This calls for what they call the Hair of the Dog treatment. Look at it this way. You’re on a roll. Keep on going. If you stop to pay attention to your body, you’re going to notice that you exploded half an hour ago. And no one wants to notice something like that, you least of all. Like my Paddy always used to say, “Dear Lord, thank you for this tasty morsel and my overwhelming ignorance of my bodily functions.” He was one verbose man, my Paddy.

And he’s right. Ignorance isn’t just bliss, it’s the only way to make sure that you don’t feel guilty about those starving children in Amsterdam.

So have another slice of pie, top it with whipped cream. Sip a nice hot toddy. Peel off a little turkey skin. Stuff that stuffing right down your pipe. And then do it all over again.

Now monotony may kick in after a while, so you’ll need to shake things up. Pour some of that gravy on your apple pie and mash those cranberries right into the peas. Have you tried a pumpkin pie sandwich? Tuna turkey surprise. The surprise is that it doesn’t have any tuna in it. Get it?

At some point you’ll need an Alice’s Restaurant break. And when your break is over, you’re gonna want to be unconscious. It really helps in situations like this. Hopefully after all that tryptophan unconsciousness will follow naturally, but if you’re a freak, and not ready for a little shut eye after Alice’s Restaurant, I’m sorry to say that you’re beyond help.

And go to bed early because you’ll need to be up at the crack of midnight to get in like for dawn-buster sales tomorrow morning. Enjoy!
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza and the Passive Aggressive Revenge

2005-11-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My brother and I just had a pretty bad fight and he called me some rather nasty names. I’m not the kind of person to let something like that go very easily, but I also don’t want to get into another huge confrontation over it. Is there any nice passive aggressive type way I can exact some revenge on him without him knowing?
A miffed Eliza

Dear miffed,
I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the wonderful world of spam. Did you know it was invented to exact revenge on an ex boyfriend? Did you know that ex boyfriend was King Solomon who went on to write a very famous little ditty about a woman scorned? It’s true.
And while he may not be an ex, spam is just the level of passive aggression you’re going for here.

Now you could go the route of putting him on a penis enhancement list, but I find the old fashioned forward to be much more endearing. You have the daily jokes, or the money making scams that Microsoft is offering today, but I find the hardest to resist, and the most time consuming, are the surveys. So I’ll get you started. And since I can’t get past one of these without answering it myself, it will also be a chance for you to get to know more about me.

Name: Dear Miss Eliza
Age: seven, although you’d never know it to look at my diction
Home town: Ever since I heard "you’re not from around here, are you?" in my very own home town, I haven’t been sure how to answer this question.
Favorite drink: But I’ve barely scratched the surface of drinks. How should I know?
Favorite book: You know you don’t want to get me started on that one. It turns me into a real bore.
Favorite word: non sequitur, zaftig
Favorite swear: it’s also a nice movie quote. "God damn son of a bitching mother fuckin’ shithead!"
Favorite State quarter: I’m a fan of irony. I’m going w/ New Hampshire
Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? My mattress is actually made out of stuffed animals. It was an arts and crafts project they had at that place where all the walls were padded.
UFO’s fact or fiction? Look at the people around you. Do you really think they came up with central heating all by themselves?
Finish this sentence, "Mary had a little…" pink elephant.
Does sunscreen cause cancer? I don’t plan on living long enough to find out.
If you were cooking dinner for a date, what would you make? Well, with my kitchen looking like this I’ d have to go with chocolate covered ramen with orange slices in a nice tomato baste.
Someone walks up to you and says, "The crows are flying east today. How do you reply?" No sir, they aren’t moving at all. It’s us that are headed west.
Longest relationship: I met Dick and Jane when I was about 5. But Spot was always way nicer to me than they were.
Best feature: my afro. No, I meant MY afro.
What do people like best about you? That I only hit them when they aren’t paying attention.
Who did you vote for? Richard Nixon. He just looks so noble.
Who is your worst enemy? Those giants that look just like windmills.
Who is your best friend? Sancho Panza
How do you like your meat cooked? With a little orange juice and served with gravy.
Who is most likely to respond to this survey? Kilgore
Who is least likely to respond to it? Zaphod

So that should take care of the first day’s forward. You’ll want to keep coming up with others. Get him in touch with some foreign investment banks, maybe a send-this-to-10-people-or-die type thing. And don’t forget the good old fashioned pie in the face accidentally on purpose. He’ll never see it coming (As long as you try it when he’s sleeping.)
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Time Management

2005-11-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I am in ninth grade, and I have so much work, it seems like there is never enough time to get it done, between work, school, and friends, I feel like I cant get enough done, and at the rate I'm going I might never graduate. help!
sincerely,
*John doe

Dear John,
Did you know that a "rate" is a change in something divided by a change in time? If not, give yourself four years, you’ll have it figured out.

So if this is the definition of a rate, you can make yourself more efficient by increasing your change-in-something, or decreasing your change-in-time. The change-in-time thing could be a bit difficult, but you could find a way to hop on a photon (that’s a light particle) and taking it for a little ride. Did you know that time doesn’t pass when you’re traveling at light speed.

More feasible though, would be an increase in your change-in-something. What you want to do is get your brain circuits working at full speed. The average ninth grader’s brain speed is a tiny fraction of its possible speed. The most common algorithm says one divided by ten times ten, fifteen times and followed by a % sign is how much of your potential speed you've already tapped into. You'll want to fix that. So here are some exercises for upping your brain efficiency:

-Play chess.
-Eat books. Did you know that knowledge is contained in books in the form of calories? So when you eat a book, you’re increasing your knowledge base at a much higher rate than osmosis. (Osmosis doesn’t work as well as they like to insinuate, in the end you end up leaking as much as you gain.)
-Play outside.
-When you’re referring to the third person singular with an undefined antecedent, use the word "she" instead of "he" It takes a little extra effort, and effort is all about pumping up those other brainwaves.
-Learn to crochet.
-Argue with people. But don’t argue something like a thesis. And don’t take it seriously. And don’t argue with someone who takes it seriously either. Even so, it’s an argument, not a debate, and try to keep the difference in mind.
-Don’t watch TV. Write it instead.
-More vegetables, less gravy.
-Re-decorate your bedroom uysing nothing but pasta and papier mache.
-Buy a graphing calculator and learn how to do all its functions by hand so that you don’t need it. -Hike the Appalachian trail, or at least a portion of it, and mentally explore the idea of what that means. And don’t take too much water. It gets in the way of valuable hallucinations.
-Speaking of hallucinations, spend a little time being schizophrenic. It can really help your career.
-Get in touch with Hunter S. Thompson in a séance.

So that list should take you about 4 years to get through. By that time you’ll be ready to get back to your schoolwork, and then it’ll make much more sense.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Hiccups... Excuse Me

2005-11-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I always get the hiccups in the middle of class, and they’re always a lot louder and more noticeable than anyone else’s. In fact I think I might be the only one who ever gets the hiccups in class. And all the other kids start looking around to find out where it’s coming from, and chuckling about it. Then the teacher gets sort of annoyed because no one’s paying attention to her anymore, and I’m al embarrassed and feel bad and everything. So Miss Eliza, got any good cures for the hiccups?
- Hic

Dear Hic,
Did I ever tell you about the time I had the hiccups at work and had to page someone over the intercom? That was fun. You’ve gotta try it.

Every old wife that ever existed came up with her very own cure for the hiccups. My paddy used to tell me that for his mama, 13 shots of vodka was the magic number. Worked like an oar in a frog pond, was the way he always put it. Then there’s the old hypnosis where you kindly explain to your innards exactly how they’re supposed to be doing their job. But I’ve had a lot of hiccups in my days and I’ve tried a lot of cures (my favorite was when they said I should listen to Yellow Submarine while laying under my bed to promote sneezing), but without fail they worked about as well as a fad diet.

And then one day I saw this infomercial that changed my life. It was one of those kitchen gadget ones, I think the thing was called an Elecro-Multi-Wizbanger. It cooked any meal for you in 15 seconds. Now I wasn’t too into that, but the little Spritz-O-Matic that they’d throw in free really caught my attention.

It was this really tasty hair spray for your mouth that was supposed to boost your olfactory stimulators, and your house would smell like you’d been baking all day. Or at least that’s what the hair spray was supposed to tell your nose that your house smelled like.

So maybe it didn’t work quite like they said it would. Whenever I tried it, I konked right out. Normally I’d wake up two days later in a hospital bed. Unless nobody found me, and then I’d wake up two days later lying on my kitchen floor with a gash in my head and smelling like cat. So this one time I had a bad case of the hiccups and I went to my bathroom cabinet for the inhaler that my doctor had said that his great aunt always used to cure her hiccups. But I was a little dazed, and must have grabbed the wrong bottle because next thing I knew, I’m being spoon fed Jell-O and watching The Price Is Right. But MY HICCUPS WERE GONE.

So you gotta try this stuff. I think you can still only get it from the TV, but it’s only 8 easy installments of $39.99 and you get this dinner zapper thing too. And that’s not a bad deal when you consider it’s a surefire way to fix what ails you.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: How to Nourish Your Religion

2005-11-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I just got back from a trip to southeast Asia. While I was there, I had something of a religious experience, a John Smith moment, so to speak, and now I’m feeling the spiritual tug that begins the journey of inventing a new religion.
Now some would say it was just a bout with bad shellfish, but that vision of the merman rising out of the sea to discuss matters vital to humanity really affected my psyche. I now understand that all humans are connected by the bond of our inner Clam, who guides us towards a life more in tune with our natural state of sea salt.
But I digress. How do I go about founding a religion?
- All clammed up

Dear clammy,
Can I call you clammy? Good. Well, you are on the right track. Any religion worth its salt (pardon the pun, it just slipped out) starts with a crazy person. Crazy people hallucinate. But crazy people aren’t always ok with being crazy. (It happens.) These are the types that refer to said hallucinations as "visions."

So now that you've established that you have a good foundation for starting a religion (since you are crazy and it would appear that you're determined to ignore that fact) the next most important part: followers. Crazy people like to tell themselves, "Well, if other people believe me then I can’t be that insane, can I?" But think about it. You talked to a merman about salt. Who’s going to buy that? In today's cynical climate, no one. Which is why much groundwork needs to be laid in the general population before you take your vision public. You’re going to need to make them dumber. The less a person thinks, the easier suspension of disbelief becomes.

So, good techniques for stupidification? Remember the following:

The television is your friend. It informs your future congregations that not thinking is a perfectly acceptable state to live a life in. In fact, it encourages and teaches the masses how to go through life without using a single brain cell. But TV primed brains are going to need to get their opinions and values and lifestyles from somewhere and you will be able to provide that service for them.

Go go gadget doodad. Those fun inventions that people come up with to make life easier and more convenient? They’re your friends. Cell phones and remote controls and atomic colliders and bottled water are all working to make life more efficient and less thoughtful. Invest in a gizmo inventing type company. It will be worth it in the long run.

Do some research into ADD. It will show you how to hold people’s attention.

Give people coffee.

Convert someone famous. I would advise you to get Paris Hilton under your wing. Who doesn’t want to be like Paris Hilton? Famous followers will also get you free press on the celebrity hungry press junket, you know US Weekly and E! and People Magazine etc. (Speaking of which, buff up a little, a sexiest man alive nomination could really do a lot for your cause.)

Hmmm, now that I think about it, the world is probably about ripe for a clam based religion. All you need is a snazzy name. How about the Universal Chowderians?
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza for the Sleep Deprived

2005-11-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza
So I'm an east coast football fan who has to wake up early in the morning to get ready for work. I enjoy watching the Sunday and Monday night football games and then the highlight shows on ESPN, but I'm always wrecked the next day. How do I make it through the next day on only 4 hours of sleep and not end up crashing on the drive to work or crashing in my cube?
Sleepy in South Florida

Dear Sleepy,
Thank you for your high octaned, jet engine propelled question.

Why do you think McDonalds is open for breakfast? Once upon a time they established that poor east coast football fans desperately need some place to crash that isn’t going to get them fired or dead. And so they unveiled the Breakfast menu as a philanthropic gesture to those in need.

How it works is this: You go in, you buy your sandwich and you use the password: "crop circle." Then you take your sandwich into the Playland and dive bomb into the house of balls. This causes a fluctuation of spacetime sending the rest of the world off on a gravitational ripple that travels at the speed of light. And since they’re traveling at lightspeed, time is not passing, but you aren’t traveling at lightspeed, therefore time is passing at its normal pace, giving you plenty of time for a few hours of passed out while the rest of the world stands frozen.

Eventually the world ripples back and you are well rested and on your way to work. With the bonus of a McDonalds breakfast sandwich.

If that’s all too complicated, then you’re going to want some place to crash. And since you specifically requested that this some place not be the drive to work or your cube, then you might want to take a little detour driving to work on Monday so that you’re on the drive to not work. This is presumably a perfectly good place to crash. I’d suggest a figurative crash as opposed to a literal one, the figurative is healthier for you and your vehicle. Might I suggest a mattress store? You go in, you find some amazing mattress in a far corner where no one ever shops, and tuck yourself in.

On the other hand, you find the right department store, and they’ll provide you with in-house bed set, pillows, mattress and even a teddy bear if you’re of the cuddling type. And if anyone asks questions, you’re a secret shopper. Get out a notepad and start rating their service.

One more option: get yourself promoted to a corner office with a pullout couch and a TV. Under the right circumstances, you could really pull this off. Then, when everyone comes in and finds you asleep on your couch on Monday morning they’ll assume it’s because you’ve worked yourself to sleep all weekend, and they’ll leave you alone.

So I hope that this has been of some assistance. And good luck to the home team… what is it, the Dolphins?
Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Well it looks as though this blog has reached several fun milestones in the last month. For example, it had a birthday! I tuned one. This means, I can stand without support, and I’m about ready to try walking. I hope you’ve got your camera ready.

I’ve already got the first word thing taken care of. For those of you that are interested it was "pickle."

You will also be interested to note that this is the 100th post, and it only took me over a year to get there. I have always been a wee bit behind the curve, but someone has to do it, right?
And you’ll be happy to note that with this post, Miss Eliza has turned… 29… again. A lady doesn’t reveal her true age until she turns 100 and can therefore be called wise. Being Miss Eliza, the keeper of all wisdom, I hold back the truth out of a tiny sense of normalcy and decorum.

So here’s to birthday cake! And thanks for shopping with Dear Miss Eliza. Please come again, soon.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza on Ritalin

2005-11-14T18:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
So there’s this attention deficit thing that’s sweeping the nation, right? The kids have it, now they’re finding the parents have it? You might even call it an epidemic. So I’m wondering, right? Why two billion dollars towards the avian flu and not ADD?
Still smelling the roses

Dear Smelly,
See here’s the thing. Since everyone has ADD (except you and me) you can’t really call it a disorder anymore. The New and Improved shorter attention span is now the average, and not the exception. So why spend two billion dollars correcting a problem that isn't even a problem anymore because it's normal?

But since this is the trial generation, we’re still suffering from growing pains. Well, I say we, but what I actually mean is the universe hasn’t adapted to the new specifications yet. And time is still pretty miffed at us for not fully appreciating it… it’s a long story.

But the point is, that since people are just fine and it’s the universe that’s out of touch with reality, there’s no amount of money that you can throw at this problem to get it fixed. So the administration decided that perhaps it would be better off spending money on its favorite national pastime, creating terror and panic in the hearts of its constituents.

I hope that sheds a bit of light on the subject.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’m writing to you today because I want to spread public knowledge about a growing problem: that of people writing in books. I had a terrible experience with this myself recently, I found a spoiler written in the early pages of All the Kings Men. I found this book at a second hand store. I’m sure the note scribbler never thought that his book would be passed into the unsuspecting hands of someone like myself. Who ever thinks that the books in his librarywill someday be in someone else's posession? But it can happen. It can even happen to you, so please for the love of posterity, tell your readers not to write in books.
Ignorance is bliss

Dear Ignorance,
Thank you for your note of caution, and I’m sorry about that spoiler. It was my fault. I teased George for years about how he could never see anything coming in literature, and ever since then he’s been on an enormous quest for symbolism, and for some reason, can’t find any better place to comment on it than in the book.

I can assure you though, that he had no intention of it falling into your virgin hands. But some how in the divorce, his wife ended up with half his library, and that woman never had any appreciation for the signs of intellect. You know how it is.

Suffice it to say, I’ll never let it happen again. Spoilers are traumatic and evil and unnecessary. It is good to have these reminders right before our eyes.
Miss Eliza

Dear Reader,
Well, let’s pretend that I was a smelly bum slouched on the sidewalk with a coffee cup in my hand. Do you just step over me saying, "If I give her a question, she’ll only use it to buy liquor." Or do you smile pityingly and drop a scrap of paper into my desperate grasp? I guess what I’m saying is that I am metaphorically begging you to send me a question. And you have no idea how bad I feel about playing the guilt card.

So to ease my pain, you have two choices. Post a question for Miss Eliza in the comments section of this blog, or dash it off in an e-mail to selizawalden@yahoo.com
Thank you and good night.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza and the African Banker

2005-11-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I am the manager of the bill and exchange department of an African development bank. We recently discovered an abandoned sum of fifteen million five hundred thousand US dollars in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family in November 2001 in airplane crash.
Wwe have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money but unfortunately we learnt that all his relations died in the plane crash as well, leaving nobody behind to claim the money. Therefore I decided to make this proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin.
To enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you, you must apply first to the bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location wherein the money will be remitted. Upon receipt of your reply, I will help you to fill the text of application and secretly submit it to the bank on your behalf.
I will not fail to bring to your attention that this transaction is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer. You should contact me immediately as soon as you receive this letter.
Yours faithfully,
MR ALIU KAJA.

Dear Mr. Aliu Kaja,
My darling, it was the greatest pleasure to hear from you after all this time. I was beginning to think that weekend in Fresno was just another sexually infused con job, brought off by a masterful Don Juan. But now, reading your lovely words has renewed my confidence in the bond between us, and I am ready willing and able to follow you to the ends of the earth playing Clyde to your Bonny.

At least I would be if it weren’t for one little hitch, as you so eloquently named it.

I have been cheating on you. Yes, with all these offers of enormous riches waiting for me all across the globe, I have been a greedy little fake advice columnist, and have been claiming dead people’s money left and right. The sad truth is that at this point my name is extremely well known as a fraudulent next of kin in every bill and exchange department of every African development bank in the world. I’ve been put out to pasture.

I’m sorry that I must deliver this news in my column, I know it has to be a shock to you. But I’m also positive that with time and a good therapist you will learn to put my shameful behavior to rest, and love me for the deviant, retired, multibillionaire that I am.

Perhaps some day we will cross paths once more, but if not, remember this. We’ll always have Fresno.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: How to Delare the Undeclared Major

2005-11-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’ve been on college for ** cough, cough ** years now, and it looks like they finally expect me to pick a major. But I’m only 24 years old! How can they think that I’m ready to know what I want to be when I grow up? How can they be so sure that I ever intend to grow up at all? But that’s beside the point. I’m just looking for advice on what to major in when I don’t know what to do?
Undeclared the Undergrad

Dear Undeclared,
Fortunately for you, the inventors of college set up a nice little catch all for people just like you. Let me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, the father of the modern American university, Samuel Adams, saw the need for a program for drifters and lollygaggers, who found their way to college purely by convention.
"They’re pouring in by the thousands," he said to himself one September. "The poor lost sheep, they too need a place to feel accepted and loved. I will create for them a special department that caters to their specific talents: procrastination, aimlessness, an lack of structure. I hereby declare the existence of English major."

And the little lost sheep rejoiced. For the English major allowed them to focus on the true reason for being where they were, the College Experience. Which for those of you who have not yet learned, has nothing to do with learning.

And for prolonging this College Experience, the drifters thanked Mr. Adams, with the only tribute that a businessman understands: they bought his product.

And from thence forward, upperclassmen had their own undeclared major, and college hasn’t been the same ever since. I mean, look at it, it has given rise to an entire generation of people just like you. And as a result, English departments all over the country have been expanding exponentially. Why do you think Bush wants to go back to the moon? Because he wants to put a university there, dedicated to the study of English. You see, space is becoming so limited on our own planet that English departments don’t even have enough paper to dole out to the students. They are reverting to the favored Greek mode of story telling, oral communication.

I am digressing. Undeclared, I apologize. The point is that a person like you should not in fact fear the future… well, the near future anyway, your future beyond college may be a bit bleak, but you don’t need to worry about that, after all, it might never happen.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: The Pet Issue

2005-11-11T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My daughter is ten years old and lately she’s been trying to convince me that we need to get a dog. She’s already got 5 fish and a guinea pig, and I end up doing all the taking care of them. I don’t really have the desire to take care of a dog, too. What’s the best way to tell her no?
Pellet mom in Park City

Dear Pellet mom,
Now, she’s just ten, so I’m assuming she hasn’t taken health class yet? What do they do in health class these days, do they have the cool dolls they give out to tell the kids that they aren’t responsible enough to have sex? Remember back in the day? When they used to have to baby-sit eggs? I think that should work in this situation.

I mean you could give her some kind of animatronic dog and have her take care of that for two weeks, but paying for the dog, could take all her Christmas present money. Eggs are much cheaper. They’re also more expendable.

So give her an egg, and tell her the deal. Every day she has to walk it, clean up after it, scratch behind its ears, and feed it. And if she fails to do any of the above, it will prove that she’s not ready to tale responsibility for a dog. And there’s your loop hole.

It takes several forms, for example, eggs are inanimate objects, therefore they can’t eat, so by definition, you can’t feed them. Which means that if her egg was a dog, it would have starved. Which shows, she’ not ready for a pet.

Along, this same reasoning, eggs don’t have ears to scratch behind, so you’ve got another out right there.

And needless to say, an egg is pretty breakable, so you might not even need to get out on the technicality in the first place.

Extrapolating the scenario a few years, this will also be a good way to draw the line on:

Dating
Raising her allowance
Paying for college
Underage drinking
Sarcasm
Junk food
Cell phone usage

Or to promote good habits such as:

Laundry
Hygene
Homework
Respect for grandparents
Doing the dishes

In other words, egg therapy is magic. Use the power wisely.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza Fixes the Love Sick

2005-11-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, but I still haven’t been able to find that special someone. So I’ve been getting cynical about the whole idea of songs about love, and have begun a boycott against love songs.
As you can guess, there’s not much left for me to listen to. But that’s not going to stop me, listening to crap that I don’t believe in is a terrible statement about my character and my morals. But I have been getting more sad lately. What can I do to curtail this?
the depressive, moral cynic

Dear depressive,
You’re getting it all mixed up. You aren’t sad because you have no girl and no music, you have no girl and no music because you’re sad. As in SAD. As in Seasonal Affective Disorder. As in, there’s less sun lately, because it leaves earlier, and this decrease in sun exposure very commonly causes depression, which in your case has led to a love song boycott.

The answer is simple. Sell your house and buy one in Alaska. This will be a great place to spend your summers, and will make sure you get lots of vitamin D. But this is going to leave your winters wide open because you’re not going to want to spend them in complete darkness, that would make things worse. So find yourself a job somewhere on the opposite end of the Earth. If you don’t know where that is, check a map: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/world.htm

And what do you find? That’s right, Antarctica. You become a researcher. There’s plenty of ice down there to study. I know, why don't you do some reasearch into whether that climate affects how ice crystals respond to your attitude? For that matter, you could look into rock formations. There are a couple of rocks down there, is what I hear.

Now, if you aren’t quite qualified to be a geologist, no big thing, you just go back to school. Go for the Ph.D. for good measure, that should take care of it. And I bet you can get a nice summer job up north with those kinds of credentials, too.

Oh, and if you need a reference, to get into school or something, I’d be happy to give one. I give really good compliments, and I only charge a minimal fee.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: Datebook recipes

2005-11-08T16:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I need to learn better time management skills. Any ideas?
Scatterbrained in Scarborough

Dear Scatterbrained,
Do you know the one spot in your house that has the most extra space lying around? I do. It’s the "greens" compartment in your refrigerator. And the best part is that it’s even intended for storing things.

Now, you may wonder, "but Dear Miss Eliza, what on earth am I supposed to store in this bin?"
Well, as my Paddy used to say, "There’s nothing like a nice crisp thought." And he was right. Now think about the temperature of your brain. Roughly 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, right? Nothing stays crisp at 98.6, the idea is absurd. So what would happen if you took all those thoughts you weren’t using at the moment, and stuck them someplace cool and dry. They would be crisper right? Which is exactly what the greens compartment is for. Why do you think they say "Crisper" on them?

Plus, keeping excess brain activity in an external source is going to allow the things that are actually in your brain at any given moment, to be processed in a much more timely fashion. And isn’t timely the name of the game in time management?

That’s what I thought.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
So, I’ve got this skiing habit that’s been getting pretty expensive lately. Is there any way you know to cut costs in this area?
ski bunny in a hole

Dear ski bunny,
Second hand shops are the way to go. If I can find a used winter coat at Goodwill for $10, why shouldn’t I be able to find a used lift ticket for next to nothing. Not to mention, I’ve never, ever seen a lift line when I was in Goodwill. Or in any other thrift shop, now that you mention it... which I believe that you did... but I may be mistaken.

But why pay for a lift ticket in the first place? If you’re not using the lift, you shouldn’t need to pay for its ticket. You just hike up sometime during foliage season, and hang out for a couple months, until you get enough powder to get you down.

Choice three: ski in your sleep. It’s just as good, but you only have to spend dream currency, and that’s equivalent to Monopoly money. (I take that back. You still have to buy a Monopoly game to get Monopoly money. And those things are not cheap.) In fact, one could argue that in a dream one feels much more powerful emotions, therefore the rush from your dream run will be extensively better than the physical one that you'd have to actually pay for. Not to mention, in your dream you can fly. On the slopes you can only fall with style. (That's not an origional. Where did I get that quote from. Anyone?)

Well, I hope that helps, ski bunny. If all else fails, there’s always rehab.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: When Your Belt Just Won't Hold It

2005-11-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’m in the middle of a diet that’s been working well enough to take 1.75 inches off my midsection. As pleased as I am with this result, it’s left me in a jam. You see, I’m half way between two notches in my belts now. And I don’t want to go out and buy new ones because I have every intention of losing more weight, and then my old belts will fit again. Any suggestions?
Just a little crack

Dear Just,
This is a commonly traveled query that you have posed here. Let me tell you a story about another such sojourner. His name was Ben.

Well, once upon a time when Ben was in middle school, he was picked on every day because he was, as his teacher put it, chubby. Of course, he was called much worse things by the nincompoop children who picked on him, but that’s not the point. Now Ben never told his mother about the abuse, but she found out during a parent teacher conference, and put Ben on a diet. Soon he was suffering from your exact malady, only he was unfortunate enough to still be wearing briefs, and the tauntings grew worse.

Summer swallowed that school year and Ben retreated with his new nickname "briefboy" ringing in his brain. And wondering what on earth he should do about it. And then he sat down across from his father one morning and slipped on some orange juice his mother had spilled. He grabbed on to the first thing he could touch, his father’s tie. I’ll spare you the messy details, suffice it to say that the garish pattern on the tie was familiar, but not immediately recognizable. Until his next trip to the department store.

Where he found… that pattern… on a pair of men’s underwear. And it wasn’t a pair of briefs. And then he decided, what if I capitalize on my weakness?

He went back to school in the fall. It was high school now, and the stakes were longer, pointier and therefore deadlier. He had taken a gamble. Would it pay off? When he left the house that morning, he received a pained look from his mother, and his little sister had choked on her rice krispies. His tension mounted.

There was silence in the hallway as the sea of faces flooded with blank stares. One boy stepped in front of him, a smirk on his face. Ben could see the retort working its way out the vocal chords, he beat it with his own one liner.

"You must be wondering what the deal is. See, I got this new job this summer as an underwear model. They’re paying me the big bucks to show off the latest fashions in boxer-ware. You like?"

And you know how it turned out. The boxers came out of the closet and a movement was born.
Now I don’t know if you want to go with the boxer root, but I think it’s time we got a look at some new oh-my-pants-are-falling-down fashion. I leave it in your capable waistline. Good luck.
Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Are you ever in the middle of your shower, lathering up and humming to yourself only to stop and ask yourself some ridiculous question? Why not take note of those questions, and pass them along to me, where they can be safely (and entertainingly) disposed of? I have much experience with question-care, and I’ll even do it for you pro-bono. Just stick your question in my comments section, or pop it into an e-mail with selizawalden@yahoo.com in the To: space. And the best part is, you don’t even need a lawyer.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza and the Halloween horde

2005-11-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My kids brought home 20 lbs of candy after Halloween. Somehow, letting them eat that much junk weighs on my motherly wisdom. I’m afraid they’re going to expand to the size of parade balloons, but weigh a whole lot more. Is there some way to get around this childhood obesity that’s looming on my doorstep?
- Mom of Barney and Bobo

Dear Mom,
Of course there’s an answer to your dilemma, I’m just glad that you caught it this early in their impressionable lives. Five years down the road, the only advice I would have been able to give would be liposuction.

The way things stand right now though, you have another good option. Here’s a good rule of thumb for Halloween candy. Eat it all in one day. This is called a binge. One day binges allow you to get the issue (in this instance candy) way out of your system. You eat yourself to some insane distance on the other side of the saturation line, and immediately after midnight you turn back into a pumpkin.

It is common knowledge that your children absorb less calories from a binge than they would from nibbling on their stash over the course of the whole year. I believe the actually percentage would be 15%, as in your body will accept 15% of the proffered calories, and expel the rest.

Of course, 20 lbs is an awful lot of candy to eat in one day. What if they don’t make it all the way through? Well, candy makes a very nice smell when it burns. But be sure you tell your children what their candy has to look forward to in the future. Otherwise, you would be a dishonest and terrible mother.

Good luck.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: What to buy the Picky someone on your list

2005-11-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My mother is a hard one to please. NO matter what I get her for Christmas or her birthday or Mother’s day or just to say, "Thanks for being my mom," she never, ever likes it.
Sure, she’ll pretend to like it for a few seconds after she unwraps it, but it’s a fake kind of liking it, you know what I mean? So with Christmas coming up soon, I just don’t know what to do. Any ideas what you give someone who doesn’t like anything you give them?
- Giftwrapping a void

Dear Giftwrapping,
Did you ever see that birthday card shaped like a pickle? You open it up and it says, "I bet you didn’t expect to get a paper pickle for your birthday," (Plagiarism note: Obviously I should be crediting the maker of this card, but I don’t know who it was. Suffice it to say I didn’t come up with it myself.) ? Well the greeting card can teach a valuable gift giving philosophy: If something is worth failing, it’s worth failing well.

There’s no right answer for what to get your mother for Christmas. There are only answers that fail the approval test. What you want to give her is a gift that says, "Mom, I know this isn’t good enough, but I love you enough to have come to grips with that fact. Please to understand what kind of a position you’ve put me in. It’s a real pickle."

So how do you go about picking the perfectly wrong present? Rule 1. Don’t waste a lot of money. Money should be spent on doing things right, like building a new school or eating good food. A good rule of thumb about how much to spend to do something wrong: How much change did you find the last time you scoured the sofa cushions? Subtract all the quarters from that. Quarters are invaluable.

Rule 2. Even the wrong present should make a statement. (see gift giving philosophy above) What do you want to tell your mother? "Mom, you need to learn to better disguise your disapproval." Or, "I try so hard, why can’t you love me?" And then there’s my personal favorite, "You know what’s fun? Using orange juice to season a turkey." Each of these things can be conveyed with a simple item clothed in wrapping paper and decorated with a bow.

From your letter, I get the feeling that you’re trying to tell your mother, "I just don’t understand you." To show this in a present, I’d start her off with the paper pickle card, and inside jot down a web address like http://www.iqtest.com/ and that ought to take care of it.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza: How to handle a phobia

2005-10-31T18:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My whole life I’ve had a fear of molds and fungus. It’s really been getting in the way since I got married because my wife loves mushrooms on her pizza, and all I can think of are little forests of smurf houses growing in my stomach. She says I really should look into therapy, but I’m not the type to spend that much money on something this stupid. Have you got any ideas?
Keeping cool and dry

Dear Keeping,
Did you know that a fear of forests or wooden objects is called xylophobia? There are some really cool ones out there. You should check them out. Go to http://www.phobialist.com/reverse.html and check through them. The list is long enough that there should be one for everyone (although, curiously, there is no name for fear of mold or fear of fungus) including your wife. This is what is referred to in so many colors as the telephone-pole-in-the-eye approach.

You see, sometimes things are capable of changing, including people. But most times it’s much easier not to. And the agent of change has no buisness being an external force, such as a wife. It isn’t her job to see that you turn into a new person. It’s her job to love you unconditionally just the way you are.

Now she may not know how to do that, which is where this phobia list comes in. Find something that applies to her like barophobia, a fear of gravity or arachibutyrophobia (fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth). Be sure to check for pocrescophobia, the fear of gaining weight.

Then, once you have found your wife’s special phobia you say, "Honey, who are you to talk about my mold issue? I mean don’t you have a thing with poetry (metrophobia)? And I don’t tell you that you need therapy. I accept, nay embrace this side of you each and every day we are together. It is one piece of the puzzle that makes you so incredible. And it is part of the you that I love so wholly. So lets have no more talk of therapy, shall we? We don’t want to try to spoil each other, right?"

That should take care of it right there. And you’ll want to behave like a good role model for her after this discussion, so give lots of hugs, and send lots of flowers with little notes that are careful to avoid being poetic. All in all, act like you love the whole her all the time.

I hope this has been informative. Let me know how things work out in the end.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you ahve a question that you're afraid to ask in the middle of polite society? Well this is the perfet setting for relieving your some of some embarassing lack of knowledge of your part. But there is one thing you have to check.
The crew here at Miss Eliza is very demanding about the qualifications for questions we publish. They absolutely have to end in a question mark. We're sticklers about this. So, if you have a question all you have to do is 1. Type it. 2. Put a question mark at the end. 3. Post it in the comments sention on this blog or e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com
And we'll take it from there. Next thing you know, you'll be just that much smarter. How do you like them potahtoes? (Note the question mark.)

Dear Miss Eliza: the logic of philosophy

2005-10-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I slept late the other morning and ended up missing my first class. The prof blew a gasket and threatened to fail me for not showing up. But, since it was a philosophy class, I got him to make a deal. If I could come up with an unrefuteable logic for why I needed to miss class, He’d give me an A. I need some help on the logic though. Any ideas?
Socrates In Training

Dear Socrates,
The best way to make an argument unrefutable is to treat it like a labyrinth. Start off easy, but get more and more complicated until your professor’s brain is a splatter on the side of a wall.
Also, don’t submit it in writing.

So try something like this: "I needed to sleep more than I needed to be in class, and that’s why I didn’t make it. Physical needs are far more basic than mental needs, and should therefore take precedence over such superfluous "needs" such as brainian (Side note: making up words is a beautiful twist for your labyrinth) exercise a measly letter grade. Because think about a grade. Does it even exist? (Side note again: any philosophical argument worth its salt calls existence into question.) While it can have physical manifestations, it is not that which represents it. (Note: Get into pronouns and move away from antecedents.) Therefore, it has no physical value, which is the defining characteristic of existence.
Instead I’ve claimed to value that which already has a physical value and is then sufficiently capable, by the mere existence it the value that it intrinsically contains, of having a value ascribed to it. (Note: Did you see how I used the same word in that sentence 4 different times? That’s an excellent way of getting lost.) And so in valuing something of worth as opposed to something without, I have merely applied logic to my own actions, thereby following the basic tenets you set for us in this class."

I wouldn’t sum up the argument at the end, that would just lead to comprehensability. I’d leave it at that.

Of course, you’ll want to get into it in much more depth, I didn’t because I was trying to spare your sanity. When you try it though, just go for broke. Hope that helps.
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-10-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I had this dream last night where I living in a department store in the mall. My brother, who owned the store, was having trouble meeting his payroll, the clerk told me he was trying to kill me. So I went out and bought a handgun, and while I was at the store, this snake started following me. It was a little green garter snake, and he was cute, so I named him Dodo. Then I go back to my brother’s store to look for a disguise and find a ball gown and glass slippers that look absolutely stunning on me. They even match with Dodo. But I look in the mirror and see my brother with a knife, so I turn around and look at him, but there’s no knife, and he smiles and cries and gives me a hug. And then he stabs me, and leaves me on the floor as he goes to close the store down for the night.
So how are you at dream interpretation?
All REMed Up

Dear All,
Well, as a liscenced dream interpreter, it is obvious to me that this dream is the result of your resentment about global warming.

This is extrapolated from the snake. He is green because that is the world is heading towards a green spell. And calling him Dodo is a reference to the famously extinct dodo bird, which is no more because of man’s extensive self-obsession and his beliefs of omnipotence.

Looking into mirrors in dreams is without fail, a sign of self loathing. And the ball gown is of course, central to all those inaugural balls that the president attends once he’s come to office.
The reason you’re living in a mall in the first place is a concept I could write a thesis on. Suffice it to say that this is in tribute to your descendants.

The clerk who tells you that your brother wants you dead is a dead ringer for the preschool teacher who was always putting you in timeout for stealing the other kids’ scissors.

The fact that your brother stabs you in the back has nothing to do with anything. As Freud said, sometimes a gun is just a gun.

In the end then, the moral of your story is that you hate yourself for allowing into office a president who is so lax on global warming. This makes you pine for the days of preschool, where your biggest problem was finding a pair of rightie scissors.

Or, it can all boil down to one word: Don’tvoterepublican.

I should note that this is not necessarily the opinion of the author, but only of your subconscious. Miss Eliza

That's Like 10 X 10 X 10

2005-10-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

Did anybody notice that on that fun little counter down at the bottom of my screen, there are now 4 digits? Do you know what that means? 4 different place values! Who’d have thunk it?

In honor of this news I’ve decided to stick to what I’m good at. To focus my focus a little better. To trim the crust off the bread and throw it away (I mean, mail it to those poor children in Africa) if you will.

You know what I’m talking about.

Thing is, I can’t do this by myself. More of the best means I need a little more curiosity from my "readership." Look at it this way:

Ok, maybe I’m not cool like some characters who answer letters on-line. I’m not even in the same universe as Strongbad. But this is good for you. It means that you have a much better chance of getting an answer from me than you do from him.

Also, getting questions is the funnest (yes, I have an English degree, and yes, I am allowed to use that word) part of my day. It’s like sending me flowers or candy or a teddy bear only without the romantic attachment, or the spending of your money. This means, that I’m a VERY good deal.

And lastly, that mouse in my hair has adjusted himself to a diet of my randomness brainwaves. He needs you to activate those brainwaves with your ? so that he doesn’t starve to death. You don’t want to kill my best friend, do you?

No, I would never give you a guilt trip. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you actually felt guilty after reading that sentence, you need to question your version of reality.

See that? I said question! If you have a question about your version of reality, I’m the perfect person to ask.

So now that my schpiel is over, if you DO have a question for Miss Eliza, today or ever in your whole life, e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com or post it in the comments section. In the mean time, I have a cake to bake. It's time for a party.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I find seasons to be irritating. It’s disturbing that I can’t rely on something as fundamental as mother nature to be constant. Why must we have seasons?
--One Weather Man

Dear One,
We must have seasons because if we didn’t, then the fashion industry would die of boredom. Without constantly evolving seasons there would be no way (nor reason) to introduce new designs. This lack of new fashion would mean that everyone would be cool (cool as in the word that used to be called "hip") because we would all be wearing the latest fashion. This would lead to equality which would lead to peace which would lead to love, etc.

And equality and peace and love are boring.

Not to mention, if there were no new fashions, then there would be no fashion magazines, therefore all the advertisers in those fashion magazines would be completely unknown. And when advertisers are unknown, nobody buys their products and they die.

And dead advertisers means that the Superbowl gets to be very boring, since it would only be about football.

So to recap: We have seasons so that the Superbowl isn’t boring.
--Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
My husband gave me $500 to take a cooking class. I didn’t tell him I wanted to take a cooking class, the thought had actually never occurred to me. But all of a sudden there was the idea wrapped up with a $500 check in my birthday card. Should I be offended?
--Haven’t Killed Him Yet

Dear Haven’t,
Yeah. He doesn’t like your cooking. But a cooking class isn’t going to help. We love what we’re used to, and we’re used to the cooking we were brought up on. So the only way your husband is going to be happy eating your food is if his mother cooked it. (Assuming of course, that his mother cooked his food while he was growing up.) And since you are not his mother, your food is not and will never be hers. (which is as it should be.)

Fear not however, all is not lost. You can ease his subconscious by serving his food on the dishes of his youth. So buy some new plates. To be on the safe side you might want to replace your cutlery too… and your pots and pans and cooking sheets and rolling pin and egg beater. The mixer you can keep, those are way to expensive to be throwing away willy nilly. And the next time you’re at your mother-in-law’s house, steal an apron.

That should do the trick. As for what to do with the $500, well, he really wanted it to go towards you improving yourself, so I would suggest an art class.
--Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you have a question for Dear Miss Eliza? Sure, you may not think so. But we all have strange notions attached to question marks rattling around in our brains. What most people need to work on is taking that notion and springing into the outside world. This takes a bit of courage, I know. So I’m bestowing upon you, a medal. Go on, take it. Don’t you feel more courageous already? You should be just about able to share your notion now, so I want you to e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com or, if that’s to much work, you can just post it in the comments section. Either way I’ll find it. And I promise, I’ll respond.
Thank you very much.
--Miss Eliza

The Publishing Gods V. Sarah Eliza

2005-10-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Warning To The Reader: This entry is long, and quite possibly boring. I'm not a fan of writing long, boring blog entries, but when I get on the topic of books, as in books that I like, I get rambly. And this particular post has been building inside me ever since that first trip to Borders in West lebanon, NH last June. So I'm sorry. But this blog is my therapy. At least that's what the mouse in my hair tells me it should be. And so therapizing myself has given life to this long boring blog entry about books and more books. And me and books. But at least if you finish, you'l know what to get me for Christmas this year.

So I’ve been going a tad crazy lately because every time I visit a bookstore, I find something else that I need to read.

It all started this summer when I innocently popped into Borders one day and discovered that their buy-2-get-the-3rd-free now included every single author I ever adored. This may be an exaggeration, but if it is, it’s not by much. Wait! I’ve got it. There was no James Ellroy.

But there was some of everyone else, from Bill Bryson to Kurt Vonnegut, they all made appearances. I saw Catch Me If You Can and Catch-22 and Catcher In The Rye. Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway and Daniel Quinn all made appearances. Or if you were more tuned in to childrens’ literature, look for a little Madeline L’Engle, or C.S. Lewis. Do I even need to mention Harry Potter? No, but I will anyway. I saw Ray Bradbury and David Sedaris. William Burroughs even showed up. I swear, they made sure that every single piece of the literary history of Sarah Eliza was on display within 50 feet of everything else. A little spooky, but mostly just drool inducing.

That was just the kickoff. Of course it was. The gods of publishing were smirking down at me giggling to themselves about the future torture that I was to endure. Because I saw enough books by authors-that-make-me-gaga to put me in a coma. And then I walked around the corner and saw A Long Way Down. Nick Hornby’s new book. I love Nick Hornby. I think I love all English comedic writers. They just know what to say to make me laugh. So it was with a lump in my throat that I put the book down and backed slowly out of the building. Borders was not safe for me anymore.

Not that I stopped visiting. Could that really be epected? One day my brain just stuck up the white flag. By now the sale had been a little watered down (buy 3 get the 4th free) but did this stop me? Heavens no! Hell’s Angels by Hunter Thompson (who is easier to find now that he's dead, but easy is stil a relative term), In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (odd timing, considering the movie coming out any minute now), Diary by Chuck Palahnuk (why oh why can't that man write longer books? They're so addicting, and yet so quickly over), and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (adorable, but dense... very dense), Drop City by T.C. Boyle, Dora: An Analysis of A Case of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud (I can explain, it was only $1.)

And still the trial was in it’s initial stages. At some point, I did swear off Borders, and promised to keep my literary spending under control. Not so much because of how much it cost (there are so many more expensive hobbies, when you think about it) but because I kept asking myself, "where am I going to find the time to read all these when I work at a summer camp?"

So I stuck to the Dartmouth Bookstore, and a second hand book shop on the same street. The sales were nowhere near as enticing, but we're talking about an entire basement full of bargain books. I wouldn't call this safe. So what do I see one day when I walk in the door? Guess. What could be more trying to my resolve than a novel by Nick Hornby? A new novel by John Irving, of course. Until I Find You was splashed everywhere for the rest of the summer. If what I feel for Nick Hornby is love, then what I feel for John Irving is a form of worship. At this point in the summer I had already finished The Water-Method Man and bought The World According To Garp ($3 at the second hand store) and The Fourth Hand ($5 hardcover in the basement). But John Irving or not, I have trouble getting myself to pay full price for a hardcover novel. I resisted.

It turns out, I am pathetically bad at not buying books. As the summer progressed, I found books that needed less and less brain, because I had less and less brain to spare. The first book I read when I got to Vermont last summer was Wonderboys by Michael Chabon, another author I idolize… (wait, I don’t think I saw a single Michael Chabon book on sale at Borders this year. Wow.) And I ended it with a pathetic historically fictitious romance novel. That’s how far my brain had decomposed. I tried to Get into Drop City after the romance novel, but my head was pea soup, so I turned instead to crochet, a look-ma-no-brain activity.

In the end, I came back with 19 more books than I owned when I left. Over the summer, I had read 12. The overlap between those two categories: 3. Of the 19 books I bought, I got around to reading three of them before I got home. One was the romance novel, and I didn't even bother bringing that back with me.

And what of course should I find waiting for me when I got back? Books of course. Kurt Vonnegut has a new book out. Neil Gaiman has to be high up my priority list and his new novel Anansi Boys promises lots in the way of everything I like to read. Terry Pratchett’s also got another book in stores, and Chuck Palahnuk’s book Haunted is out and about. These’re back burner compared to the rest of my dire reading situation, though. I'll just let them be. Maybe if I find them in the library.

I wrote someone recently, ranting about all this temptation, this torture, wondering who was going to be the next to smother me with the oldest known weapon: the book jacket. . It turns out that it’s someone from whom I thought I was safe. "Carl Hiaasen," I had said to myself but a week ago, "just had something new last summer." (I know, because I bought Skinny Dip just this summer.) But of course, the publishing gods are keeping me on my toes. And here is Flush.

A kid’s book yes. But when has that ever stopped me from reading someone I love? Did it stand in the way of Hoot, his other children's book? What about Summerland? (Now that’s the kind of book you read to your kids annually, like my mom did with The Best Christmas Pagent Ever.) Don’t even get me started on Roald Dahl (who was all over Borders. To be expected with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being released). Talk about readable. And there’s the classic A Wrinkle In Time.

There’s more to come, I can feel it. The next phase is going to involve dead people. Douglas Adams will implant himself in someone’s brain and write another book. I haven’t heard from Ray Bradbury for a few years. And what about Dave Barry? His last novel was 2002. He’s due. Or Nomar Garciaparra will find that it’s time for his autobiography. The Christmas season is not yet upon is. The storm is not over. I just don’t know where it’s going to come from. And that's jsut how they want it.

Cliché Busters: Little People Are Scary

2005-09-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

So yes, I’m tired of people saying that little people are scary, disturbing, creepy, diabolic, or mermaids. It happens a lot. In fact, I hear this so frequently… the mermaid bit especially… that I’m ready to call the whole mind set a cliché.

When you think about it, there are so many better things to find disturbing. For instance, are you ever weirded out when you walk into a general store? More specifically, a general store in a town that you didn’t grow up in? And it’s not the set up, so much as the hostile flying saber vibes given off by everyone in the store. And you can feel them thinking, “Now why in Hades would someone like that be in a store like this?” Now that’s something worth getting disconcerted about.

Or what about the E! Network. Creepy peppy Stepford people who want to make sure that I know EVERYTHING about every famous person on the planet. Because it is so any of my business why Sandra Bullock broke up with Matthew McConaughey or who’s marrying her co-star from the Apprentice, or why Kristie Alley can’t stop having sex. And the bad part is, that enough people watch this to make people want to advertise, which keeps the thing on the air.

And need I mention how sketchy carnies are?

So what’s the big deal about little people? And how come no one ever gets worked up about pygmies? I mean, they’re cannibals. They are strangely colored. They work for Willy Wonka. Why are these characteristics so easy to ignore? Why can you just shrug a pygmy out of your consciousness so easily, but someone who acts just like you but is half your size gets way more attention and emotion?

That was pathetically expressed. But you see my point. Not only is it boring and out of style (you heard it here first) to get the heevy geevies from little people, it’s also illogical. PLUS, you also have an availability of actually creepy people who are half your size. So go pick on them for a while.

Happy 900!

2005-09-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

So I’ve reached another hundred-man marker! This one being 9. So what does that mean? Because of this site…

-1800 pupils saw the words, "So Says The Mouse In My Hair." This caused ? gazillion synapses to fire sending colorful images to the ? lobe of the brain.

-899 people have gone out and bought new hairbrushes because they’re afraid that they might have gotten e-lice from me. One just itched his scalp and licked his fingernails.

-712 people wondered, "is there anything interesting that I can ask Miss Eliza?" and answered themselves, "no." 80 people wondered the same thing but answered, "Yes, however this permanent vegetative state that I am in does not allow me to ask it." And 8 people answered, "yes, now leave me alone, will you?"

-I had to find 890 fingers lying around the dump so that I could count high enough to account for all the people that came to visit me. Speaking of fingers:

-612 people immediately clicked their mouse on "next blog >>"

-There have been 4200 seperate instances of, "Wha? Huh?"

-0 celebrities have anything to say to me. That’s ok though. It’s not like I’m dreaming of a scenario in which you write a letter that says, "Dear Miss Eliza, you are the high point of my every trip down Blog Way. If I had half your zest, and half your reasoning capability, I’d be making a quarter of the money that I do right now." I mean, come on!

-415 people have chair scooted slowly away from their computers due to the information I cause to be on their screens. 415 more have rolled slowly away from the computer. 165 people have backed slowly away under leg power, and the other 5 tried to get away, but they fell over and the computer ate them.

-9 people have laughed out loud. 109 people have cried. 209 people have had sex and 309 people have gone in search of cannibalistic cultures.

-667 people have gone out and spent $850 on alcohol and $12,400 on illegal substances and 4 drug stores have been burgled.

Not bad huh? I wonder what happens during the next 900 visitors!

I'm Fine

2005-09-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom,
Just writing to let you know I’m fine. Hit a bit of a SNAFU on the drive back from CA. I got to Montana and noticed that I didn’t have enough money for gas to get me back home. I mean, I did when I left, but with Katrina, and these new prices and everything, there’s just no way.
Not that I’m complaining. The ones who actually got hit by the hurricane have it way worse than me. I know how lucky I am to be alive and clean and dry with a place to sleep at night. Those guys need help way more than I do at the moment, so if you’ve got a little extra money kicking around, don’t worry about me. Get it to the Red Cross. I’m fine, like I said before.

See, here’s the story. I was way out in the middle of nowhere, on the scenic route home, stopping for pictures and everything. The views out here are uber more stunning in person, you know? Those mountains? Powerful stuff. But yeah, I stopped for gas in one of those cute little Americana towns, with the park in the middle, and the gazebo and main street and everything. And I was about to pump, when I did some internal calculations, and realized that $300 was not going to get me back to the east coast.

I know, you’ve been telling me forever that I need better gas mileage than the jeep, but you know how it is with parental advice right? But yes, you were right. And a new car is right near the top of my list at the moment.

But anyway, I was pretty lucky to notice the problem when I did. $300 may not be able to get me home anymore, but it was enough to get me a deposit on an apartment in the middle of nowhere Montana. I asked around and found this cute little above the garage type thing that the family (the Carpenters) had just finished. Mr. Carpenter said it was originally supposed to be for their son, a deal to get him to stay close to home and go to the community college, but he changed his mind and wanted something a little more prestigious. So he’s over at Stanford, and the Carpenters are here with an apartment to rent.

It’s not really furnished. Gus, that’s the son, was going to do that, but he took all that stuff to college with him. But since I don’t have much in the way of furniture with me, I’ve been trying to get the seats out of the jeep. It isn’t going that well. All I’ve managed so far is a chuckle from Mr. Carpenter. He was riding the lawnmower about early in the week, puttering is what Mrs. C likes to call it, having a good old time watching me for a while.

Finally, he comes up and says, "You know, you get some cash, you can find yourself some pretty decent stuff at one a the yard sales this weekend."

Yard sales! Mom, you’ve gotta try them. Amazing. I went yesterday, and found a used-but-not-ratty mattress for $25! They even gave me the box spring! I also came up with a few decorative pillows and some stuffed animals to up the squishy factor in my new place. You know how I love soft, fluffy environments, right? Yeah.

Oh the money? You’re wondering where I got it? I found work. It was the next thing I did after I got the place to sleep covered. There’s this daycare/preschool down the road that was looking for people. Margaret (my new boss) was a little wary about the no previous experience thing, but she went gaga over the first aid/CPR training. And the kids are so cute! They’re up to four years old, and you would not believe the things that come out of their mouths! Well you would I’m sure having experience with your very own four year olds, but me, I have to stop myself from laughing in their faces.

Yesterday this girl comes ups to me, and with the most serious expression on her face, she says, "Boys can make little boys, but girls make little girls. That way things are even." I mean come on, how am I supposed to answer that?

So like I said, I’m fine. And now that things are taken care of, I’m saving up for a new car. Gotta go though. The weekend’s not over yet, and there’s many yard sales to go before I rest.

Love,
Jenny

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-09-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My daughter starts school on Tuesday and has stubbornly explained that she’s not going without her cell phone. I’ve tried explaining that at six years old she really ought to be able to leave the thing at home (It’s more of a toy than anything at that age, you know?) but this only incites tantrums and talk of ice picks meeting skulls. What is a mother to do?
- Fears A Lobotomy

Dear Lobotomable,
As my Paddy used to say, "What doesn’t kill you leaves you alive." In this context, his sage advice could mean one of several things. First: a lobotomy may kill the you inside you, but it won’t kill you which means you’ll still be alive. Some people would consider this worth living for… but not many. So I would suggest that you let your brat—I mean daughter—take her cell phone to school.

(For future reference, when an advice columnist... or anyone else for that matter... insults your spawn they areprobably insulting yourself as well, but only if you should happen to look hard enough.)

Letting the little girl take a cell phone to school is not irresponsible. Letting a six year old have a cell phone is irresponsible. That bears repeating in color. Letting the little girl take a cell phone to school is not irresponsible. Letting a six year old have a cell phone is irresponsible. Exactly what are you trying to teach your daughter?

To look to society for a picture of who she’s supposed to be
As a family you should all bepermanantly joined at the hip clip
A lesson in money management
An appreciation of the glorious things that humans are capable of
How to enslave yourself to your fellow citizens

Good grief!

I’ll end my personal tirade here. Just promise me you’ll think about it before you have anymore children.
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza
Call me cheap, but maybe I’m just cheap. And as a cheap I’m looking for some cheap ways to take a girl on a cheap date. Cheap. Is there anything I can cheaply pull off that will manage to come across as romantic?
Cheapy McCheap.

Dear Cheapy,
Did you know that the cool thing about the Appalachian trail is that it doesn’t cost you money to hike it? It’s true. Of course that's not the same as not spending any money when you’re hiking it… but that’s not the issue. Hiking brings up an excellent point. Nature is free. That’s where the saying "free as nature" came from. Did you know that? Well you’re learning a lot today then. Not only is nature free, but you don’t burn any gasoline… which is saying the same thing… which is called redundant… which coincidentally is called natural.

No it’s not. That’s a lie. But anyway.

p.s. If you’re looking for the coolest book ever written about the Appalachian Trail, try out A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson. I don’t know if it is literally the coolest book ever written on the subject, but I do know that it places somewhere in the list of coolest books ever written about the Appalachian Tral.

Anyway, I’m digressing. Nature is free, so a nature date, is at the very least cheap if not free. I'm a campfire girl myself, so you give me a flame and a stick and marshmallows (plural please on the marshmallows) then I’m a happy columnist.

NOTE: the keyest key to a cheap date is picking a date who doesn’t mind. If her idea of a date is candlelight and a place-setting-with-more-than-three-utensils and cloth-napkins, and a wine-glass-that-isn’t-the-same-thing-as-a-water-glass, you are pretty well out of luck. So go forth and scope out nature and find yourself a nice cheap girl, and you too can be a happy columnee.
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
My dad’s a Christian, but my mom’s Jewish, which means that I’m Jewish too, but I still know how to celebrate Christmas, not that I do it because I’m Jewish because my mom is Jewish. The thing is, my old college roommate (in ’67, ’68, ’69, and ’70) deleted me from her address book. Don’t ask how I know, long story. So I’m wondering if it’s inappropriate for me to send her Christmas cards anymore, since I don’t believe in Christmas and she’s trying to pretend like I don’t exist. We’ll just see about that Cheri! I told you that night with Marc would come back to haunt you, but no, no, no. You just had to go ahead. And look where it’s gotten you!
Wait, I don’t even know if Cheri reads your column. I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry. If you could just answer the question, my therapist suggested you. He says you’re good with the crazy people questions. Thanks!
-No, I mean I’m almost done with the therapy

Dear No,
You know, it might just be easier to find someone else who still has you in her address book, and ask her if she'd like to be your old college roommate and send her the Christmas cards instead. Of course, you’ll have to make sure that she’s ok with the idea of Christmas… and the idea that you know how to celebrate Christmas, but don’t celebrate it anyway.

College roomies-by-proxy are just as much fun… way better actually… than the real thing, not to mention the fact that you don’t have to remember all those icky fights about who’s towel was left in the middle of the floor, and all those times when she put your CD's in the microwave. It’s all good now. Because, assuming you pick the right person, life was full of peace, love and anti-war demonstrations.

So good luck with that one. I’d offer, but I wasn’t really around for those particular dates.
- Miss Eliza

Since I Shouldn't Operate Heavy Machinery...

2005-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

So here’s the thing about moving in. There’s all that heavy stuff. Not that I have any right to be complaining. I’m just living in the same place I did last semester, so I don’t have to move things like furniture or my library. Ok, not my whole library. But I did expand it quite a bit this summer. Did you know that I have 19 more books now than I did in May? But the new books don’t quite count towards my heavy lifting because 1. I haven’t moved them yet and 2. Most of them are paperback.

No, I was thinking more along the lines of how much effort it takes to go from an empty kitchen to a stocked kitchen. I filled my shopping cart yesterday. I never fill my shopping cart. Mostly I just cover up the bottom and find myself content. But when you’ve got a case of water and a bag of cat food, well that about takes care of covering the bottom of your cart, doesn’t it? And then you add on the canned food and the pasta and the tea… ok, maybe the tea doesn’t quite count… and all of a sudden you’ve got bags of groceries in the double digits. And it’s taking you three trips from your car to your door to get them all in.

And then there’s the biannual textbook relay. How many times do you need to switch arms when walking home with $230 worth of books?

p.s. $230 may not seem like it would buy all that many books, but UMF really understands how far a college-student-dollar is supposed to go. Because $230 bought me 4 classes worth of reading material (8 books all together) a 3 ring binder and a bunch of geometry tools. Are you impressed? I was impressed. How about a round of applause for my lovely university?

Not to mention the moving out I did last Saturday. But that moving was made 50 times easier because it involved a wheelbarrow and no stairs… and no locked doors either, but I think the big thing was probably the wheelbarrow.

Oh, did I tell you that they let me keep the canoe paddle? But that wasn’t even close to heavy, which was a huge bonus, and one of the reasons I liked it so much… and it was an Old Town paddle. Enough said.

On another note, I must apologize for the poor content quality of these recent posts. I haven’t quite got my head on yet (the green tea is still working its way into my system) and my recent reading material has just been sad. We’ll try a Dear Miss Eliza and see if that helps, shall we?

And so Ends My Summer Sabatical

2005-08-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

So, you ask yourselves, where has Sarah been all summer long? I pine for her random playful words that so love to dance across my computer screen. How I do long for her bright and cheerful words of love and scorn. How I’ve missed knowing her opinions On life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. I so wish she would come back.

Well you must have a genie in your bottle because 1. it would be just like a genie to grant this wish that you made with only sarcasm in mind, and not the one about the lotto and 2. Here I am.

And boy do I smell bad. There’s something weird about summer camp sweat. It smells completely different from your normal, average, everyday kind. And it wasn’t just me, either. Everyone else said their sweat smelled different too. I know because I asked. Someone said it was the lake’s fault. And if the lake was involved, then I suspect the milfoil’s involved as well.

(Speaking of milfoil, now I understand what the big deal is, and if you would be so kind as to PLEASE keep it out of any bodies of water that I might ever come into contact with, I would be most appreciative.)

Also, I’m sorry… or not… to report that Sarah’s Stepfordization was a failure. Somehow all the talk about kindness and goodness ended up sounding sketchy and disturbing. The idea that the camp was a "safe haven from the world" managed only to make me feel isolated and resentful of the fact that I was unaware of what was going on in the world. And the idea that you can get through a trip to the toilet on five squares of toilet paper is just plain traumatizing.

And yes, I broke the cookie pledge. But that wasn’t until the last week of camp which doesn’t even count because it was post-nervous breakdown.

On the other hand, I did get to teach kids how to canoe. And yes, that is a big deal. Have you ever taught someone how to steer a canoe? Yeah. And I got to do LOTS of hiking.

(FWI, there’s some fabulous hiking to be done in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. You’ve gotta try it.)

And the girls were fantastic. Most of the time. Well, some were fantastic all the time, and some
were fantastic some of the time, which leaves just a few who were just a pain all the time. And that all averages out to "And the girls were fantastic. Most of the time." Note to those who may be affected by this: Eight and Nine year old girls’ feet find every possible stumbling opportunity when coming down a mountain.

But it’s good to be home. No, let me reword that. It’s good to be able to cook my food again. Yesterday I went home and picked blueberries (the real kind, and let me tell you, they’re STUNNING this year) so that I could bake a blueberry pie. I ate salmon. Did you hear that? I got to eat fish! I slept on a mattress. A mattress! I saw clothes that I’d forgotten I owned because it’s been three months since the last time I’d touched them! There’s no charcoal left on my Red Sox hat! Yay for the little things in life.

Not to mention the fact that my cat has got to be excited to get out of the house. She hasn’t been getting along so well with the new puppy.

So that’s as good a wrap as I can put on Summer ’05. Welcome to the fall semester. And Dear Miss Eliza’s back in town if anyone has a question. In the mean time, I need a shower.

Bumblebees Have Tails?

2005-07-23T06:02:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I met a man at the gas station who cried and stole my wallet. It was a turning point in my career. Does that make sense? Let me explain.

He was a farmer from midwestern Aroostook County, which means that he farmed potatoes. Now, those potato farmers up in the county are a sketchy lot, and I try to avoid them all together, but how was I supposed to know that when I was seven years old?

Yes, I was seven years old when this County bred potato farmer cried on my shoulder and stole my wallet. Yes, I had a career at that point, although let me tell you, things just weren’t the same after that. And yes, I had a wallet for him to steal.

It was a little pink plastic one with daisies and bumblebees. And the bumblebees (because to just call them bees doesn’t do the wallet justice) all had those series of dots behind them that tells you that the picture is in motion. Only I didn’t know what they were for when I was seven. I just assumed that bumblebees had tails that were cut off in the middle.

Remember, it becomes very difficult to argue with childean logic. So we’ll just skip that part.

The wallet was almost empty. I think there was half of a valentine left over from the school party a couple weeks before. Of course there is a reason that I was keeping half a valentine in my wallet, I just don’t happen to remember what that reason would be. But I know it was there when I went to the gas station that day.

He must have seen me coming. I mean think about my outfit. I wore a pink sweater set (my mother had a fetish for sweater sets) and starchy denim skirt with shiny back mary janes and those little whist socks with the lace frill. And I was carrying a pink plastic wallet with daisies and bumblebees on it. I was asking for a grungy old farmer to pull one over on me.

And then he did. And I haven’t been the same since. But I’ll get to that later.

One Just Has To Ask...

2005-06-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

So I went to see the movie Crash today. It shines a light on some excellent points. But I left the movie thinking exactly the same thing I thought after I finished watching Collateral.

How many ways can a person find to not want to live in LA? I'm curious. Does anyone know?

A Kind Of But Not Really Goodbye

2005-05-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get tired of your computer? Because I do. Not that I’d ever tell her that (please don’t spill the beans) I don’t want to crush her innocent spirit. She’s a darling. An aging darling though, she’s freezing on me plural times a day, which is new. She’s always been so well behaved.

But there comes a time each year, around the middle of May most of the time (very fortunate timing) where my body starts to reject keyboard time. There’s this electric feeling coursing through my blood stream saying, screaming in fact, "Saturation point! Saturation point! Saturation point!" and this internal method thoughtfully reminds me to run, run far away. To find a land where computers, while not forbidden, are immoral, a place where dolphins (who may take the form of trout) carouse in the evening calm, where the food is hearty and the moose are… moose, where there’s no need to romanticize because the setting will do it for you.

It is most fortunate that this so coincidentally coincides with the end of the semester and the stress of finals week. Because this just so happens to be that time of year where I do get to find this magical land.

So yes, I’m leaving you. Not for good or anything, but we’re talking like a once a week kind of posting. Please don’t be mad at me. I need this. It is what makes me human and loveable and endearing. We must all have a Home whether it be home or a sporting camp deep in the heart of the Maine woods, where we retire for some amount of time to recharge. And that’s what this is.

This is not goodbye, this is see you later, keep in touch, and I’ll do my best to do the same. FYI I’m going to try to focus what posts I am available for on Dear Miss Eliza, so make sure you get really curious and ask lots of questions and keep me busy, all right?
See you in the fall… or in a week, whichever comes first.

p.s. party at my house tonight. Cake and ice cream for 700!

Dear Miss Eliza: The BIO 110 Edition

2005-05-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

And now a special edition of Dear Miss Eliza, stemming from the fact that I spent my day reviewing for my Bio final. And now of course, I know everything there is to know about behavior so I felt compelled to share such knowledge with you. Feel enlightened, dear readers!

Dear Miss Eliza,
My mother is the queen bee in my hive, and I’m next in line to inherit the throne. But I don’t understand why I should have to do all the reproducing by myself, I mean why can'’ some of the other bees help me out here? Do you know why I have to do it all myself? Nobody ever told me.
Princess of the Hive

Dear Princess,
See, reproduction is awfully complicated. For example, depending on which species you are, it involves sex. Which means that a girl and a boy have to meet and… you know… And some females aren’t so good with being around male genitalia. Your sisters might be penophobic, which would explain why they aren’t interested (or even afraid of) reproduction.

Or perhaps they prefer to focus on their careers. This is very common, you know. People do it all the time, so why not bees? And since all your sisters’ careers revolve around you reproducing well… there’s your result right there. You make babies and they raise babies and everyone’s careers are fulfilled!

Then again, it could be the whole haploidiploidy thing. Which means that you ladies have twice as many chromosomes (one set from mom and one set from dad) as your brothers do (One set from mom and none from dad because there’s no sperm involved in making boys). So your sisters are more related to you (r=.75) than they are to their theoretical children (r=.5). This means that the best way for them to pass on their genes to future generations, is for them to help you have lots and lots of kids.

Of course what really makes you haploidiploids into freaks is how you relate to your male relatives. For example, a male receives all his genetic information from his mother which means his relatedness to her is 1. But she only passes on half of her genetic information to him, which means her relatedness to him is ½. It’s sort of the same thing with you and your dad. You got half your genetic information from him, so your relatedness to him is ½. But he gave you all of his genetic information, so his relatedness to you is 1. Cooky, huh?
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
So my partner and I robbed a bank, and got caught. Oops, of course, but it’s a little late to complain, you know? Anyway, they took us downtown, and put me in this room with a table, a couple chairs and a mirror, right? They told me I had a couple choices. If I talk, and tell them everything then they’ll cut me a deal and I’ll only get 6 months in the big house. But If I stay mum about the whole thing and my buddy talks, then the whole thing gets pinned on me and I get 5 years. Thing is, I got no idea what he’s telling them in there, and what if he’s trying to pin the whole thing on me! But what if he’s not and I got this chance to save my butt? Can I really afford to pass that up?
Prisoner with a Dilemma

Dear Prisoner,
This happened to me once you know. Well, not the bank robbing thing, in high school my boyfriend and I got picked up for jaywalking. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. But I did have pretty much the same choice. For me it all came down to food. My mother’s best dish was a Big Mac if you know what I mean. So I was all for spending a little time in juvie. I kept my mouth shut.

It backfired though, because Lindy (That was my honey’s name… don’t look at me, I didn’t name him!) kept his mouth shut too. Apparently he had this nasty test coming up in accounting class, and he really wanted to get out of it.

So since neither of us talked, and the only witness was this cute little old lady with glaucoma, they didn’t have anything on us and had to let us both go. Sad because I had to go back to big macs, which led to my weight problem, and he failed his test. We learned our lesson though.

Next time we jaywalked, we did it in front of a MUCH more reliable witness!
Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
So I’m this great guy right? And sure, I don’t know how to meet girls or anything. We all have our issues, right? So I was thinking, right? The personals section! What a way to meet a girl without ever even needing to meet her. Definitely a good way to go, I’m thinking, right? But I sit down to write it, and my mind goes totally blank. I mean, what should I put down you know? How do I make myself look good enough for a girl to actually look at me? And I come up with nothing. I just don’t know. Do you?
SWM

Dear SWM,
Since everyone and her sister would tell you to make yourself look mature and capable, I’m going to ignore that part. I mean DUH! Instead, let’s look to the psychology of the female who searches the personals ads. What sets her apart from females who don’t search the personals ads? Most importantly, it means that she’s looking for a mate. I mean, if you’re not looking for a mate, you’re not going to look in the personals ads are you? (Well, not unless you need a laugh or something, but you don’t need to be worried about those kinds of girls. They’re only going to make fun of you.)

So what you want to do in your personal ad is to show these girls who are looking for a mate, that you could fill that role. And the best way to say "You’re looking for a mate, and I can be a mate," is to just say that. So stress the fact that you could be a mate. Come right out and say that.

Next, the girls who are looking for mates are all well and good, but they need to me looking for a male mate for you to qualify in any meaningful sense. So don’t forget to emphasize the fact that you’re a male mate. One might expect that this would be covered by the M part of SWM, but what about those people who think that M stands for Mylanta? So you should restate this somewhere.

So now we’ve got "SWM, and I can be a mate." To this I would add, "But only the male kind of mate, because that’s what my dad made me."

Now you might want to add something about the kind of girl you’re looking for. And of course, you’re looking for the kind of girl who is looking for a male mate, because that is what we’ve established to this point.

So your ad should read: SWM, and I can be a mate. But only the male kind of mate because that’s what my dad made me. Looking for a female who'’ looking for a mate." And I think that's followed by some code that’s worked out with the personals ads makers or something.
Well, I hope you’re happy now that I’ve done all your work for you. Good luck with that girl of yours!
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you have a question for Miss Eliza? About anything? I promise, I'm not picky or anything. In fact, I might go so as far as to say I'm... what's the opposite of picky? inclusive? Well, that's putting it nicely, but we'll go with that. I'm inclusive. I'm also a caring sensitive person who loves to help. If you have a situation/question/sentence ending in a question mark that you would like help with, just drop it in the comments section, or e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com and jsut like that, you become a priority. Didn't you always want to know what that felt like?
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-05-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
All my friends are lazy. I really want to help them overcome this; but American Idol is on most weeknights, and weekends are just not convenient, especially since I got the entire 3rd season of 24 on DVD. what's a boy to do?
Sleepy in Seattle

Dear Sleepy,
Here’s the thing about advice. (And believe me, I know advice) You have to ask for it in order to be able to accept it in any meaningful way. This is much like pity. So, trying to affect your friends’ behavior without their desire for such affectations is going to get you a great big punch in the nose.

In light of such painful repercussions, I would advise that you simply learn to accustom yourself to their ways. See if you can learn to be lazy right along with them. Observe their behavior and attempt to reproduce it. What are these friends’ thinking processes? Can you learn how to think this way yourself? Try. I know it’s going to be uncomfortable, because I can see that you are such a lively vibrant personality, but such a stretch is going to be worth it in the long run.

First, learning to be lazy yourself is going to bring you closer to your friends. This is good. Trying to change them would lead to alienation and then you would no have any friends and that is bad, not to mention lonely. Why do you think so much of our youth is based on learning to have friendly relations with other people?

Second, mastering laziness is WAY less work than trying to make a difference. And minimizing effort is a goal to be esteemed.

Third, just look at the results! You get to be lay around, maybe watching some TV (which will keep you in the know at the water cooler) play some video games (maintaining or even improving hand eye coordination) and get on the computer once or twice (your daily dose of human contact). What more do you need?
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
My baby is sick, he's got a cold. I'd like to try to comfort him when he cries so that he doesn't get too worked up and uncomfortable. However, I don't want him to get used to getting attention (immediately) when he cries. Any suggestions?
-concerned dad

Dear dad,
It's all in the operant conditioning. What you want to do is to negatively reinforce this comfort that you want to get rid of. In other words, you want to punish your son. But not the normal physical abuse that would get you in trouble. So you'll have to be more creative.

PUNISHMENT POSSIBILITIES:

Ask yourself, what would Simon say about my sining? If the answer is "Simon" enough for this to get prime time air space, this could be a good way to "punish" your son for feeling confort (immediately) after crying.

Two words: brussel sprouts.

Leave him with your mother-in-law for a day or two. But before you do, make sure you tell him how much fun you and your wife will be having without him.

Of course, the normal way for a baby to show that he's not comfortable (immediately) is to cry again, and so you have a punishment-cry-attention-comfort-punishment cycle which takes up LOTS of time. Which makes you ask, "is it worth it?" hard to tell. Give it thirty years or so, and then ask his therapist how much he talks about you. If the answer is, "the real question is when DOESN'T he," then I'd try a different approach with your next child.
- Miss Eliza

In Which The Negative Reveals His Secret Weapon

2005-05-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

And now for all you clock watchers out there, you should know that The Negative, who we left with a horrible despondency, has one minute to save Pablo’ house from certain annihilation. He is standing on his lawn with his new friend Sam and his old friend, La Femme Violet (pronounced, of course, VEE-o-let). And since last we met, they have been joined by several bulldozers, a wrecking ball, and an auctioneer (who would never be able to sufficiently explain what he was doing, or how he came to be there).
The Negative has capitulated to ever mounting despair; he is sitting on the lawn, possibly getting grass stains on his lovely new spandex suit. And Scene!

"Dude, you’ve got to get up. This is so not cool," La Femme Violet tells her boss, "So your parents messed up. It happens. We all learn to see that our parents are… I guess you would say sketchy, huh? Yeah. It’s no biggie. You still have your card to play, right?"

The Negative was not paying attention to her due to the mind bogglingly huge pond of self pity he happened to be drowning in at the time. La Femme Violet, in true form for a woman who has a crush on her superhero employer, wanted to pat him on the back in one of those pathetic and weak attempts at consolation. But since she was on the opposite side of the lawn from him, she would have to travel a short distance to accomplish this.

An easy task, one might suppose, and hardly worthy of mention. But of course it is worthy of mention, because this simple act would bring about a chain reaction whose echoes we are still listening for today. Allow me to explain.

While walking across the grass, La Femme Violet stepped into an inconsequential hole and fell.
"Damn rodents," she said.

Scholars have argued for some time whether or not this hole was actually the work of rodents or not, but the answer is rather trivial. It is enough to know that all holes of this nature on Lucy’s lawn were caused by rodents, leaving rodents as a perfectly justifiable explanation for her now sprained ankle.

At this precise moment, several things happened.

1. The clock hit 0 minutes and 1 second left to stop this abomination.
2. The bulldozers and the wrecking ball and the auctioneer braced themselves for the "good part."
3. La Femme Violet’s comment about rodents registered in The Negative’s brain causing him reflexively to push a button that he had conveniently programmed into his watch.

And that was all it took. An aide almost instantaneously ran up to Sam and whispered something into his ear, which caused Sam to yell in a voice so angry and nefarious that the bulldozers and the wrecking ball and the auctioneer were instantly paralyzed. A fortunate series of events for them, considering what followed.

Sam was mad, indeed livid. He marched up to The Negative and frowned down upon his person.
"What have you done?"

"I have ruined you," The Negative confidently replied, "the way you just ruined me, so now we’re even. Specifically, with one little jab onto this button which I so conveniently programmed into my watch here, I sent a picture to all major media outlets across the globe. And the picture I sent them, showed this!"

With a flourish he pulled a piece of paper out of the sleeve of his costume. Much as it would have been easier to pull this out of a pocket, no one had as yet found a method for attaching pockets to spandex suits. This is the ultimate gripe of any superhero, you would not believe how much flack I hear about this.

But back to that piece of paper, it was the final product of that hour he had spent at his computer, a picture of Sam embracing… a vole! Both wore insidious grins, and one of them (I won't say who) had a cigar in his mouth. The background was a lush, palatial kind of setting with expensive-but-tasteful decorations and furniture. A true picture of opulent greed and ultimate evil which no one anywhere in this universe could find to be anything but abominable and despicable.

"I would never stoop to such a level!" Sam cried. "This is not only embarrassing and capable of destroying everything I have built these past decades, it is completely and utterly false! How dare you attempt to spread such wicked lies!"

"Photographs do not lie, friend Sam," The Negative replied with a smile. "Deny all you want, but you will not survive. Sexual harassment? Employing illegal immigrants? Forcing thousands of Americans out of work for your personal gain? Child’s play, as you have so wonderfully demonstrated, but allying yourself with the lowest, most destructive life force known to humanity. Sorry buddy. You’re toast."

He was right too. At that moment, another aide approached Sam and explained to him that in the past minute or two, over 30,000 law suits had been filed, his stock had toileted and his wife was asking for a divorce. Yes indeed, this was certainly the end of an era, and The Negative couldn’t help but gloat at this triumph. And he happened to be VERY good at gloating.

"Well, I guess there’s no point in my hanging around anymore is there? Back to the hot house, huh?" Sam asked no one in partcular. Not that no one in particular was listening. In fact, he has several particular listeners.

"Well, that’s if Satan will even have you," La Femme Violet interjected. She was also a great fan of a good gloat. "I don’t think you’ll find him very welcoming just now. I hear even he can’t stand those voles."

And so Sam skunked off into the evening, leaving behind him Pablo’s house, all in one piece. while La Femme Violet and The Negative took a well deserved break on his front porch.

"So," he began, "my mom and dad, they..."

"Just another anecdote for your therapist. We all need to have them." She consoled.

"You’re right," he said, changing the topic for no particular reason. "About the name, I mean. The Negative isn’t working very well. And it’s got more of a villain aura to it. I don’t think it’s going to work."

"I know the feeling. La Femme Violet is nice and all, but what is she actually capable of? These answers are always in the name, and there's just nothing there. No good, I tell you. Just not working."

"Maybe Picture Perfect. Yes. That’s what I’ll call myself. It sounds so much more positive, and upbeat than The Negative. Not to mention the necessary pun works better too."

The sun’s final beams of the evening spread across the neighborhood in a moment of magic. Picture Perfect noticed this, and he watched as the rays crept up to his companion's face and lit it in just such a way...

"Sounds like the name of a computer program," she said, not noticing his attention, "but… I think I like it. So what about me? How about Sidekick-Some-Ass. That totally rocks, and it means I’ll get to kick tons of ass! Dude! This is cool." She looked at him. "Are you ok?"

Picture Perfect was wiping his nose with the sleeve of his costume.

‘What? Oh yeah. I could probably use some tissues though. Let me go get some."

And with that, he opened the door, and to his great amusement was met by a cascade of candy. Peanut Butter M-Azing bars to be precise. And it looked like his house was full of them.

The End!

Did you see that? No "To be continued..." and we can all breathe a sigh of relief and conclusion. Isn't that a nice word?

In Which The Negative Faces A Great Challenge

2005-05-09T14:26:00.000-07:00

In true suspenseful and heroic fashion there were twenty minutes left on the metaphorical clock keeping track of the end of Pablo’s house. It does indeed pose a query that Lady Dude! can sew two superheroic costumes in under two minutes, but The Negative must take a full hour to toy with a couple photographs. I ask you though, to please consider that clocks must always almost run out of time before the world can be saved from abominable evil. If it isn’t a last minute--nay last millisecond--victory, then it holds no place in the most awe inspiring of halls, the superhero hall of fame.

“Aha!” The Negative cried as he almost ripped the photograph on it’s way out of the printer, “You, the evil, the slime incarnate, even you cannot have an answer for this!”

The Negative was not talking to Sam himself, obviously, because Sam himself was not there.

And then he was.

“So you have decided to make your stand after all, young Pablo. How fortunate for myself. It’s just not the same when you don’t put up a fight. You have no idea how disgruntled I have been since last we met, due to the very fact that you wanted to play the weak card.”

“Pablo? Oh, you mean the guy that lives here? No, that’s not me. Don’t be ridiculous. I am not Pablo. Whatever gave you that idea? I am The Negative, defender of the oppressed, the needy, and the riders of bicycles. (I mean, how hard is it to share the road?)”

[NOTE to readers, the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the author, or of blogger.com. I just write down the story. I don’t make it up.]

Sam didn’t seem to believe The Negative. (About what? Probably the Pablo thing. Remember, he didn’t have a mask or anything, just the suit. A work in progress, you might say.) So he just sort of smiled and nodded. How lucky that Sam's silence should give Lady Dude! an opportunity to scope him out.

“Wait, don’t I know you?” she asked. “Yeah, you’re rich and famous or something right? Sam? I’m so sorry that I ever got this opportunity to meet you. You given me this really nasty feeling in my tummy, like I’m pregnant with a huge… who knows what.”

“My condolences,” Sam replied.

“Anyway, I’m Lady Dude! For now anyway, I don’t think I like the name. It just sounds so… off kilter. Maybe La Femme Violet. Yeah, call me that, ok?”

For my dear readership, Violet in this case is pronounce VEE-o-let. It's the french pronunciation.

“What ever you say.” Sam used that very enunciated tone your kindergarten teacher took when she was trying to placate you. Sam was a big fan of placation. Then he turned to The Negative. “So I assume you have the authority to speak for Pablo on all matters pertaining to this house which will soon be my greatest Supercenter ever?”

“Of course.” The Negative replied.

“Good, then allow me to show you just what will await you if you give in to my demands.”

Sam waved a magic wand, and no, he didn’t have the magic wand with him before. But he is Sam after all, give him a little credit.

The Negative and la Femme Violet (pronounced of course, in the manner of the French) and Sam were standing on Pablo’s front lawn looking at a giant piñata where his house no longer stood.

“You turned my house into a piñata?” The Negative was not quite impressed. Close, but not there yet. He was put off guard enough however, to refer to HIS house instead of Pablo's, a mistake that Sam smiled at, but did not mention.

“This is not just any piñata, Negative, this is a house sized piñata full of peanut butter M-Azing bars. Care for a whack?

Of course The Negative cared for a whack. He’d been craving a peanut butter M-Azing bar since he woke up yesterday morning, and that was a LONG time ago, and you know how cravings just snowball when you ignore them, so you can’t really blame The Negative for grabbing the bat that Sam had popped into being for him, and running full force towards the M-Azing bars.

Fortunately, La Femme Violet was able to maintain a direct line with reality and screamed at the slobbering superhero that that was his house that he was about to attack with a baseball bat.

It wasn’t so much what she said to him that made him stop. I think it was more the fact that she had said it after wrestling him to the ground and while she was jumping up and down on top of him that really did the trick. Either way it worked, and he released his grip on the Louisville Slugger.

Then he stood up and said confidently to his evil nemesis, “I don’t cave in so easy as that. A little respect, that’s all I ask.”

Sam nodded the way your kindergarten teacher used to not at you. “In that case, there isn’t really much I can do.” He started running around the yard. At first it looked like he was kicking the air in front of him or something, but this air was almost immediately replaced by a bouncing soccer ball. The Negative followed the ball not only with his eyes, but with the rest of his face as well, nodding, and shaking his head as it went back and forth.

The Negative thought back to those halcyon days of his youth, joyous with his friends, zigging towards the goal, and away from it again. He remembered his first soccer ball, It was a birthday present when he turned nine. He clapped and hugged his father who smiled back indulgently. What a soccer ball that had been, some kids had their teddy bears, or their barbies, or their play stations, but he was never so happy as in the company of that soccer ball.

“Yes,” Sam replied to these thoughts, “I remember that ball well. I was visiting the factory that day… They let me put the air in it myself…”

It took a minute for the meaning of this statement to pool in The Negative’s brain. For the first minute while it took hold, he continued nodding. In the next minute his shoulders began to sag, and his chin went up and down much slower. In the third minute it stopped altogether, and in the fourth minute, it finally made sense. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you. My dad would never…”

“I still have the receipt. I picked it out of your trash one night. One of my many pleasures. I’m especially fond of receipts, they tell me how much money I am making. You wouldn’t know about that, though, would you?”

“Accounting was never my strong point,” The Negative sassed. He wanted to look strong, but his entire past was crumbling, one happy memory upon another had been built upon a lie, upon a poor child in a sweatshop who saw these toys everyday, but never got to play with them. He was a bad person.

And just like that, his morals crumbled, and a tear ran down his baby soft cheek that just this morning he had applied moisturizer to. The good kind too, he bought it at a farm stand from this nice old lady who had mixed the concoction herself from emu butter. But even that good deed fell under shadow now. Escape was futile.

To be continued…

Well, I don't know if all of you are completely insane by now, but this is definitely driving me nuts. Who knew that stories took so much time to tell! They never used to. The next one is the end. I promise.

In Which Pablo Solidifies His Alter Ego

2005-05-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

"Yo," Lucy said. Lucy loved to begin conversations with yo. She figured it was genetic, because her parents had told her that it was the first word she ever said. "Sup?"

"I need a suit," Pablo replied. "Black with a purple stripe down the side."

"Hot date, huh?"

"And I need it to be spandex."

"Spandex? This is serious, dude. Do I even want to know?"

"I have been forced into battle against the most stupendous force of evil known the entire universe. It is a matter of life and death, good versus evil, David against Goliath, celebrities against the paparazzi, Coke versus Pepsi-"

"Right. I get it. So you’re doing the superhero thing."

He nodded, his expression solemn.

"All this time, I’ve been the personal assistant of a superhero? This is big. This is like hair dying big. A superhero’s assistant should have really cool hair. I’ll find a nice purple to match your suit. But I’m forgetting something. What is it?"

The car was silent for a minute while she thought. Pablo’s face maintained its stony façade.

"Ha! I know what it is. Don’t superheroes need superpowers?"

"You would not believe me if I showed you, but I have been blessed by the gods with an unusual ability to doctor a photograph."

"No wonder I’ve always been strangely attracted to you all this time. I just figured I’ve been trying to get ahead. But it’s really your heroic magnetism that I find so sexy. What are you doing this weekend?"

"This weekend may not see the light of existence if all goes ill today. Why don’t we concentrate on that suit right now?"

Oh, sure. Of course, I mean duh! But Ilike after that…"

"We will talk of that in time."

The truth is that Pablo had been meaning to ask Lucy out for two months now. But whenever the opportunity came within one mile of him, he felt queasy and his nose started running. Asking nice girls out on dates just wasn’t his forte. So since he didn’t keep any tissues in his car (a huge metaphysical error, but we won’t go there), he really didn’t want to get started.

"So that suit?" he asked, scratching at his nose.

"Right, It shouldn’t take long, I’m a whiz with the sewing machine. Heck, maybe I should make me a cool outfit so that I can be Super Sewing Girl. Dude, that would rock. Call me that from now on, right?"

"I’ll see what I can do. Ok, Super Sewing Girl, go forth and find me that which my body has been craving my entire life, the black body glove with the purple stripe on the side."

"You got it… ummm… Pablo. Hey, that’s not going to work for your superhero name. Got anything better?"

"Go forth, and make haste, we have not many fractions of fractions of moons to bring about the salvation of this, our planet. Whence you return, I shalt give you my name."

You may or may not have noticed dear reader, that since Pablo’s run in with Mr. Sam, his countenance has changed. His words have become cryptic, and his muscles have grown somber. If you should wonder at this transformation, it can be explained as such: to each superhero, his own. It was Pablo’s way to react to such grave news as the demolishing of those quarters in which he had spent so many contented hours with the gravity that he felt it deserved.

And so It was with all due seriousness that he pondered the name to give his alternate identity. Fortunately (at least for his house) there was no need to think on this too long. He would call himself-

The light bulb went on over his head again. This of course meant that Lucy—excuse me—Super Sewing Girl had returned. Only now she wore a purple spandex suit with a black trim and her hair was purple. She tossed a handful of black fabric at him.

"There you go. Need a phone booth or something?" She asked.

Pablo looked at his watch. "It hasn’t even been two minutes. Do I even want to know?"

"I had to settle for a wig. The dye wasn’t going to happen." As if that was supposed to explain something. "So anyway, about that name thing…"

"I’m thinking, The Negative. You know, a pun on the whole photograph thing."

"The Negative? That sort of works. Sort of. It’s not going to win you any awards at Marvel or anything."

"Number one, way short notice," He snapped. Mr. Serious had pretty much vanished. Don’t ask. "We’re up against a giant diabolical clock here. Number two, me and names? Not the best of friends. Why do you think I don’t have a dog? I couldn’t think of a name. Number three, I’m not trying to win awards. I want to save my house."

So Pablo was not so good with teasing. Hey, nobody’s perfect.

"Right. Check. You’re The Negative. Maybe we can rework that all later. If we get the chance and everything. But right now, you need to change. And then you have that thing you need to be working on. And I’m your personal assistant, so I’m just going to…"

"Fix my computer? It froze on me this morning. I think it was connected to this whole Sam mess that I’ve gotten into, but it’s hard to tell. You’re good with supernaturally indisposed technological equipment, right? I thought so. How nice. That means we’re rolling."

Now since I know that the time table on all this is important to you readers, you should know that at this moment, Pablo has one hour and forty minutes to save his house from the utter indignity of being turned into one of Sam’s Supercenters.

At one hour and twenty five minutes, The Negative, now in full The Negative regalia, and Super Sewing Girl are pacing Pablo’s study, back and forth in front of his de-chilled computer, deep in thought and conversation.

The Negative: "What we need is a picture. If the world can see photographic evidence that Sam really is worse than George Steinbrenner they will tear down his buildings, and send him back to that pit of Hell where… Where…"

Super Sewing Girl: "You need a mask. Sure, an outfit is a start, but you have to accessorize. Thing is, do you want a full face mask, or just one of those ones that covers some of it, like the Phantom of the Opera has..."

The Negative: "Maybe if I can link him to something that is universally acknowledged to be disgusting and evil and worthy of actual hate. What have we got like that? Say he’s incestuous? He’s buddy buddy with Osama? He invented the filibuster? No, I need something really good…"

Super Sewing Girl: "And Super Sewing Girl seems pretty limited. I think I should get a more encompassing name, like Rockette Woman, or Lady Dude. Yeah, Lady Dude! With the exclamation point as part of my name. That’s it, I’m Lady Dude! from now on, and I can swim like an otter and fly like a hawk, and dig like a vole, wow, I’m totally awesome!"

The Negative: "What was that you said?

Lady Dude!: I’ve got a new name. It’s-"

The Negative: "Vole? You said something about a vole? You are totally awesome!"

And with that, the Negative made a mad dash for his computer screen, and the gems contained within it awaiting his nimble mouse. This was going to be good.

To be continued…

Once more I must apogize for dragging this on so, but there comes a limit to how long one's blog ought to be, and I keep going past it. A sad state of affairs, I know. We'll see.

The Following is intened to be read in a British Accent... the high class kind thank you very much

2005-05-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Do to an exsessivly stupendous case of burn out htat abloslves me from all gramatical and spelling errors, I am not posting today.

What?

No. I don't see any irony at all in posting to tell you I'm not posting. The idea is absurd.

I blame the burn out. I finished classes today. And by finished I mean that I still have to complete final exams or murder my proffesors in order to be able to leave. I haven't decided which option I'm going with. I would welcome any and all suggestions on the subject.

Yes. I did leave my last post with To be continued... and it's completely unreasonable of me not to tell you what happens so... here we go.

A light bulb went on over Pablo's head. No, I mean the physical kind, because the metaphorical lightbulb may or may not be over used. How did the light bulb find itself in the on postition? Well Pablo was sitting in his car, and Lucy opened the passenger side door so that she could climb inside.

Now if you're wondering when and how Pablo got in the car without your knowledge, ask yourself if you know what your gastronimical bacteria are up to right now.

Where was I? Right. Lucy got in the car, and the light bulb went on over Pablo's head. Oddly enough, the light shut off again once Lucy slammed the door shut, as she was so often wont to do.

To be continued...

I already told you I'm not posting today. Don't you ever listen? Sheesh!

To be continued...

In Which Pablo Meets His Enemy

2005-05-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, that was quick wasn’t it? This blog has surpassed my wildest expectations. Which was easy to when you think about it. I have very low expectations. This comes in handy in so many different environments that I would actually advise it as a course of action for the rest of the human race. Now here he is, Mr. 600:

Pablo Jones was humming at his computer as he flitted between blogs. And then it hit him. He gasped. Well, he tried to gasp, but it came out as a hiccup, but it had the same effect, meaning he inhaled rapidly. Then he smiled.

Then he said, "Oh goodie! I’m number six hundred at this blog. How nice. I’ve waited my whole life to feel like I belong somewhere, and now I have an actual number that will forever and always be associated with me, myself and nobody else ever. Dude, I rock!"

And then Pablo’s computer froze, in the way that can only happen when you’re in the middle of a life changing epiphany. And then there was a knock at Pablo’s door. He really wanted to ignore the knock and nurse his ailing hardware back to health so that it could continue to show him how lucky he was to be such an impressive and invaluable number. He wanted to work on his acceptance speech.

Instead he answered the door. (If this doesn’t make any sense to you ask yourself why you have a cell phone if not to interrupt you at any possible moment in your extensively important life. Then it will make sense.)

"Hello? Can I help you?" he asked the form that was covering his doorstep. It was a harmless looking elder gentleman with an adorable smile on his face. He gave Pablo the creeps in the way that only a harmless old man with an adorable smile can do.

"Mr. Jones? I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time."

Pablo really wanted to say no. He had learned through past experience that no good came come of conversations with people who knocked on his door. He wanted to slam it in this man’s face. He wanted to yell and scream and scare this man away.

"Absolutely, come right in." he said. (Do you see a pattern developing here?)

As the benign old man crossed the threshold, the sky darkened. Then it lit in a stupendous slash of lightning, and an earth ripping peal of thunder. Fear gripped at Pablo’s gizzard and twisted it with an evil grin that only an inanimate force is capable of summoning from the pits of hell. But by now the sky had resumed its shining and the birds were chirruping and children were giggling in the street again. Of course he was confused, but Pablo had learned that when one is confused, one’s best course of action is to smile and nod. So he did.

"Mr. Jones, do you know who I am?" the nice old man asked.

Pablo stared at him for a minute. "Ummm, no. I don’t think I do."

"What if I do this?" The old man donned a blue trucker hat. You know, the kind with the really flat brim and the mesh stuff in the back? It was like that. But this one had some white writing on the front. It said…

And Pablo knew this man. But he was still confused.

"Aren’t you dead?" Pablo asked.

"I tried that, but you know how things are. I mean, I was down there, right? Watching the world go by, and I couldn’t help saying to myself, ‘Sam old boy? The world just isn’t as evil without you in it.’ Seriously, you guys have no idea how boring you are to watch when I’m not around to cause a ruckus. So I’m back for a second go round."

"So you’re evil then."

"Do you really have to ask?"

"And what are you doing in my house?"

"I just wanted to see your reaction."

"To what?"

"To me, when I tell you that I’m going to tear your house down and put up a Supercenter."

Pablo nodded. He decided that his confusion was trying to explain that he was missing something, so he wanted to go over all the pieces again. So he kept nodding. Then he nodded some more. Then finally something stepped into place…

"But isn’t that like, bad or something?"

"Bad? Of course it’s bad. And unethical. And immoral. Not to mention mean, greedy, and unfeeling. Why else would I be doing it?"

Pablo wanted to fight. He wanted to punch this dastardly, hugely successful, southern hick of a billionaire straight into a nice large pile of human feces. He knew where to find one too. The neighbors had been saving it for just such a moment as this. He could drag this undead moron over there right now and rub his face in it.

"So when do I have to be out?" he asked.

"You have two hours to set your affairs in order."

"And how much money are you giving me for this?"

"Well we’ve done our research on this, of course. I mean really. So we’re prepared to pay $1000 for the whole caboodle, it’s the going rate in Indochina you see, and then we’ll be free to sell it again for market value in the US."

"Right… Well I guess I’ll be seeing you then. Ummm, good luck or whatever."

"And to you, Pablo." And Sam patted Pablo on the back and smiled and walked down Pablo's little stone pathway to where it met the sidewalk and took a right.

And it was then that Pablo truly understood the evil that was that empire. To wish a man good luck, and to pat him on the back and smile and knock his house down, that was lower than Oscar the Grouch on a deep sea expedition in a black hole. And Pablo knew what he had to do.

To be continued…

My apologies on the to be continued thing. This is turning out to be much more involved than I had originally suspected. But I promise, I’ll get to the bottom of this.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-05-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My girlfriends all tell me that I shouldn’t let a guy pay for dinner "because he’ll be expecting… well… you know," and that instead of following such fascist and prehistoric cultural norms, I should burn my bra and my garter and my dish cloth. Which is all well and good, but I have no idea what they’re talking about when they just well-you-know their way through it. And since I hate to feel ignorant, I don’t have the marrow to ask what they’re talking about. So Miss Eliza, what is this well… you know that everyone keeps talking about.
- Well… No I Don’t

Dear Well…,
You see when a woman and a man love each other very, very much (or in this case, when he pays for her dinner) he expects her to… umm… reciprocate the favor. You know, it’s the age old story of if I scratch your back then you scratch mine. Only in our analogy, if I buy you dinner then you… you… how can I say this gently?

I’ll just come right out with it because you obviously don’t have a head for intonation. It means he’s looking for a… there’s just no way to say this kindly, is there? Well, he’s looking for a place to watch NASCAR. Sadly, yes. He just wants you for your cable. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but your guy is a mooching loser.

You can break the cycle, however. While burning your bra and your garter and your dishcloth is one way to go, I would instead face the problem by looking for a different type of individual. You see, you can tell a lot about a male by how he finishes the sentence, "can I buy you…" I have included the following as a rough outline, though this in no way exhausts all possibilities.

GOOD
Can I buy you a drink? He wants sex. Which is a much better deal for you than NASCAR.

Can I buy you a stand mixer? He wants someone to replace his mother. It’s still better than NASCAR, and you get a stand mixer. Say yes. Stand mixers are not cheap.

Can I buy you Red Sox tickets? He wants you to know where his priorities lie. And just so you know, he’s got them right. Don’t mess with them. And he’s a keeper.

Can I buy you flowers? He wants you to smile again. He hates seeing you down in the dumps, and he feels your pain, and wants it to go away.

Can I buy you a book? He wants to test you. He has a philosophy about girls and the books they choose and their personalities. Choose the right book or he’ll leave you flabbergasted in front of the magazine rack.

BAD

Can I buy you Yankees tickets? He wants you to sell him your soul. It’s a bad trade. Don’t go for it.

Can I buy you lingerie? He wants you to know you have no style at all. This is an insult. Punch him. Or withhold sex.

Can I buy you a vacuum cleaner? He wants you to bring it over to his apartment and try it out.

Can I buy you chocolates? He wants you to psychoanalyze him. It’s never preferable to get inside the head of anyone who brings up chocolate. Remember the movie Labyrinth? That baby was just a symbol for chocolate. You don’t want to go there.

Anyhoo, I hope I’ve been of some help. Good luck with getting rid of your NASCAR loser.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
I have moral scruples against drinking coffee. It’s not a religious thing, I just feel like coffee is an invention of higher powers (Possibly Starbucks, but the jury’s still out on that one) who seek to subdue your mental capacities. But as a mental entity free of the devil that is coffee, I take umbrage at members of this culture so uncouth as to ask others to go out for coffee. This question thoughtlessly discriminates against non-coffee drinking members of society. Miss Eliza, could you ask your readers to abstain from asking this question, and also to call their friends on it when faced with this outrage?
-Nimble Greenleaf from east India

Dear Nimble,
You have brought an important matter to our attention. I personally feel ashamed for my past conduct on the matter of going out for coffee (but I swear I didn’t inhale) and I apologize for any hurt or offense my carelessness has caused. However, I must draw the line just short of reparations. I am a poor fake advice columnist blogger. Not the best way to earn a fortune, but I except that all to change, as soon as blogger gets its Lotto blog up and running.
Miss Eliza

The Greenville Collection:The Flatlander

2005-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

What is a flatlander? Where I come from it’s a name that locals have for the tourists. It isn’t necessarily that they live on flatter land than we do. You could be from the Rocky mountains and pop into our town and comment on the pretty hills around here and we’ll give you the evil eye and talk about that flatlander from out west.

This being the case, I started asking myself once, "what makes you a flatlander?" Is it being from out of state? And I concluded that no, that’s not it. Mainers can easily be flatlanders. You come up to my neck of the woods with all your extension-of-Massachusetts money and stay in that cabin on the lake, you know the one you paid $250,000 for, and you say, "Isn’t it quaint and peaceful up here?" And we’ll frown and slap mosquitoes off our necks.

So maybe a flatlander is from outside a smaller area? Is it that people who come from outside, say, Pisataquis County could be called flatlanders? You’re getting closer, but don’t bet on it. Sure it’s harder not to like you because we’re related. And we’re in the same boat economically so we aren’t going to treat you so coldly, but you could still be a flatlander.

See, it turns out upon much consideration that geography isn’t really a factor. So is it people who are compatible with nature? Well look at all those families who had to stop in Freeport on the way up here. Some stay in cabins, some stay in RV’s, some stay in tents. Some will bring up speed boats which will make others sadly shake their heads as they float around in their canoes and kayaks. They all do a little hiking and pat themselves on the back for being so close to nature. But we don’t buy it. We may not have a Wal-Mart and we may have closed down our local McDonalds, but we’ll still sit in the drug store on Sunday morning and drink coffee. We’ll tell our anecdotes about those crazy tree-hugging flatlanders and we’ll laugh at you for spending so much money to do something as easy as taking a walk.

It’s not the car you drive, or how much rust is on it. It’s not how you say the word "horse" or "there". If you ask us how to get to Acadia we’ll smirk and say "ya can’t get they-ah from he-ah." It’s not how many guns you keep in your truck and it’s not about whether you’ve got electricity and running water. We do, by the way, in case you were wondering. It’s not how much money you have and it’s not how many toys you own to play with outside.

The truth is, I’ve narrowed it down to the answer to one single question: "Do you know where to go to find moose?" It doesn’t matter where you go in Greenville, people are asking that question. We say that we’re a big tourist town and that’s our industry, but that’s not quite accurate. It’s really moose. We have moose in the landscape, with Moosehead Lake and the newly named Big and Little Moose mountains. We’ve got moose in our retail with tourist shops like Moosin’ Around Maine. You want something moose? We have toy moose and books about moose. Moose postcards and CD’s filled with moose calls. You can get Moose-in-a-can and If You Give A Moose A Cookie. Want moose on your pajamas? Or maybe a lawn ornament? I know, you’re looking for earrings and a belt buckle made out of moose antlers. Chocolate moose poop? We have the moose hunt in the fall. You get to see them in the back of a truck with their tongues sticking out. You can find Moose head busts in several of our stores. Need a moose safari? One tourist company painted a bus brown and put some antlers on it so they could herd people out to find them.

And you buy it all. It’s natural to come to Greenville and ask to see a moose, but what’s with all the other silly questions?

"Hi, could you tell me how to get to Greenville?" Sure. Remember where you blinked? Go back there. Yes, town really is this one little intersection with the blinking yellow light. But you didn’t come here for the civilization, so don’t get so disoriented when you don’t find any.

"Where’s a good place to eat?" Honestly, they’re all the same. They all serve the same thing, except the Lost Lobster. I’ll give you three guesses on that one. But I hope you like beef in any shape or form, or maybe chicken. And don’t be looking for fast food. If that’s what you desire, well, try the grocery store.

"Where can I get a USA Today?" Ummmm, Dover? It’s about forty five minutes down the road. Good luck on that one.

"I’ve been coming here for ___ years. I’m not a flatlander anymore right?" This one’s my personal favorite. And the answer is, if you have to ask… In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not a welcoming group of people, and we tend to be pretty cliquey.

So we’re not always so nice to tourists. Why is that? Maybe we wonder how you can be so stupid and still have more money than us. It’s not that you are stupid, but you have to admit that naive often comes across that way. Maybe we think you look down on us. You come up north and think, "you live how far away from a movie theater? How quaint." Maybe we figure that loving Greenville doesn’t count if you only love it for a week or two out of the whole year. If you can put up with winter and mud season and black fly season and mosquito season all in one 365 day stretch, then you might be an ok person. Maybe we resent how much we actually depend on you. While this does qualify as biting the hand that feeds you, it still happens.

Anyway, along with your flannel shirt and Ford Explorer, try not to forget your-brush-off-of-us-locals-and-our-attitudes look. We’re really not so bad once you get to ignore us.
And as for where go to find moose? Drive out of town in any direction until you come to cars parked along the side of the road. There may be people standing outside taking pictures, there may not. Pull your car over on the side of the road along with everyone else’s. if there isn’t a moose right now, there will be.

Oh, and be careful driving. Moose aren’t fun when they’re on top of your car.

Mr. 500

2005-05-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like mysterious #500 has no desire to show himself. But since I was all excited about doing something, I’m going to do it anyway. If you happen to be #500, and are reading this, please do not feel insulted at all the scandalous, possibly libelatory, things I’m going to say. You forfeited your right to an actual history a long time ago. And if you like this one better, feel free to use it, just don’t forget to say that I am your source.

So without further ado, is the life and times of Mr. 500, better known as Leo.

Born in 1978, Leo grew up in a small rural area of eastern Wisconsin. His father was a molecular biologist, who taught classes at the local community college where he met Leo’s mother, a janitor, one night as she was singing while mopping up a leaky toilet in the men’s room. He told her that he could make her a singing sensation, and the rest is history.

As a child Leo developed an exquisite taste for the local cheese, which to this day remain “fromages.” For many years, he had intended to inherit his ailing grandfather’s dairy farm, but his life bumbled off on to a dramatic side track (as lives are apt to do) one day in late ’96.

The actual details are a little sketchy, but as with all good stories, it’s worth talking about. As far as I have been able to piece together, it was around this time that Leo was first introduced to political science. It was his senior year in high school, and this interest manifested itself after Leo discovered that he had a crush on his current events teacher during the hooplah surrounding that year’s presidential election.

The crush never amounted to anything (though he still sends her Christmas cards each year), but his political fetish bloomed. Just about the time he was thinking about running for the local school board, he heard something on the radio about a woman named Monica Lowinski, and that night he had a dream, a vision really, so sacred that he will not speak of it to anyone.

But this dream, this vision, molded the course that he was on. He denounced his still ailing grandfather, and ran off to New York, the news mecca of our culture, to learn the ropes of what he now understood to be his calling in life: political cartooning.

And that’s where he is today, renting a flat in the big city, he has a drawing board and a pencil, and is perfectly content to read newspapers and watch CNN and FNC, and to apply his old fashioned Wisconsin humor to anything unlucky enough to cross his path. Alas for him, there is not so much money in this sort of life style, he’s been forced to take a second job as a soda jerk in a 50s style drug store where the women all wear poodle skirts and the young men don’t want to be square.

This is far and away not the life he envisioned for himself living in Wisconsin and tasting fromages, but when life goes the way you planned it, you know you must have taken a wrong turn back there somewhere.

I still intend to keep track of future readers who hit future special numbers. If you would like me to invent your biography, just be the lucky number (100x where x= any number ever) and e-mail me your name, and tell me how you want it to end. you can find me at selizawalden@yahoo.com

Don't Forget:

2005-05-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to check the people counter and e-mail me if it says "500" for you. I'll make you all kinds of famous.

selizawalden@yahoo.com

It'll be as fun for you as it is for me, I promise.

The Greenville Collection Part 1: Support Group

2005-05-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Support Group

Hi. My name is Sarah and for six years I drank milk out of a bag.

"Hi, Sarah."

You know, it really feels good to get that out in the open. I mean, I always thought I was the only one. OK, not the only one only one. I mean everyone in my school had to do it too. But you go out into the world and suddenly you’re surrounded by people who got to have cartons. But I didn’t know about you guys. I thought it was just my school because they did stupid things like that. You know, people ask me, "what’s it like going to school in Greenville?" And I’ll give them one of those don’t-even-get-me-started looks and say, "well, I graduated with nineteen other people and we drank milk out of bags at lunch." And they give me that what-freaky-kind-of-place-did-you-grow-up look and I go, "I know." And you guys probably all know what that feels like, right?

A couple nods.

"I never tell anyone at all. I’ve found a place in the world now. I don’t want them to know things like that about my past."

It’s just worse for us. I mean, hot lunches are psychologically damaging for everybody, but there’s something about those sacks, maybe it’s the way they sag around your hand and all the condensation gets on your fingers, that just screams onset of depression. You can feel it in the school everywhere.

"This is the first time I've thought about it that way, but it makes sense. I mean we’d blame the administration or the faculty or the bars on the windows. [note to reader: there weren't actually bars on the windows] I think it can all be traced back to the milk bags. They’re just so droopy, everyday, like the superintendent’s laughing at us."

"No way out, no way out. Lunch was the worst part of my day."

But they do have their good side. They’re great for a laugh. You guys must have played with them too, aiming them at other people’s trays.

"Who can write their name in the shepherd’s pie?"

"For us girls it was a great way to cope with penis envy. Not me personally, but I had some friends who took out their Freudian aggression at the lunch table."

I remember someone put one in my backpack once, did that ever happen to you? Yeah, none of my books would close right for the rest of the semester.

"Boys used to throw them at me and yell about how I needed implants."

"I think the kid that sat behind me right after lunch liked to put one in my seat right before I sat down. I spent so much of fifth period in the bathroom that the teacher must have thought I had a bladder infection."

And remember the chocolate ones? And all the brown stuff would collect down at the bottom and since the plastic was clear, you could see it all in it’s horrific picture? No, that’s not really a good word, but you get my point.

"I couldn’t even drink those. It reminded me too much of dirt."

Of course there was drinking it. It was never honestly cold.

"Yeah it always just a luke cold. I could never stand that."

And the bag would flatten when I sucked and the milk would squeeze into little streams and tributaries heading towards the straw. And when the milk was almost gone the bubbles would flow and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get the bag to be 100% flat. I always felt like such a failure.

"Did any of you ever blow it up again and stick the straw through the other side so you’d have a balloon?"

"I saw a kid do that once, but then he added a hot dog onto the other end and went around waving it in people’s faces and screaming. I still can’t eat a hotdog unless it’s blistered and black and has lots of condiments."

And the straws, remember the straws? How they were pointy on one end? And trying to decide where to stab it? I usually went straight down the middle.

"My friends used to pick on me because I always put the straw in the same place, the seam at the top, an inch over from the right hand corner. I still don’t really know why."

"I was a corner kid."

And if you got the straw in just the right place then you could push the straw all the way into the bag and it wouldn’t come out the other side. My straws were red, Yours too?

"Yup."

"Mine were clear."

Then sometimes I’d just forget to pick up a straw, so I’d bite a corner off the plastic and tip it upside down and drink it mouth to mouth with the bag.

"I had to do that too. I always forgot something at lunch, a fork or a napkin or a straw. The straw was the worst one though."

It was like sucking on an udder. A humiliation, even if it’s only in my head, from which I’ll probably never fully recover.

Talk about humiliating though, all those other people out there? It’s a clear cut example of the two types of people, you know?

"And the carton people have no idea how to picture or conceive of the things we’ve been through. I’ve never seen one that understood or reacted well when they found out about my bags."

I remember telling my dad about the bags once. He didn’t even believe me. So I brought one home from school one day. At lunch I slipped it in my backpack and it waited there until seventh period was over and it walked home with me. Picture the bag of milk sitting there, touching my pencils and my calculator and my ruler, from noon until I got home at 3. The terrible shape it must have been in!

"And room temperature too, I’m so sorry."

I know we can’t blame all the world’s problems on bagged milk, but it’s an acceptable excuse for me. What’s wrong with you? Oh, I drank milk out of a bag for six years.

"It’s always worked for me."

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-04-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I've got this problem with voles eating my lawn and shrubbery. How do I get rid of them?
-VoleH8er

Dear VoleH8er,
Thank you for your indelible and fastidious question.
The voles will stop trying to eat our lawn and shrubbery if it is not there. But it would be a pity just to destroy your lawn and shrubbery to get rid of a few voles. What a waste! That’s what you’re thinking, right? I agree. Instead, I would suggest donating your lawn and shrubbery to charity.

There are several respectable charities that you can consider. Goodwill and The Salvation Army come immediately to mind. And if I’m not mistaken, the knights who say, "ni" have formed a charitable foundation for tax purposes. They will take excellent care of your shrubbery, however, I’m fairly certain that they don’t deal with lawns, so you would have to split the two up. I’m not sure if you’re willing to do that or not, but you would at least be certain that your shrubbery was going to a good home.

Not only will donating your lawn and shrubbery to charity eliminate the voles in your life, but think of all the less fortunates who always wanted to have a lawn and/or shrubbery, but due to unforeseen financial difficulties were never able to make this dream come true. Your little contribution could fulfill someone’s life long longing. You will be making someone’s life better.
We should all be so lucky.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
I’ve got a date coming up and we’re supposed to go see a movie. But the thing is I really, really don’t want to shell out the big bucks for popcorn. I know she’s going to want some. What can I do?
Druther Buy Gas

Dear Druther,
Did you know that today’s gas prices have inflated as an echo of popcorn price rises? It’s true. Unfortunately, it has also led to dilemas for any almost broke college student who’s trying to take his girlfriend out on a date.

People do not understand how much damage buying popcorn does to your psyche. As a "psychoanalyst" about 2/3 of my patients’ histories could be traced back to traumatic nights at the movie theater. But there is actually a good way to skirt around this.

Take your date out to dinner BEFORE the movie starts. (A nice romantic (filling) dinner at an exclusive restaurant with large servings is not only cheaper than buying popcorn, it is mentally healthier.) Feed her a LOT of food. Explain to her that you will take it as a personal insult if she doesn’t eat everything on her plate, dessert, and all your leftovers. Keep going until she excuses herself because she feels that she’s going to be sick.

Offer to hold her hair back. This will give you quite a few of these little things we in the business call brownie points.

Once her stomach has corrected itself, give her a mint. Now it’s time to go to the cinema. You get in line, you pay for the ticket, and you find yourself in front of the concession stand. You say (in a very concerned voice), "You want anything?" she’ll smile demurely and shake her head. And you’re home free. Congratulations!

But remember, always use this power for good, or little imps will tweeze you nose hairs while you’re handcuffed to a raging hippo.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you have a question you always wanted to ask an expert but never did because said expert would make you feel stupid? These are my favorite questions. Not only will I answer them (way better than any expert... depending on your defintion of "better," but I'll also make you feel really smart at the same time. So give me your thoughts, end them with a question mark, and start them with a "Dear Miss Eliza." Send them to me by e-mail: selizawalden@yahoo.com or just plunk it into the comments section. Really, it's a good thing.
- Miss Eliza

What Color Is Your Towel?

2005-04-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

In case you are keeping track, it has now been four posts since my last Dear Miss Eliza. While I normally stick another column in right about here, I'm afraid that's impossible today because no one in the world is even slightly curious about anything. Oh what a feeble race we have degenerated into. I'd like to comfort you, and say it's all going to get better... but I don't want to lie to you. (I bummed that one off the American Beauty screenwriter(s) so don't give me credit for it or evil, stinking, nasty, STDs will attack you with fervor.)

So instead of Miss Eliza, I'm going to turn into Concerned Older Sister. And because I care about you, I want you to know that there's this movie opening today called Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. From what little I've investigated about it, there's this itsy bitsy chance that it might even live up to its potential. What Potential?

Why all the potential that Douglas Adams could stuff into his book/radio program/any other incarnations of Hitchikker's Guide To The Galaxy that I'm not fully aware of. And believe me, he crammed a LOT of potential into that book. You know that the graph for a tangent looks like? How it's got all those lines stretching all the way up to infinity? Well, that's pretty much a measure of the potential endowed to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy... the book. If the movie lives up to the potential of a sine wave, I'll consider that worthy.

Has anyone noticed that I'm writing a critique of this move before I've actually seen it? A terrible idea, I know, and one that I could easily be ashamed of tomorrow morning, by which time I will have seen the movie. But we'll let tomorrow be tomorrow, and if this glowing recommendation turns out to be very poorly assigned, well, I guess I'll just have to write a REAL critique. And if it's worth writing a REAL critique, then you know it's going to be worth reading a REAL critique, because would I lead you astray, my young and impressionable siblings?

p.s. If you have some relief for this Miss Eliza drought, questions can be directed to the comments page or to miss eliza personally at selizawwalden@yahoo.com must the dry spell continue?

Cliché Busters: The Consolation Speech

2005-04-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

A priest a rabbi and a chemist walk into a bar…

Oh no, that’s the wrong one. I’m looking for:

Oh honey, don’t worry. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re a beautiful person. Some day a boy is going to come along and see that, but these things take time. You’re still young. You’ll find someone, I promise. Things will work out, I just know it.

You have heard it before. I knew it. You know how I knew it? It's standard. pretty much verbatim actually, and I should know.

And as one who should—and does—know, I think I can speak for all other young, smart, funny, beautiful people when I say, "can’t you spice things up a little?"

Because it isn’t really comforting when I already know what you’re going to say. (And when I say "know" I mean both that I can see the words coming before they show up, and that I am in agreement. Of course I’m smart and beautiful, and have a sense of humor. Isn’t it obvious? Egotistical I know, but that’s me.) What I feel is more along the lines of, "I already know that, so get to the new part."

This is strikingly similar my reaction to classes ¼ of the time, but I digress.

There has GOT to be something else you can say to someone who just got dumped. How about:

- That rat cum isn’t fit to clean spit of your mary-janes.
- What’ll it be kiddo? (appropriate if you are behind a bar. While this is a cliché in it self, if you can make it sound sexy, I’ll totally forgive you.)
- Good.
- Did you see that episode of South Park where [fill in synopsis of episode here]? Even that had a happy ending. (NOTE: Make sure the episode of south park you’re referencing really has a happy ending.)

And if you really, REALLY need to go with the adjective format with your new dumpee, try something fresh. Applicability isactually second to use of wide ranging vocabulary. It probably won't make any sense, but I’m sure I’ll forgive you if they’re random enough. How about:

Sweetie, don’t feel bad. You know you’re a catch right? You have so much moxie (NOTE: Use moxie in any sentence any time and I’ll give you a hug. It’s just one of those things.) and you’re Orwellian and indefatigable, not to mention a great lay. (NOTE: Downright lying is a little different from not applicable, but she’ll appreciate it if you do it right)

Also a good rule: Make her laugh. Actually, make her laugh condescendingly. When your heart is broken it’s absolutely ok to try to make yourself feel better than someone else. Use snide comments about

Democrats
Republicans
Right wing nut jobs
Liberal pinkos
The ex
Stupid people
Tree huggers
Siblings
Celebrities
Red Necks
People who watch Public television
People who watch network television
Peoplw who watch cable
People with satellite TVs
People
Etc.

These are surefire tips to avoid having your sympathetic monologue met with rolling eyes. That is always a good thing. Really. I should know. Because I like rolling my eyes.

When In Doubt Look To The Numbers

2005-04-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

I'm finding that people counters on my blog are much more useful than one would think. Not only do they give my self esteem a much needed kick in the pants (In that loving way that only a people counter can accomplish with any authority... you know of what I speak) It also gives you a fairly fascinating topic, whenever you're suffering from th ever dreaded bloggers block.

Lets say that nothing worth discussing with the world at large has occured to you in recent times. Normally, this is where you would insert one of your painful attempts at actual fiction writing, but you're not in the mood today. Because for some reason you've got this feeling that real fiction isn't nearly as satisfying as fake fiction, because you're telling a story, which is completely different from lying... you know of what I speak.

So you're stuck. Topicless. Hung out to dry. And those bloodthirsty readers that you imagine are actually paying attention to you (ahhh, the imaginary audience... you know of what I speak) are clamoring out there for another installment! You've got bubkus! You're empty! You've been watching too much TV (is this a new recurring theme that will be surfacing whenever I'm not paying attention? Probably) and your brain looks like that ad where the guy's frying the egg! What are you going to do?

And the Lord sends a miracle. Manna typed from heaven floats gently down and touches your computer screen. You look at your people counter, and lucky you! You've hit another one of those hundred people milestones! This one happens to be 400 which happens to be twice the number since the last time you wrote about your loving (granted blood thirsty) audience. You are golden. You are saved. Your fans will have food for their starving mental palates this evening. Life can continue.

Random question (which is really the ONLY truly cool type of question... you know of what i speak) does anyone happen to know who was lucky # 400? Cuz I've got this fabulous idea involving you and me and a gallon of antibacterial soap...

I jest. But anyway, from here on out, keep an eye on my people counter, and if you happen to be one of those cool numbers ending in 00, pop me off an e-mail (selizawalden@yahoo.com) and I'll feature you in a prominant-yet not at all painful-featurette. it'll be like hosting SNL, I promise.

Vote For Me

2005-04-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for coming, please enjoy the free ice cream while you’re here. Oh, you didn’t get any? Pity, it must have been gone by the time you got here.

Anyway,

I’d like to announce my candidacy for Next Late Night Talk Show Host.

[Insert cheers, whistles, catcalls, boos here]

I’d be great, I promise. Why? You need reasons? What level of reality are you living on?

Oh, in that case…

Vote for me because I’m a girl. Why is it you hear all kinds of girls saying, "I want to be the first woman president when I grow up" but not, "I want to be the first woman late night talk show host when I grow up"? Have we already had one that took that title and never told anybody? Is that what this is?

Vote for me because if I ever get to be in the same room with Ben Affleck, I promise I’ll tell him off.

Vote for me because I’m a smart girl. You have NEVER seen one of these on TV before. Well, it’s possible that they exist, but are forced to stupidify themselves for ratings purposes (Oprah, this means you). I promise that as your next late night talk show host, I will not stoop to this level!

Vote for me because you can come sit in the audience and I’ll feed you ice cream.

Vote for me because I’ve got this theory about TV. Ready? It goes like this. Currently, TV has two modes. As a show you either make stupid people feel good about being stupid (WB, this means you) or you make stupid people feel smart while letting them still be stupid (CSI, this means you). This is a bad thing. Sure, if you made people smart, they might not watch TV as much anymore, and you wouldn’t make any money off of advertising because people wouldn’t watch your show. BUT you can’t let people go around being zombies all the time. Sure, it’s good business but it’s just plain rude. Where are your ethics?

Vote for me because you know you want to see what I look like drooling in front of Kevin Spacey.

Vote for me because I’ve got this theory about celebrities. Ready? It goes like this. They’ve got to HATE interviews. Why? Because answering the same questions all the time gets really boring. And because they end up talking about their private lives which, when you think about it, are NONE OF OUR FRIGGIN BUISNESS. (E! this means you.) I vow that as your next late night talk show host, I will put the joy back in the celebrity interview, and I will NOT bring up personal lives because this is NONE OF MY FRIGGIN BUISNESS.

Vote for me because if you don’t, I’ll hunt you down and strangle you with a rubber hose.

Vote for me because you want to watch me go down in flames. Seriously, what kind of ratings am I going to get if I go around and try changing the whole theory behind TV’s role in our society? Are there really enough living people in this culture to notice that I’m there to help them?

Vote for me because I promise not to be on TV the same time as Jon Stewart. You will not be forced to choose between us. Isn’t that nice?

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-04-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Golf season is quickly approaching. Do you have any tips on getting rid of my slice?
-Willie Munchright

Dear Willie,
Thank you for your incendiary and multi-dimensional query.

Contrary to popular opinion, the slice actually serves a valuable purpose, otherwise, why would it have been invented in the first place, am I right?

Imperfection is celebrated far less than it ought to be. It is, after all, our nature. We were never meant to be gods, not even before the whole apple thing. In fact, it was trying to turn ourselves into gods where we got into so much trouble. If Eve had just been satisfied with her slice originally, none of this would have happened, and I would not be afraid of giving birth. Thanks Mom.

The slice is your unconsciousness trying to tell you that you need to think outside the par. Go wide, go long, go short, go underground. Has your ball ever ended up in a rosebush? Let me guess. You grumbled and mumbled about all the thorns, but you never once stopped to smell the metaphor it offered. As my Paddy used to say, "It’s all in where it DOESN’T go."

Not to mention that a slice really improves the chances of your client winning, which is exactly the way the Fates intended it. So go on, embrace your inner slice. Celebrate and expand your slice related neurons, they will take you far in life.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
I am in an internet cafe, it is 11:19 at night, whole families with squalling infants are at the surrounding cubicles. (3 actually) What kind of a family outing is a trip to the internet cafe, exXxspecially one where I think the sign on the door says smoking mandatory or maybe it was "monitored", shaky on the alphabet, maybe it's something you understand once you have kids?
Skatecat

Dear Skatecat,
Thank you for your caffinated and salacious question.

Once upon a time Stork was soaring the vast blue expanse and she looked down and frowned. Many large families with squalling infants lived in small cramped houses turning grumpy and saying cruel things to one another. These words pierced Stork in the heart and caused tears to fall from her eyes. These tears turned into a stream, which became a creek, which became a river, which flooded a young town that lay in its way. The houses and elementary schools and banks and post offices were pulverized into the sticks and bricks and ticks from whence they came. The river calmed itself until the next year when Stork cried again. The river swelled again and this time when it receded there stood an Internet café. Stork saw this Internet café, and she said it was good. From that day forward, the Internet café would act as a family outing away from the small cramped houses which made them so grumpy and nasty.

Epilogue: Unfortunately, the internet café did not have the desired effect. Families still felt cramped and grumpy, and they still said cruel things to each other. But what can you do?
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Now I’m not a Catholic or anything, but I have many good friends who are. What is the proper way to congratulate them on their new leader?
Mr. Jones from Jonesboro

Dear Mr. Jones,
When in doubt, always send a thank you card. It heals a multitude of wrongdoings. I remember one such occasion involving me, a butcher knife, and my host’s poodle. One thing lead to another, and we found ourselves in a gruesome and awkward situation. Fortunately it was all smoothed over with a simple thank you card. You have no idea how much money that saved me!
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
This is the part of the show where I remind you how EASY and FUN it is to send a question to Miss Eliza. Because 1. It will totally get answered. 2. Everyone will be able to see how cool you are by what question you decide to ask. 3. It's my only form of communication with the outside world. Don't let me down! You can post your question in the comments section, or e-mail it to me @ selizawalden@yahoo.com
You know you want to, and if you don't, you know you wish you want to. I'm right, aren't I?
- Miss Eliza

And I'm The Nutcase

2005-04-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Does the world ever scare you? Do you ever read the paper and think to yourself, wait, isn’t this supposed to be fake? Why am I reading it in the newspaper?

Contrary to popular opinion, I think I’ve got a pretty firm base in reality. I can tell the difference between things I (or someone else) made up, and things that are actually happening. But then things happen:

-A lady gets charged with grand larceny because she says she found a finger in her chili.

-Tom DeLay decides that congress is actually supposed to control the judicial branch.

-Some cardinals get together, talk a little, vote a little, burn some white smoke and poof! Now someone who was just human five minutes ago is infallible.

And this scares me. Because I didn’t read about these things in some short story, or Hunter Thompson novel (or memoir depending on whether he was writing novels or memoirs) or supermarket tabloid. I watched it on the news last night. I read it in the newspaper last week. This is reality.

So I end up asking myself if reality maybe needs a stronger foothold in reality. I mean, if I can tell what’s supposed to be real and what’s not, then why can’t they? And if they CAN tell what is supposed to be real and what is supposed to be fiction, then why DON’T they?

And what about the public? Does the rest of the population know that things like this are supposed to be followed by a, "Just kidding"? Because I don’t get that feeling. It’s more like they take it with an "Isn’t that nice?" and a handful of popcorn.

Is this where the American Dream has ended up? Have we put tranquilizers in our apple pie? Is it really ok that reality is so insane? Because I’m just not feeling it.

Words of comfort to my cynical soul anyone?

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

2005-04-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Ginny: Honey what’s wrong?

Bob: Oh, I don’t know.

Ginny: You’ve been moping around for days. Is something wrong at work?

Bob: No, I just got that promotion, and now I’ve got the new office and everything, work is nice.

Ginny: Hmmm, maybe your sex life isn’t where it ought to be. [He looks at her] no, it can’t be that. Are you feeling like a slobby pig lately?

Bob: Uh uh. I’ve been getting to the gym regularly. It’s like this six pack is made of granite.

Ginny: And still you’re feeling down in the dumps.

Bob: I know. It’s like my whole life is going exactly the way I planned it, and all I can do is sit back and feel despondent.

Ginny: Sweetheart, I’ve got it!

Bob: Really? What’s wrong with me?

Ginny: You’re suffering from Too Much Focus. What you need is a strong dose of But That Wasn’t What I Had In Mind!

ANNOUNCER:
Yes it’s true. That Wasn’t What I Had In Mind might be just what your doctor ordered. Thousands of people each day report symptoms of depression, responsibility, and high maturity levels which can all result from Too Much Focus. We don’t know much about it at this time, but it is gaining acceptance among psychiatric circles. The best thing you can do when suffering from Too Much Focus is to take One But That Wasn’t What I Had In Mind! and call me in the morning.

Ginny: Here, eat this fruit roll up.

Bob: Fruit roll up? But that wasn’t what I had in mind.

Ginny: Exactly. Eat up. [he eats] A Fruit roll up is only a small dose, but give us a little time we’ll have you playing Duck Duck Goose with Boo Radley in no time.

Bob: Gosh, I’m feeling better all ready. Thanks But ThatWasn't What I Had In Mind!

[both turn and smile at the camera like maniacs.]

Crazy

2005-04-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I know that everyone thinks that their family is the craziest one in the universe, but I might have a legitimate claim on the title. I mean does your dad dress up like Buffalo Bill and stage imaginary Wild West shows on the lawn? Does your older sister stage Save The Platypus marches in the halls of junior high and expect fellow students to give a whit? And my mom? Let me tell you a little story about my mom.

I thought it was just another trip to the supermarket. I figured, we go. We pile things in the grocery cart, we put them in bags, we leave. That’s how grocery shopping works, right? And things were working so smoothly until we got to the paper products.

"David, honey, can you pick me up some toilet paper?" she asked me.

So I went to get some. Mom gets the green Soft Aloft toilet paper, which I never really understood. Why green? What does it really add to your bathroom that white toilet paper doesn’t?

But there was no green Soft Aloft. That was weird. I pulled down a package of this blue green color and went to catch up to my mother who had made it to dairy.

"Here you go," I said, and put the TP on top of the box of cereal.

She looked at the toilet paper, and she looked at me. "David, this isn’t green. Go find me the green. And put this teal crap back on the shelf."

Crap? Now, that’s harsh language for my mother. I didn’t understand what there was to be getting upset about, but she was working on it. Great.

"I looked for the green, Mom," I replied, "it wasn’t there."

"Of course it is, honey. It would be right next to this."

"It’s not. I checked. This was in between the blue and the pink. NO green."

She turned her cart around and headed in the direction of the Aisle 10. "You just have to look harder David. When are you going to learn to take your time and double check things?" cruising down the aisle we came to the toilet paper. She stopped in front of the rainbow of Soft Aloft.

"Here we are. Now, orange, pink, teal, blue, yellow… Where’s the green? The green’s not there."

"I know. So this blue green is close enough, right?"

"Teal, David. It’s called teal. You should always call things by their true name."

Blue green sounds like a true name to me, truer than teal anyway. what's with those random names of colors that no one can figure out?

"Whatever, can’t we just get it and move on?" I asked. Mom’s cart was in the middle of the lane. Some girl was coming up behind her, plotting a way to get by, not having much luck.

"No David, this is not the time to settle for second best. It’s the principle of the thing." That was one of her favorite things to say. It came up a lot when she felt indignant about something, mostly during arguments with my dad. "It’s time for you to learn about principles."

"In the grocery store? Can’t I learn about them when we get home?"

The girl rolled her eyes and decided not to wait for my mother to move. She pushed her cart over to the edge of the lane and squeezed by. These aisles must be wider than they look.

"But that is not the present. And there is no time like the present to learn about principles."

And with that she sat down on the floor and crossed her legs like an Indian.

"Mom, get up. You can’t sit on the floor here. I don’t think it’s allowed."

"Sweetheart, I think you’d be very surprised by what they allow in supermarkets."

"Well even if they do, it’s not cool. Please, can we go home?"

"There are more important things in life than cool, David. How many times have I told you that?"

An old man in one of those wheelchairs you can get in the store that have the steering wheel and the basket in the front was coming down aisle 10 now.

"Excuse me, ma’am," he said, "I need to get by you for some tissues. Would you mind moving over a bit?"

"I’m sorry, I can’t do that."

"Mom!" This was worse than not cool now. This was embarrassing. And we were going to get in trouble. "He’s just a nice man who wants to pick up a couple groceries. Can’t you please let him by?"

"Honey, when you decide to take a stand—or a sit in this case—the most important thing you can do is not cave in to outside pressure."

The man rolled his eyes. There must be something I could do.

"What kind of tissues were you looking for?" I asked him.

"Puffy Dreams, the biggest box they have."

I scooted around Mom’s blockade and grabbed him a box.

"I’m awfully sorry about her," I said on my way back. She was humming something and rocking back and forth, oblivious to us. "I just don’t know what to do."

He nodded. "Thanks for your help son." And he set off back down the way he came.

"Mom, I think you’ve made your point by now. Can we please, please go home? I’ve got homework to do."

She shook her head. Not allowing me to do homework? I really don’t know this woman.

Someone else was walking our way now. A tall young man in a button down shirt and a blue tie, he was wearing a badge that said, "Ted: Store Manager."

"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked. He was looking at me, so I pointed to my mom. Her head snapped towards his voice.

"You have no more green Soft Aloft. Were you aware of this situation?"

What kind of a question was that? He was the store manager, of course he’s aware of the situation. They know everything, those store managers.

"Yes ma’am," Ted replied, "It has been discontinued. Soft Aloft has stopped manufacturing their green toilet paper."

"And you just let them? Who cares about the customers who depend on this product. If it'’ not making any money, just pull it. How can you be so shallow?"

I wondered if this made any more sense to Ted than it did to me. Apparently not. He looked at me for help. My face was getting really hot, which meant that it was getting really red. I wanted to go home.

"You all right buddy?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "I had nothing to do with this. I just want her to get up. None of it makes any sense to me either."

He nodded. "What’s your name?"

"David Farthing."

"And you’re how old?"

"Eleven."

"I remember when I was eleven. My dad bought a bunch of old airplane seats and a movie screen and set them up on our front lawn. He wanted to charge all my friends to come watch. I was supposed to sell concessions."

"Crazy," I replied. I was getting to be an expert on the subject.

"Excuse me," Mom interrupted, what do you plan to do about this Soft Aloft situation? As a loyal customer, I demand action on your part."

"Well Mrs. Farthing, I can’t allow you to sit on this floor forever. You are stopping other loyal customers like yourself from shopping, not to mention the publicity from news crews that will most likely be arriving shortly. I’d like to settle this quickly. Is the teal so bad?"

"Young man," my mother snapped, "have you ever been in my bathroom?"

"No ma’am."

"That is correct. Because if you had been in my bathroom, you would know that my hand towels are green. Further more, you would know that that toilet paper," she flung her arm accusingly in the direction of the shopping cart, "has no business being in the same room as green hand towels. The clashing would plunge me into deep depression from which I might never recover."

So this was about hand towels? Hand towels! Crazy doesn’t cover this. Poor Ted.

Poor me.

Meanwhile, the lane was becoming more crowded. Gawkers with carts or baskets of groceries were pooling at either end. And was that a video camera? Great, the news was here. All my friends were going to see my crazy mother on TV. Not good.

Ted was thinking. You could see the gears working in his brain.

"Hmmm, hand towels. Well Mrs. Farthing, there’s only one way I can see to end this amicably."
My heart leapt. The ordeal was almost over. Life might go back to normal, or at least the weird version of normal that we usually settled for at my house.

"Now," he continued, "you are not going to be able to go back to green toilet paper. But if the only impediment is hand towels, then I would tell you that all you need is new hand towels."

Silence.

Mom blinked. She frowned. She squirmed. I feared. She shrugged and said, "Ok."

Clapping and cheering and whistling from the crowd. People began to file down the aisle for those groceries they hadn't been able to get to. Ted was receiving pats on the back and congratulations from customers. He deserved them too, talking my mom out of her insanity is just as noble as talking a suicidal jumper down from a window ledge. Ted was going to go places in life.

And as for us? Well, two weeks later my father informed us that we were moving. He’d found this great place in rural Maine. Got a great deal on the house and five acres of land because it was right next to the landfill. Crazy?

Crazy.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-04-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My co-worker is a very competitive person. For example, today I told her that I had cleaned my apartment last week. She countered that she had cleaned her house. What is the correct way to respond to someone who’s always trying to one up you like this?
Almost in Albuquerque

Dear Almost,
Much time, energy and money can be spent on being better than the other one. Instead of being bullied into playing the well-I’m-even-cooler-than-you game, you may want to laterally side swipe your opponent. (While I mean this in the most figurative of sentences, the literal sense can also work.)

Simply replying with an, "Oh, I’m so sorry!" is an excellent approach to take. Unless sympathy is what you are competing for. Then a rousing rendition of, "Well, they do say that laughter is the best medicine tee hee hee!" will work wonders.

Equally endearing are the responses, "Nope, sorry, not buying it," and, "I know you are but what am I?"
- Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza
I've heard that noodling for giant catfish is dangerous. Can you confirm or deny?
Rick Shaw

Dear Rick,
Thank you for your cautionary and distilling question.

The rumors are true. As I have had the unpleasant experience of finding out first hand, noodling for giant catfish is indeed dangerous.

"Go," they said. "It’ll be Fun," they said. "It’s only noodles and a catfish," they said. Fie, fie to them and their other thems. How could they have hoisted this tragedy upon my frail young shoulders?

Here’s the thing. One: The noodles are dry. Two: Giant catfish are extremely adept at weilding noodles. Since my "incident," Serious restrictions have been hoisted upon the noodling catfish industry. Some say that these restrictions take all the fun out of it, but those particular suicidal nuts have simply moved on to cheesing giant leopards.

But even with these new legislations, noodling giant catfish is still to be approached with caution and a very large plastic shield. These can be purchased at most respectable toy stores. And believe me, it’s worth the $3. $4 is pushing it though, so haggle a little if you need to.

Oh, and don’t try this on your honeymoon. It will only end in wailing and misery. I should know.
- Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
You know you want to try it, this asking of questions. Believe me, it's way easier than it sounds. 1. write a sentence. 2. re-write it in the form of a question. 3 post it in my comments or e-mail it to me @selizawalden@yahoo.com 4. Come up with a sweet smelling pseudonym. it makes all the difference in the world.

And remember it's a great tax writeoff.
- Miss Eliza

How To Stage An Argument

2005-04-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

According to one who would know because he gave me half his genes, I am an abstract thinker.
You’re shocked, aren’t you?

With this realization, I have decided to channel my powers towards the greater good of all mankind. I am going to teach it how to argue. Because, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but mankind has got it all wrong.

The first step towards arguing Nirvana is correctly picking your partner. What you’re looking for is a go with the flow kind of person. You don’t want to get in the middle of a brilliant point only to have her stop you and say, "But that doesn’t make any sense!" You want someone who can match you in flexibility, nimbleness and subject jumping.

Next thing you want to choose carefully is your topic. Do not pick something that you hold so near and dear to your heart that you are forced to take it seriously. That gets in the way of amusement. Or, if you do want to argue about this thing, then argue the other side. It’s more difficult, but that also means it’s better exercise. Good topics: pros and cons of McDonalds salads, humvees, or dandruff shampoo. Bad topics: your relationship with your mother, tsunami relief or the catholic church (this last one only if you are devout, for anyone else it’s fair game).

And you’re off. Now what you want to remember is that people today have the wrong focus when they are arguing. It’s not about whether you win or lose or get the last word. What is really important is how smart you look when you say something. That’s important enough for me to repeat it in color.

It’s not about whether you win or lose or get the last word. What is really important is how smart you look when you say something.

Also to be remembered: Logic is much more pliable than they would have you believe. Un-logic (is this different from illogic? Perhaps, perhaps not) is to be avoided at all costs, but pseudo-logic is God’s favorite gift to mankind. Or maybe it’s my favorite of God’s gifts to mankind. Yeah, that’s it. And when inserted into arguments, pseudo-logic (perhaps better known as sophistry, but perhaps not) is a butt load of fun.

NOTE: Use of pseudo-logic is the reasoning behind finding yourself a pliable sparring partner. If you find yourself stuck with an old fuddy duddy who wants your points to conventional sense (as opposed to pseudo-sense) you have my sympathy.

And finally, it is exceedingly cumbersome to have an over arching point that all your little baby points are trying to lead to. It really limits where you can take this thing. So instead of arguing your thesis, concentrate more on "anti-other guy" tactics. Jolly good fun, that, and it really spreads out the playing field and weapons of choice.

With these simple rules you will able to astound your anti-you and entertain listeners everywhere. In the end all sides are left with a sense of profound relaxation and the need to smoke a cigarette.

Demographics

2005-04-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

Happy 200!

I have been doing research on the topic of demographics. Who is reading my blog? Are they coming back and reading the next day? And so I have been conducting a thorough survey of surfers. My sample size was "everyone who has read this blog except you." Why did I feel the need to leave you out of this? Well, our history has been a little rocky, if you’ll recall. But here are the results that I have complied. (I would enter them into a pie chart or graph or something, but my computer savvy ends with typing letters.)

90% of users are lonely single males. Without exception they found this web address on a bathroom stall. You would be surprised at how popular I am on bathroom stalls. I’ve heard tales of notes saying, "Thanks bud. You were totally right about Miss Eliza" or, "She can stick a mouse in my hair any time."

5% of readers are super well adjusted males. You can define a super well adjusted male by how much time he spends reading blogs. The lower the number of blogs read, the more well adjusted he is. For my purpose, "well adjusted" can be determined as less than or equal to three.

4.9% of my readers are male fictitious beasts. The minatour especially is very fond of my adorable post topics. He told me that he sits down with a big bowl of popcorn, but he leaves the ice cream in the freezer because It'’ just too rich.

.09% of my readers are prokaryotes. Now you wouldn’t expect single celled organisms with no nucleus to be able to maneuver the internet, or a computer for that matter. But in the future computers will in fact become this simple to operate, and time travel is actually going to make it’s debut in time travel, so they enjoy visiting my blog in the here and now.

.009% (which if you’re keeping track is .0018th of one person) of my readers are unsure of their own identities. You may find this fact curious, but it’s easy enough to come to grips with if you are aware of the following facts: First off, some people have vitamin deficiencies, and in the next place, we aren’t all Mister Smarty Pants like you.

Finally, .001% of my readers are female. This is really the most interesting number of the bunch. Why do so few women read my blog? This requires further reasearch, but I am told that the president of Harvard is a leading authority in this area. You could ask him.

Do you have any questions about these numbers? Would you like to argue with them? Feel free to try. I can’t promise you’ll win because I don’t argue fair, but that’s a whole new bottle of bubbles.

Profanity

2005-04-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

Like all things, swearing ought to follow several simple rules to maintain maximum effectiveness.

First: Only swear when you mean it. Extraneous usage dilutes potency. So wait. And if it gets to the point where you feel deep down in the very core of your being that it’s time to let it go, just open your mouth, and life will take care of itself.

NOTE: Listening to your inner potty mouth does not mean that you need to be sparse in your choice of vocabulary. An example: Lets say I was watching the Red Sox game against Toronto last Friday. (Ha! As if you thought I would be able to talk about this subject without bringing up baseball. Do you not know me at all?) And lets say we got to the ninth inning. And lets say that I got a little pissed at Mr. Foulke for his downright shitty performance. Am I going to stop after shitty? Hell no. An appropriate response would be, "You god damned mother fucking cunt of an asshole!" followed by, "fucky, fucky" through every at bat thereafter.

And don’t get me started on David Wells.

Second: Be creative. If the situation calls for swearing, you must not settle for a half hearted "dick." If you’re going to get your mouth washed out with soap, you’re going to want to get enough dirty words in there to make it worth while. You don’t clean your dishes after just one meal. You wait, let them accumulate, and do a mother load that takes you an hour. So put some heart into it. Instead of "dick" why not go with "asshole with a hard-on" or "you ass fucking whore of dip shit."

Third: Swears do not under any circumstances have to make sense. (And if you think differently, then I would suggest a week of cuticle therapy.) Be honest with yourself. If you’re sending off a stream of foul rottenness, no one is going to be paying attention to the grammar. If I say, "Pansy fucking cock wadded asshole" are parents going to ask just how you think you’re supposed to fuck a pansy, and where the wadded cock fits into this picture? I don’t think so.

But be careful. Swearing was not meant for everyone. In fact I firmly believe that there are two types of people in this world. People who can pull it off, and people who should be banned from swearing for all of eternity. And I fully back any legislation that would call for a liscencing process for swearing.

To My Dearest and Most Adoring Public

2005-04-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

(That’s all of you, so don’t worry. You can feel free to continue reading. I’m not going to bite your head off. Actually, I’m not going to bite anything of yours at all. I have to teeth. That’s a lie. Confused yet? No. You haven’t even been introduced to Confused yet. If he stops by I promise I’ll introduce you.)

It has recently come to my attention that I am a loser. (Ok, that’s a lie. It was not so recently. See, it’s one of those pretty hard to miss things, you know like American Idol or that bus that’s heading right for your head. Duck!)

But this particular incarnation of belittlement has to do with my blog. Have you noticed how few comments I get? Me too.

This is all my fault. You see, I lack pizzazz. Because why else would people not comment on my sharply dressed, insipid words that leave warm fuzzies in your heart? (Don’t worry, these fuzzies will not lead to clotting, It’s more of a hug than anything else.) And I do lack pizzazz. The concept is as foreign to me as the word "sexy" or the implementation of transition sentences.

So obviously, I have work to do. How can I make all you people visiting my site write something? It’s tricky. (I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised. When I start talking the most a get in response is what is referred to as a smile-and-nod.) (For those of you that are not familiar the smile-and-nod can be translated to "and why is this person allowed to walk around on the streets?" to which I reply, "crazy yes, but I’m also completely harmless." Of course, I don’t SAY this. It’s implied in my answering gesture, the headstand-and-giggle.) (Have I mentioned how cool parentheses are?)And it’s hard to turn the smile-and-nod into a comment. But I’m sure that once the move has been perfected, my comments will rise dramatically (in number if not in content) and I’ll step away from my loser blog girl status.

In the meantime I understand that it’s up to me to point a gun at my beloved (and beloving—at least until I pointed a gun at their heads—) public. And so, here goes.

You should post a comment on my blog because it means that you’re smart. You will even get a chance to look smarter by snootily denouncing every word that I have written, much the same way that I do.

You should post a comment on my blog because it’s good buisness. It draws attention to yourself. And we all want more attention. It’s why we dream about being naked. All about attention. Mark me. You want it. This is a GREAT place to get attention.

You should post a comment on my blog because you never know, this could be your chance to get discovered by talent scouts… or writing scouts… or boy scouts. Famous people might read this site. (Why? They’re waiting for me to say something evil about them, which I will… just you wait.)

You should post a comment on my blog because you like to tell people what to do, and this is the perfect opportunity. Think I need more iron in my diet? Or that I ought to stop leaning in on my back swing? Or that I need to fix my grammar? (This could actually be a lost cause. Studies are being performed at the moment to look into this possibility.) TELL ME! I cannot satisfy your every need if I am not aware of them! I don’t know everything (unless I’m wearing my Miss Eliza hat) and I’m not psychic. You must give me directions.

You should post a comment on my blog because it’s polite. Just ask Abby. Even better, ask Miss Eliza. She would know.

You should post a comment on my blog because you want to see how I will react. I can always be counted on for a reaction worth paying attention to. What can I say, it’s a gift.

You should post a comment on my blog because it makes an excellent release valve for pressure. And I should know. It’s my number two reason for writing a blog. (My number one reason is of course to move the people counter.) So blow off some steam and sit back, relax, sip a hot toddy, and laugh condescendingly at my reply to your comment.

You should post a comment on my blog because you vehemently disagree with the statement (made originally by a third party, or possibly a fourth, there’s no real way of knowing) that I am a loser. I know that it is truly your desire to play the night in glistening armor, galloping in to save the reputation of a fair maiden.

You should post a comment on my blog because there is absolutely no better possible use of the 60 seconds it would take to write it. I didn’t make that up either. I have it on the highest authority. I’d tell you, but I made a vow early in my blogging career never to reveal my sources.
And I promise, I’ll work on my pizzazz.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-04-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why do some people have a drive to do great things, while others have a drive to see great things, and yet others seem to have no drive at all?
Driven Crazy in Thesisland

Dear Driven Crazy,
Thank you for your inspirational and limpid question. As with driving a car, this sort of driving is also based on a licensing system. Class A drivers want to do great things. Class B drivers want to see great things. And class C drivers failed the test.

Wait, you say, I don’t remember taking this test. When did I take this test?

Little known fact, this is the true story behind kindergarten screening. Between the eye test and the ear test and the part where you soon-to-be teacher gives you a book is this test. Being so early in life it has faded away into the oblivion of our memories along with all those geometry theorems and that song you learned for the piano recital.

The test has three different parts. First we have the interview:

Teacher: Now little Johnny, what to you feel you can contribute to the greater good of your community, your nation, mankind and a future galactic empire?
Kid: I have a dog. Do you know my dog? He’s brown and his name is Duke.
Teacher: What is your impression of the surrealist movement. Do you feel it was a cause of o an effect of early twentieth century counterculture and drug usage?
Kid: I like to play with play dough. My mom has this recipe and we help her make it, and we get to choose what color we want. I like orange.

And so it goes. Points are awarded based on how relevant the answers are to the questions, though actually answering the questions is not required.

The second part of the test is all about the child’s abilities. Those measured are:

whistling
skipping
eating without needing to change your shirt
following one direction
following a Socratic argument
implementing a Socratic argument
Jumping rope
Sliding down a banister
Throwing a right hook

Grades prove that where Johnny is now determines where he will be in 40 years. The grading system is highly complicated with five different differential equations, but the results, oddly enough, are smack on accurate.

The third part is the swimsuit competition. This is a newer addition to kindergarten screening. The first year it was included was 1967. It is a co-ed test, but the boys are asked to try it in their mothers’ high heeled shoes (wearing boy bathing suits) while girls walk the runway barefoot and laugh. It is all about poise, confidence, and hair.

And in the end the children are separated into three categories: Class A drivers, Class B drivers, and class C drivers. And then they grow up and act like it.

Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why do they make baseball caps of football/basketball/hockey/etc. teams?
- Tam O’ Shanter

Dear Tam
It is obvious that makers of football/basketball/hockey/etc. are big fat cheaters. They are simply too lazy to stick their logo on things that belong to themselves. As my Paddy used to say, "This is tragic." Not only does it teach our children to plagiarize (it’s not like you have notes attached to the hats saying, the design for this hat was originally intended for baseball players) but it show a shocking lack of creativity. I could do so much better. See here:

Football: ought to be selling team shoulder pads.
Basketball: Stick logos on arm/leg/finger extensions.
Hockey: teams should claim fighting styles.
Soccer: Team accents. As in the verbal kind.

Now tell me that wouldn’t be way fun and totally cool.
- Miss Eliza

Stephen King Throws Like A Girl

2005-04-09T05:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I saw Fever Pitch. What did you expect? I’m one of… you know… those people. And I can relate. Do you know how hard it is to try and keep baseball talk to a reasonable amount in this blog because of all those other people out in the world? It’s WAY harder than not talking about myself. So we’ll see.

But about that movie…

It had its great points.

-Tek makes an appearance, and I think I got a half second shot of Nomar which is always good for my heart. Unless it wasn’t him. It was hard to tell in half a second.
-Ben’s green monster wall? Classy. Nice touch. I like seeing that Ben has his priorities straight… -Red Sox, sex and breathing? That’s such a good line.
-The sound track. Dirty Water, Sweet Caroline, Tessie. They know how to pull heart strings, those ones.
-The Bill Bucker intervention? Dead on.

And it’s got evil nasty points.

They definitely downplayed the whole Red Sox thing. I know that sounds illogical, but they did. The choice seems to have been made. Lets make this about the fans. And we fans LOVE to talk about ourselves. All Ben’s philosophizing on the subject is dead on. Dead on in that we do spend an awful lot of time philosophizing about our fandom (and looking down on Yankees fans. Seriously people, booing Mariano Rivera? What is wrong with you!!?)

But let me explain something. Reveling in Red Sox fans is like eating condiments. It’s not the most attractive part of the meal. We need the food, we need the actual nutritional value. We need the Red Sox! Where’s that post season eight game winning streak? Where’s all the Yankee hating? Come on, the least you could do is have one disparaging remark on the subject of A-Rod. That July 23 game? Hello! It’s like they thought the movie was supposed to be about the plot or something. I mean, come on.

So I’ve been one of… well, you know… for a few years now. A relative new comer, I’m pretty low on the totem pole. This doesn’t bother me. I know my place. But still, I’ve learned things. For example, we get emotional about these games. We pout when we lose, we jump up and down when we win. Ben was disturbingly level headed throughout the movie. I blame this on Jimmy Fallon. And why the Farley brothers let him get away with that is beyond me. They should know better.

Then there’s nitpicking.

Let me explain something. If it’s September and Schilling pitches on Saturday, Pedro is not pitching on Sunday. Kudos for ever, Ben would not have let that comment by Linsdey slide, but his line should have been, "Schilling’s pitching Saturday, Arroyo’s going on Sunday." Come on, they can’t have totally forgotten the rotation: Pedro, Wake, Schilling, Arroyo, Lowe. (And this was the September rotation. For most of the year Lowe was #4.)

The F in Bucky F. Dent does not stand for Friggin. Nobody says Bucky Friggin Dent. I can see their reluctance to use harsher language, but still. Some things are just wrong enough to hit a chord.

Remember that half shot of Nomar? That was supposed to be at Fenway Opening Day. But he wasn’t in the lineup Opening day. He was on the DL most of the first half of the season… and with the Cubs most of the second half of the season… so yeah. Unless it wasn’t really Nomar. Could have been Tek. I was going by the go-tee.

So it’s got issues. Which I understand. The movie was not made for Red Sox fans it was made for everyone. And y’all might have a hard time relating if the movie was concocted as Red Sox Nation intended it. But this is not so hard to remedy. We are patient people. We can wait for the DVD. But what I want is an RSN cut. So put Tek/Damon/Nixon’s lines back in. More Yankee stuff. You can’t just act like the rivalry is all about toilet paper and getting tickets to their games. More post season stuff. This cannot be stressed enough. More post season.

Join with me in a petition to put the Red Sox back in Red Sox fan!

Questions Of The Day

2005-04-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

When did public libraries become so irrelevant to my life? Why can I never find the books that I’d really like to read and not want to buy?

Where has all my nonsense gone? I blame it on my current reading material. We are what we eat, right? So If we’re eating boring books then we’re writing boring blog entries. I apologize for this. But if you have anything tasty to offer, I’ve got vacation coming up. And we all know that they were invented for reading books suggested by blog readers. Further incentive: giving me good books will lead to worthy blog entries.

Will you still love me when I’m sixty four?

Does David Wells belong in a Red Sox uniform?

How many books can I read over April vacation? This I will attempt to keep you updated on. With any luck I’m going to finish this Howard Hughes biography this week, which will leave that next week WIDE open for better things. Honestly, this book? I have no idea how these authors manage to make Hughes sound exactly like any other person that was ever born. All biographies ought to be reflective of the life they are explaining. So the question is, who is nutty and obsessive-compulsive enough to talk about Howard Hughes? I’d like to see Ray Bradbury give it a try. Or James Ellroy, The Cold Six Thousand is how I got into Hughes in the first place.

Why aren’t more people asking questions of Dear Miss Eliza? Seriously, you do realize that it’s fake advice, right? You know what that means? That means that fake questions are TOTALLY par for the course. So make something up. Then I’ll make something up. Then we’ll all be happy.
Have the Red Sox decoded Mariano Rivera?

Who is going to be the next pope?

Why is Keith Foulke trying to kill me? For those of you who didn’t follow the game, let me explain. Bottom of the 9th. Red Sox winning, 6-3. At the end of the game the score is 6-5 Red Sox with the bases loaded. He wants me to die. So maybe it’s not just Rivera. Maybe it’s a bad year for closers.

What’s with my new young adult novel fetish? I don’t know. But I just finished Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. It’s just like all of his adult novels, except he toned down the language.

And why is it that authors who write about life in Florida ALWAYS write about life in Florida?

Does the song "Dirty Water" count as classic rock? Does it count as classic rock when you’re talking about it in relation to a radio station owned by Stephen King?

Are there more people in the future who are going to expect Jimmy Fallon to carry a movie? Could he do Kevin Smith? That might be interesting.

Why is it so easy to pass three hours + of time listening to a baseball game?

I need sleep. Well, that’s what my eyes are telling me. They’re turning very unnatural colors. Let your imagination take you where it will. In fact, give your imagination five minutes to do just that. It’s good practice. Then tell me how it goes. I promise I won’t laugh… unless I’m supposed to… and if I am, you’d better warn me ahead of time, just so I know.

Speaking of which, you’d think that my entries would be improved at needing sleep stage. Why? Because all my blogs sound like they were written when I was half asleep. I know, because I read one once. So what’s the problem?

Right.

Girl Meets Boy

2005-04-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

He’s been staring at these fingernails for two minutes. I’ve been timing him. How long can it last? What, you think I’m gonna stop him? You know how much these babies cost? Two inches and cherry red, (to match my lipstick) admire away. How long before he buys me a drink?

I can’t help it. Those fingernails? Some sexy. The way she’s tapping that glass? They’ve gotta leave marks, the good kind. No ring. I should do something about this. Nice girl like that? It’s a pity to let an ass like that get lonely.

Three minutes, four seconds, and on to my butt. Now that is a work of art. And if I’m bragging it’s only because I deserve it. I worked hard on that thing. Buns of Steel, Stairmaster, leg weights, please let me stop. When’s he going to make a move?

I need another shot. Will three be enough? Who decided that the man has to do all the hard stuff? Oh sure, she does the whole baby thing. Nine months and all that, but WE’RE the ones who have to make that move. The first line? That perfect mix of cheesy and smooth. Those things are not so easy to find. And they never manage to appreciate it. Maybe after four. Or five. I’ll order five.

Tell me he’s going to do something. Tell me he’s not going to sit on that stool until it forgets how to hold him. Look at his hair! Think a guy with that much style shows up every day? We’re talking keeper just based on that. Maybe a smile. Those break the ice. And I haven’t been using that tooth whitening shit for two months for nothing, right?

She smiles at me and raises her glass. I follow suit. Here’s to tonight. I down the shot. I’m almost there. One or two more. The bar tender’s rolling his eyes. As he pours he looks at me. I know. Shut up. And how about a little camaraderie, huh? Like he really doesn’t know what this is doing to me. He pours another.

"Oh, is that for me?"

I had to do something. Boys. Why do they always manage to freeze like that? And we have to do everything. So not cool. And yet, those arms? So very cool. And the boy can dress. He’s had lessons. That’s not a male’s natural state. Me on the other hand? It may take hours, like these stilettos, or days, you should see this halter top I’ve got on, but I will keep on. I know what to look for. And that would be him. Come on, bubba. Your move.

She smells like cinnamon. And mere inches away. I can touch her. Ok, I could touch her. I don’t. I offer her the shot instead. She accepts, and those nails sort of scratch my fingers. Nice. So nice. Oh, did I mention that? Yeah. I need to say something. Something cool. What’s cool?

"So uh, you have a watch or something?" Oh shut up. It used to go down really well. Sure, it was middle school. But things don’t cange that much in ten yers, do they?

A watch? With this belt? Right. So he’s not perfect. Like that’s a shocker. I’m not kicking him out of bed yet. I pull out my cell.

"10:42. PM. You late for something?"

"What?" Where’d that come from? Why are girls always pushing what you say way out of proportion? "Oh, no. It’s just…" Just what? I’m such a dork. And she’s such a… yeah.

"Curfew, huh?" I’m joking. I hope he can tell. Does sarcasm penetrate when you’re trashed? It had better. I could use a little help here.

"Ha ha. So hey, My name's Adam. It's a pleasure, I must say."

He's grinning. Comfort level rising. Stress level falling. This is working. "You’re kidding! My friends are always teasing me about meeting an Adam. I get it a lot. Never from a real Adam though. You’re my first." That got through all right. Like I didn’t see that coming. "See, my name is Eve."

Eve. That sounds familiar. Do I know an Eve from somewhere?

It’s not registering. This is worse than I thought. So much fo progress.

"Oh! Eve! I get it. Sorry, I get a little slow sometimes."

"Bars will do that to you." Now that was a good line. If all words added up to good lines like that all by themselves, we'd be dandy forever and always.

"So Eve, is that your real name, or are you making fun of me?" Why is talking so much easier when it comes in the middle of a conversation?

"Adam, would I do something like that?" The tease wasn't too heavy in there was it? A little thick maybe? Apparently not. He's still mired down in his liquor.

"Good question. I’ll have to investigate before I answer that." Investigate? Oh wouldn't I love an investigation. Keep your fingers crossed, k? I mean, she looks like she's up for it, but you know how girls are... wait, women, how women are. Yeah.

"Uh oh. This sounds serious. Am I in trouble? Do you have a pair of handcuffs I don’t know about?"

Wait a minute. She must be doing this on purpose. Right? This isn’t a conversation. This is completely different. It’s called flirting. I should have noticed sooner. I haven’t had that much to drink have I? Anyway, flirting. Forward ho!

"Sorry Miss. That’s confidential. I could tell you but…"

And I’ve got him. Like pulling teeth. When are they going to come up with an easier model? "That serious, huh? Looks like I should be pleading no contest."

"As your attorney, I must advise against trying that sober. Why don’t I buy you a drink?"

Thirteen minutes and twenty nine seconds. Bingo!

Yankee Hating: It's just not a Choice Anymore

2005-04-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

It’s hard not to hate the Yankees. I know because I’ve tried. Once upon a time in the earliest halcyon days of red sox fandom youth (clunky, yes. But it says what I wanted it to.) I was an idealist.

"I like the Red Sox, but I don’t hate the Yankees," I told people. They smiled and nodded. It’s a gesture I’ve become very familiar with. And I thought it would work. Honest. But then something happened.

The Red Sox played the Yankees.

There wasn’t anything special about this series. I don’t remember a single thing about it except that we lost. More than one game. Hmmm.

This was a problem for me. I tend to take losing personally. And just as suddenly as I had developed my Red Sox fixation, I acquired my Yankee Hater badge.
And things went downhill from there.

2003 ALCS.

A-Rod. (For the record, I was always a Garciappara girl. A-Rod was unwelcome from the very beginning. I didn’t mind him going to the Yankees either. But then he tried to pick a fight with Dear Mr. Arroyo, and ended up with a face full of glove courtesy of Dear Mr. Varitek. Now tell me that wasn’t personal. And do I even need to mention Game 6 ALCS 2004? So if my babies want to take pot shots at this creep and put it all on the record, well, who am I to stop them?)

So if bad/stupid things happen to members of the Yankees roster (for example, say the Yankees starting pitcher gets a little upset after a loss and relieves this aggression by punching a wall, and as a result he breaks his hand) you can bet I’m going to be sitting right here with a smirk on my face.

But then, I never said I was a good person… unless I did, in which case, I was lying.
And now, this is all ancient history. And the Red Sox came from Three Games Down, and we’ve spent the winter gloating. Which, while pleasurable, is also a good way to set yourself up for an incredibly painful Opening Day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for the Red Sox (because, while not genetically inclined, I’m a hopeless Yankee hater) but when you add our recent opening day history to the New and Improved Yankees pitching staff, it could get ugly. Riot police part deux? I wouldn’t rule it out.
And as for me, I’ve got my Red Sox hat… and swat shirt… and t-shirt… and my red socks and I’m hoping to enter a land with many soft throwable objects and intoxicating beverages.

But my cussing is a little rusty. I forgot about my spring training. Oops.

p.s. Today is a double dose of Signs of Spring (triple if you include the flooding) because we change our clocks today. Doesn't it give you warm fuzzies all over when you go ouside at 7:00 and find the sun hovering there on the horizon to say hello? It doens't get any better than Baseball and seven o'clock sunsets. Life is good.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-04-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why are slugs usually found in gardens?
-Dirty Hands in Denver

Dear Dirty Hands,
Thank you for your grubby and slimy contribution to the Miss Eliza column. Please write again!

You’ll be happy to know I went right to the source on this one.

I stepped out into the early morning haze and inhaled that infamous aroma that says, "I hope you parked your car on the high ground today," and trotted off to that 4x4 patch (and that’s inches) better known as my herb garden. And as I looked down at my bare toes I beheld a golden lump of snot. He looked so contented with his lot in life, care taking my plants and telling them stories about when they were knee high to a grasshopper’s nose. I poked the young gentleman onto my forefinger and brought him up to eye level.

"Oh, it’s you," he says. I attribute the flatness in his tone to the fact that he is after all, a slug.

"Oh, wise and aged creature, share with me your delectable secrets. I long so to be one with nature and her family," says me.

"Freak," says he. (You may wonder, how did I know it was a he? The guy would not stop looking at my chest. Dead giveaway.)

"Answer me this, oh heart of the land, why do you and your kin reside in the soft dirt of man’s garden? What secrets does Mother Earth share with you here?"

"Look, I don’t know what’s up with you, but I took this job cuz of the bennies. And when they take my bennies away, I’m gone. Get it?"

And there you have it. Slugs reside in gardens cuz of the bennies. Of course, it didn’t occur to me to ask what kind of bennies come with being a slug in a garden, but lets hope there’s a dental plan.
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Each evening my husband and I get in a huge argument over who should do the dishes. This quite often ends in hurling of said dishes across rooms. To date we’ve gone through 15 casserole dishes, 54 plates, 99 water glasses, and 4 windowpanes. We’ve agreed that the only way to keep our deposit on the house is to get an arbitrator, and congratulations, that's you! So, Miss Eliza, who should do the dishes, me or my husband?
--Paper Plates in Portland

Dear Paper Plates,
Thank you for your philosophical and clearly equalitative question. I shall do my best.
This is a conundrum as old as human civilization. The minute Eve brought home her first set of Correllware, Adam immediately replied, "Ain’t to way I’m cleaning that." And Eve retorted, "Don’t go there, buddy. You eat off it, you clean it."

Which sounds like a good rule of thumb, doesn’t it? But here’s the problem. If that was the answer, then it would come later in my letter. So we must look for other alternatives.

My personal favorite is the "Baby Knows Best" theory. This says that infants are far more in tune with the age old wisdom of the universe. Their answers to life’s questions ought to be recorded somewhere and kept sacred. But you have to ask before they lose this knowledge. There is a very small window of time between the time they learn to speak and the time their wisdom shrinks to the size of a singularity. (But without all the density which is disappointing.) About the only time you’re going to get anything useful out of them is around the time of the first word.

Which means basically that which ever name your baby says first, "momma or dada," that’s you’re answer.

Not that the other partner gets off scott free. Where’s the equality in that? No, whoever doesn’t do the dishes is forever after in charge of washing, pairing, and folding socks.

And as for all you sparring couples out there that have no children, I’m an old fashioned girl, and I fall back on old fashioned methods. This particular one is called "Rock, Paper Scissors." Perhaps you’ve heard of it. You can play it once, or you can play best of three. But upwards of that and you’re just stalling and should be shot.

I hope that answers your question.
-Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Why are boys such liars?
--Honest Abbella

Dear Abella,
The answer to this question lies with us. Females have none to blame but ourselves. Boys lie to us because the truth has the same effect on us as water does on the Wicked Witch of the West (only without the melting). This is true. Why do you think you can’t get a straight answer when you ask "does this make me look fat?"

Let’s review this question. In my experience it can come into play on two types of occasions. The first is if you really are having doubts about your outfit. In which case the answer is one you can give yourself. If you have to ask, you ought to change.

So let’s say you ask your date, "Does this make me look fat?" If his answer in any way echoes your concerns (which presumably are related somewhere to the truth) then you’ll be upset because the thinks you’re fat. You get huffy and he gets scared because they were right about women scorned. He knows this. He’s not a big fan of scared. He’s going to avoid it.

Girls are scary. You know it, and I know it, and boys know it. But for the sake of sex, they are required to find a way around this. This is called lying. Under the circumstances, I would only call it fair.
-Miss Eliza

Game Day

2005-04-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

So I’ve been awake for all of half an hour, and already I’m bursting with today’s blog entry. See, I had the idea while I was toiletrying in the bathroom this morning, and as soon as I was out, it was zip zap to the computer. NO, no, it’s not that I’m trying to be a goody two shoes:

Ooh, look at her the little do gooder. The Blogger’s pet, she just wants to make us look bad.
(We make ourselves look bad enough. We don’t need help from the rest of the world. Am I right? Who’s with me?)

It’s more that my fun idea… because a blog by any other name is a fun idea… may or may not stick around long enough to fiddle with if I don’t fiddle as you read this.

So here’s things. I’ve come up with a couple really fun games in the space of twenty minutes. This two fer is really a deal, considering how often it is that I come up with games… at least games with rules. So here goes.

They
Yes, it’s an off shoot of my blog yesterday. I know it’s not kosher to go harping on this one idea, but then this game came up and bought me a drink, and it’s all downhill from there. You know how it is.

Anyway, here’s how to play. Person One (for our purposes we’ll call him One) names several people. Ex. Ruth Ginsberg, Beverley Cleary, and Lucy Lawless. Then persons Two through whatever (for our purposes we’ll call them Two through whatever) have to come up with a sentence starting with They, where They is all the people that One mentioned.

Sadly, due to people’s dearly lacking creativity skills, we are forced to add more rules. Your sentence has to be at least ten words long, three of them having more than three syllables, and you have to have a verb, an adjective and a (dreaded) adverb in the sentence. None of this "They are nice," crap. Scrabble may go for it, but not me. If it’s not challenging it’s not educational.

Then all players vote on the best sentence, unless you only have One and Two, in which case you play until you get hit over the head by a foul ball. In this case, the one who’s still alive wins.

WWWS
Better known as "What Would W Say?

NOTE: While I realize that in the blog society it is proper to write Dubyah or something similar, as with all my other Bushisms, this one is purposian, and for effect.

NEXT NOTE: I understand that he’s given up his fun habit of rewordification, which is why this isn’t a drinking game. But just because he’s decided not to play this game anymore, doesn’t mean we can’t. He did inspire it after all, and it is the natural way of things to enjoy our leaders’ soft spots. Monkeys do it too. Just watch. And if nothing happens, watch longer.

Anyway, I’m sure you can all guess how this game goes. Person A (we’ll call him Person A for our purposes) shouts out a word. Then Person B (we’ll call him Person B) shouts out a modificationism of that word. Then Person C (who may or may not exist) shouts out another modifcationality. And round and round it goes until some one can think of any more modifiscetomations, at which time he yells "Nuculear!" and you start over again.

And remember, as with all games, so it goes with these. The fun isn’t in winning or losing. The fun is how you get there.

The Few The Proud The They

2005-03-31T07:13:00.000-08:00

This is the part of the show where Sarah comes out and yells at people and their clichés. "For heaven’s sake," she says, "take the road less traveled and quit boring us all to death." She wants to start with a newie but a goodie. In fact it may, or may not, have even reached the level of cliché at this point, but it is close enough to make Sarah say, "grrr. How about a new question please?" And so, without further delay is Sarah and her They.

Hi folks, I know how much you’ve all been anticipating my answer to this question, right? In fact I’m shocked, no aghast, no shocked that not one of you has written to Miss Eliza and demanded a response. But since nobody did, I’m going to address the topic in my NEW column Cliché Busters. Y’all know what I’m talking about right? The age old question, "So who is this They that everyone keeps talking about?"

And my answer is, stop asking. It’s getting old. Try something new this week, like, "Who is this You that I keep referring to?" It’s vastly more philosophical, baffling, and fun. But I digress.
For those of you who don’t know, they is a PRONOUN that can be used to talk about many things. Whatever this thing is that your THEY is replacing, that’s the ANTECEDANT. This cryptic "They" that everyone talks about all the time doesn’t really have an antecedent and should be capitalized because it’s just so darn special. It also talks a lot, as in, "They say that there’s a war on." Yes, They do say that, and after They say that, then they start saying that to be just like They but they aren’t, and you know it, and they know it because if you ask them who They is, their answer isn’t going to involve the words, me, myself, or I.

SIDE NOTE: that was way fun to write by the way. I just wanted you to know that.

Apparently They are the originators of all of these ideas like the one that goes, "there’s a war on." Which means that They are the creators of the nation’s talking points. Not so strange now that you know, huh? Getting the answer is as satisfying as drinking flat Coke.

But They are not the leaders in some vast conspiracy involving crop circles, oil reserves, and JFK. I’m not saying that there aren’t any cast conspiracies involving crop circles, oil reserves, and JFK, I’m just saying that these conspiracies are invented by actual antecedents and not your generic Them. Got that?

The ones that make me want to groan condescendingly are people that ask "Who is They?" like it’s new, first of all, and secondly, like the answer is so scintillating that it’s worth conversing about. I’m sorry to report to you people that the topic is stale. It’s lost all it’s verve. It’s laying there on life support, when we’re all perfectly aware that it had a living will. Make your peace, and let it go.

That’s all I have to say about that, and so I leave you with a plea. Leave your clichés in high school. Life is so much better than a trite little saying. I know, because I am a trite little saying, and I look upon life with envy and resentment at being relegated to hacks.

Dan Brown Is A Liar?

2005-03-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

So the Da Vinci Code is in the news again, this time because the Catholic Church fears that this book gives them a bad name. "It’s full of lies," they say. And this is easily rebutted by any thinking person anywhere by saying, "It’s friggin fiction! What were you expecting, George and a cherry tree?"

Me personally, I didn’t care for the book. How does it irk me? Let me count the ways. No, that would take to long and make me sound like an elitist bitch. (me? Ha!) So let me summerize. I have no problem with the thesis of the book, if Dan Brown wants to get people thinking about something they’ve just taken for granted since their parents were conceived, that’s fine with me. I have a problem with bad writing. And The Da Vinci Code was bad writing. I suffered from an appalling lack of curiosity over what was going to come next, and his little "cliffhangers" at the end of every chapter were overused, over dramatic, and overkill. (As was my use of the word, for which I apologize.) The only thing that kept me reading was habit.

Originally, I decided that this would be a perfectly wonderful book if the man hadn’t tried to stick it in an ooo-lets-get-everyone-ever-to-read-this-thing hole. Translation: I would have preferred non-fiction.

Thing is, fiction is going to reach a larger audience than a thesis paper. If you take what you want to say, dumb it down into a cheesy suspense novel and add the Mona Lisa (to make them feel smart) you’re going to reach roughly an extra billion people. Your message has got do much further than it ever could have otherwise.

Where was I? Oh, that’s right, I was talking about people using the fiction label as a defense of the book. Not too happy, about that. It’s a cop out. Saying The Da Vinci Code has no responsibility to the truth because it’s a work of fiction is cheating.

That’s not to say that I think Dan Brown is telling the truth. That is to say that I think Dan Brown thinks that his theory is true (or at least that it has some validity) and when people say "it’s fiction" meaning, "it’s just fiction" that undermines the potency of what he wants to say. (Yet another problem that could have been solved if the man had done the simple thing and non-fictized the book.)

Unless of course, he doesn’t believe a word he’s written and it really is just fiction to him, in which case he’s much worse than just a bad writer, he’s a cult leader and should be removed from the face of the Earth ASAP. (But then again, he should be removed from the face of the Earth ASAP anyway, just for being a hack.)

OK, I’m getting off the high horse now. Tune in tomorrow for something completely different.

And please, please, please, if you didn't like The Da Vinci Code, show your face (or voice, or fingerprint or SSN). We can start a support group. I think I might need it.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-03-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
My next door neighbor appeared in last month’s issue of Good Gardens to Gape At. It was twenty pages of her lovely garden and those adorable gates and trellises and flowers and shutters in her windows. The pictures were lovely and liable to make a good many home gardeners envious. They might even ask, "I wonder what her secret is." Sadly, I am privy to the answer. This garden is a fraud. All those lovely flowers and vines and vegetables are fake. She doesn’t even HAVE shutters on her windows. Should I make a big deal out of this?
--The Real Deal

Dear Real,
This is not, as you seem to want to make it, a moral issue. It’s not about whether it’s "right" or "wrong" to let an entire country be deceived by the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of words This is a matter of pity.

If you are a pity person, you will feel sorry for the way your neighbor has to pretend to herself and to the whole world that she knows her gardening. Think of the psychological hell she must be putting herself though each spring as she plants her plastic seeds and watches them grow.

Ok, it’s a nice image, but doesn’t really work well. This is mostly why I’m not a poet. The rest of the reason being that I don’t want to be a poet. So there.

Your neighbor is simply damaged. This is not a sin. This is not even bad. I know damaged. I’m very good at damaged. I take pride in damaged. Damaged is what makes me the puppet I am today.

So head on over to your neighbor’s house and bring a basket of goodies. Not the green kind though, because that’s just showing off. Buy her some cookies or a pie or a frozen cake at the grocery store. What your friend needs is confidence. Confidence is also known as something you can see yourself as better than. In this case, she will conquer her self esteem issues by devouring cheesy signs of other people's laziness.

NO seriously, this works. How do I know? Did you know I’m a doctor? That’s because I’m not. Mostly because I haven’t got the training, but the rest of the reason being that I don’t want to be a doctor. So there.
--Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Make up a list of words that sound bad but aren't, like flaccid and moist.
--Tousled in New York
p.s. http://www.tyborg.com/blog/C549754167/E2078497269/Media/batgun.jpg

Dear Tousled,
Who do I look like? FREUD? This may be hard to SWALLOW (and easy to SPIT out), but we are actually two different entities. I do not have ORAL cancer. I do not even think about SEX in any of its latent forms. Yes, it is a common misconception, often COUPLED with the idea that I seek only GRATIFICATION of my own fantasies. This may be HARD for you to comprehend, but my nature is not a PHALLIC one. My PLEASURES lie in far simpler times of beach BALLS and SUCKERS. Yes, I am a MEMBER of the Peter Pan club. My HEAD aches and THROBS with such adult ideas as you are asking me to contemplate. Why must you ask me to PLAY WITH this question? I should be out FONDLING such lofty ideas as Relativity and the evolutionary advantages HORNY toads. Oh, dear, what is a poor girl to do?
--Miss Eliza

p.s. of course this is just one way to interpret your request. One could also run through the dictionary and pick out words that would be DIRTY if you were coming up with definitions. Examples being "kazoo" and "pheasant." (I mean, can you seriously tell me that doesn't sound libidenous?)

Dearest readers,
And by dearest I mean those of you how follow one word to the next and stick them together in meaningful ways.
Would you like to become active in the Dear Miss Eliza process? Are you bored by all the questions that other people ask? Think you could do better? Think you could do worse? Then prove it. We’re always looking for curious people around here. Just ask a question. You can post it here, or e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com and I’ll answer it poste haste. Thank you for reading!
--Miss Eliza

A Circus, But Without The Elephants

2005-03-28T06:23:00.000-08:00

So there are these two news stories that have been floating around in the last pages of the newspapers lately. With all this fuss about Kyrzystan I doubt you’ve even had a chance to notice them. These are stories that I’ve been loathe to bring up, for obvious reasons, but since I’ve finally discovered the angle that no one else has, I thought it only fair to share.

See, it all sort of starts a few decades ago with the formation of The Jackson Five. A lot of things happened between then and now which I won’t get into because I’m not that evil. Cut to today. Michael Jackson is in court dealing with child molestation charges and the people want to know all about it.

But here’s the kicker. Michael Jackson is a joke.

This is the most important statement ever uttered by a thinking creature ever in the history of ever. It bears repeating. For emphasis, try a British accent.

Michael Jackson is a joke.

Now, we all know about how elite today’s media is, and we all know it because they said so on television and on the radio and in books and on the internet and in the movies and in newspapers and... where else do we find media? Anyway, there too. So because the media told me that the media is full of snobs, I’m using that as a base for future arguments. Ready?
Is a media full of elite snobs going to want to cover a joke? Are they going to want to give the attention to this story that the plebeian masses demand of them? Hell no. They need a diversion. Something also involving courts. Something with an air of legitimacy and moral values that we can all latch on to. Something That will push Mr. Jackson onto pages A 2-3.

And such is the story behind the media circus around Terri Schivo. Haven’t we all asked ourselves, "What’s the big deal about this one woman? It’s actually so that serious reporters don’t have to take part in the media circus around Michael Jackson.

Because, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but nothing is allowed to be funny when a woman is starving to death because all the king’s congress and all the king’s presidents couldn’t get the feeding tube inside her again.

What I mean is, Terri Schivo is not a joke. It's just tasteless and rude, and it means that you don't have a heart. Or taste. Or tact. Which I don't, so I don't see what the problem is.

But Michael Jackson is a joke.

Wait, did I say that already? My bad.

So, since Michael Jackson is a joke and Terri Schivo isn't (unless you're me and you've seen her everywhere you look for a week and a half, and you're wondering if maybe other things are happening out there in the world) then it's all right for her to take super valuable front page space every day, even if the only new thing to be reported is that she's getting weaker.

Because seriously, we really couldn't have come to that conclusion on our own simply based on the fact that her feeding tube was removed eleven days ago. We just don't have that kind of brain power. It's what seperates us from the dolphins, what we have to be told my the media that's so much smarter than we are.

Have I thouroughly confused matters yet? I guess it all boils down to two things.
1. No news story deserves headlines for more than one day. Even if itvolves a woman who is being forced to starve to death because she told her husband that's what she would have wanted.
2. Michael Jackson is a joke.

Your "Shopping" List

2005-03-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

You know how every time you’re driving "home"…

and by "home" I mean the house where your parents are living.

…you come up with this list of things you plan on "stealing"?

And by "stealing" I mean taking things that your parents would be perfectly happy to give you if you bothered to ask which you just never do

But then you get there, and one thing leads to another and actual things…

Like religion and politics and politics of religion and religion of politics

…take up all that brain space on which you were saving your "shopping" list. And since the file got deleted you leave with loads of goodies...

Not quite care package goodies, but they have their own uses. Like those little green pieces of paper they stick on your pockets make excellent currency.

... that your parents so thoughtfully donated to the Keep You Alive For A While charity, that is so wrongfully left out of tax exempt status.

So in the end you’ve got great things like cans of soup and Easter candy and salad tongs and vitamins…

What’s with the vitamins anyway? But that’s for a new day.

…but you’ve also left all those nice little toiletries un-pilfered. Just like you reminded yourself on the way over that you weren't going to.

You know what I’m talking about, right? Q-tips. I really don’t think your mom and dad would have a problem sharing with you...

After all they come in quantities resembling the population of China

...but it’s March now, and you’ve been reminding yourself to nab some since January. And you haven’t yet.

Worse though than the forgoten and unwritten shopping list, are those things you should remember in flashing neon signs, but somehow they only cross your mind like a bird flying across the road in front of you.

"Oh, I should remember my tax forms when I leave tomorrow."

"I know I’m going to forget my backpack. Remind myself to remember my backpack." Yeah, like that one works.

So when you’re packing to leave, in the end, somehow, you remember to pack the Hunter S. Thompson edition of Rolling Stone, but completely forget the jacket that has your apartment keys in it.

For those of you who are very confused about why you put your apartment keys on a separate chain from your car keys and never told yourselves, it was so that you could warm your car up and lock your apartment door simultaneously.

So in the end, no matter what happens, you still hit yourself over the head with a paring knife because you forgot the q-tips and you can't get into your apartment or do your taxes or your homework.

In which case it's a comfort to know that you've got those vitamins.

Hmmm. Somewhere inside me, a voice is screaming to be heard that is saying, "Sarah, since you already know you’re a freak, you may be confused as to how many experiences you share with your readers. Who knows, they might actually be resposible. And mature. And good human beings who don't kill plants. Maybe you just happen to be really bad at invisible lists and mental post-its."

To which I reply, "Ha! This phenomenon is as universal as the snipping of the umbilical chord." The thing is, to prove it, I'm going to need some help. You must put this little voice in my head to bed with your stories. What is it you're always forgetting to remember even though you todl yourself to remind yourself not to?

On your mark:
Get set:
Go:

The Art of Self Depreciation

2005-03-24T09:46:00.000-08:00

Why is this an art form? A put down must be handles with style and grace. Use it too much and people will start to move away from you at a rate that will have you wondering about your smell. One might call it too much of a good thing if one was to look at it as a good thing, and we all know how people react to too much of a good thing. See: the macarana.

"But," you ask, "Why do I need to put myself down at all? It’s counterintuitive and unhealthy and no one is going to want to hire me." This is just not true. (except for the hiring thing. Don’t try this at an interview.) Done with humor, an insult to yourself simply means you follow the first rule of life in any form: DO NOT TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY. (BTW, this is a most excellent rule and to be followed in dead earnestness. Bad things happen when you move away from this. For further evidence, see: Julia Roberts. Remember Hook?)

As for practicing the art of self depreciation, you should follow a few simple rules.

USE SPARINLY. This cannot be emphasized enough. All you need is a dash. Like a cooking dash, as in "a dash of rosemary." If you have no sense of the size of a cooking dash, find a recipe and follow the directions. It’ll all make sense.

YOUR NEGATIVITY SHOULD NOT BE THE CENTERPIECE OF A CONVERSATION. It is a sidebar. Lets use an example. Say you’re driving down the highway and you pass under a bridge that has a sign with the name of the road on it. How long is that road sign in your consciousness? Not very.

NOTE: If conversing partner kidnaps your comment and feels the need to play Freud, offer her cheesecake. (actual or metaphorical) This will send you off on a new and more enjoyable subject.
NOTE: said cheesecake (actual or metaphorical) must be handled itself with skill so that your conversing partner doesn’t quite notice that you’re changing the subject.

USE FUNNY. Funny draws the attention away from your actual comment and towards the joke part. This way you can release the pressure (in dashes, of course) of your pathetically low self esteem and disguise it as funny. And if done correctly, no one will ever notice, and you will not be forced to talk about yourself.

I should know. I’ve had to talk about myself before. Completely gruesome.

NOTE: This is my dash of self depreciation. Did you notice? Of course you did, because I wrote it in neon on a billboard and put very big boobies next to it. So if your next question is, "and what’s so gruesome about your life?" I will reply with, "People who become interested in the workings of my brain explode. You don’t want that. Have some cheesecake. I made it myself. It has a dash of rosemary in it."

Three rules. That’s easy enough isn’t it? Of course, some of you need somewhere else to use your sardonic comments on your own psyche. And let me just remind you how many people are out there, begging to be put down. Current favorites: Michael Jackson, Barry Bonds, the entire Bush administration… you can do it. And people want to hear it. And if it’s not about you, you can just make your entire recipe consist of rosemary.

Dear Miss Eliza

2005-03-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Eliza,
I really like this girl I’ve seen around, but I don’t know how to go about asking her out or introducing myself. I'm too shy/scared. How can I gain confidence and shed my horrible fear of rejection?
--Gunmetal blah blah blah

Dear Gunmetal,
As it turns out, I happen to be an authority on romantic relationships. ME and them, we’re like this: [] So you’re in good hands. The answer to all of your doubts and insecurities lies in the first comfort that a mother ever gave her kid. That’s right, the bo-bo blanket.

It has scientifically proven magical properties that instill perfect confidence and trust into its squeezer. I have done studies myself. Wrapped in my security blanket, I passed safely through Bluebeard’s castle and single-handedly fended off the Balrog’s first cousin. Granted, these pale in comparison to the formidable foe that is female Homo sapien, nothing short of myth will prepare you better.

"But," you ask, "where can I find such treasure as you speak?" Tis true that the quest for the bo-bo blanket is perilous and fraught with relatives. You will have to journey to the cardboard box in our attic, cryptically marked "baby Gunmetal blah blah blah." But do not be deceived. Only a fully grown man can truly understand and accept the need for his bo-bo blanket. He is not a toddler who can open that box and pull out this soft collection of fuzz balls and memory.

But the bo-bo blanket isn’t for everyone. I admit that. Your next best bet is going to be a kickass cologne and alternate personality schooling. It’s a conscept that I’ve been thinking of expanding, and finally I got some funding left over from Viewers Like You (yes, I’m talking about the PBS Viewers Like You. Don’t ask. It’s a touchy subject) and classes start in October. Wish me luck!

And good luck to you too, Gunmetal.
--Miss Eliza

Dear Miss Eliza,
Is the glass half empty or half full?
--Thirsty in Australia

Dear Thirsty,
Due to the Heinsburg uncertainty principle, it has been proven that you can know either a glass’s fullness, or it’s emptiness, but not both at the same time. A lot of this is due to the dual nature of the glass itself. It is generally conceded that we’re talking about a martini glass that has been sealed shut and flipped upside down. Why? Because they came up with the answer to an average glass that was right side up and needed a challenge.

Sadly, theory is terribly complicated and most people like to deal in the concrete. So look at it this way. If you have eaten a pizza, it is half gone. This "gone" means empty. Therefore the pizza is half-empty. Further evidence can be found in the stomach. If you are capable of eating a whole pizza, then if you have consumed half the pizza, your tummy is half full. Which means the empty half is sitting right there on the table staring at you. So again, the pizza on the table is the half-empty half.

This is a very good way to introduce us to the drink. Lets say someone (who happens to have a much smaller stomach than the pizza person) has drunk half his drink. His tummy is then half full, leaving the drink half-empty.

And also, obviously, sealed shut and upside down in a martini glass.

There you go, an age old philosophical question can finally be laid in a cozy little trundle bed and sung to sleep. We should all be so lucky.
--Miss Eliza

Dear Readers,
Do you have a question for Miss Eliza? Don't be afraid to share it with the whole class. YOu can post it in the comments section, or e-mail it to me at selizawalden@yahoo.com
Have a nice day!

The Cupidity of Clouds

2005-03-20T06:39:00.000-08:00

Is it me, or do clouds remind you a lot a lot of cupid?

Not really in the romantic matchmaking sense, but let’s face it. Cupid is a brat who likes to stir things up and see what happens.

-Hmmm, a stockbroker and a hippy? Now that’s entertainment. This is going to be good. We’re talking golden arrow award for "Most Volatile Relationship" here. I’d better write a speech.

-Hey, that biker chick has been sitting at the bar alone all night. I should hook her up with the janitor. Mom would freak!

Get it? It’s a game. And why shouldn’t it be? If I could make people fall head over heels I’d want to see how far I could take it, try new combinations all the time. Fiddle with ye mere mortals. The practical joke is one of our highest art forms.

This is why the celestial manager saw fit not to give me any power. I would totally abuse it. And have a wicked good time doing it.

Clouds are like that too. They've got a high level of cupidity, the rambuntious little devils. They understand they hold a certain sway over our daily workings, and they like to play with that. And again I can’t really blame them?

An outdoor wedding, huh? It’s so romantic huh? Do you have any idea what I can throw at you? Hail will do nicely, I think. But no sun. That’s so too easy. Come on, be a little creative, please.

Dude, check this out. See that guy down there, shoveling his car out of that snow pile left over from last night? Check this out. I’ve got another three feet for him starting now. Watch what he does, ready?

Oh so you think that just because it’s nice and sunny out, you can take a long canoe ride into the middle of the lake? You think you’re better than me, don’t you? Try again, buster.

And the oldest entertainment in human history? You know, laying on your back and watching the clouds and using them as Rorschach’s tests? Clouds won’t even stay in one shape. They keep switching on you?

See that one? Doesn’t that look like a clown?
What? Where?
That bulge up front, that’s it’s nose, see? And it’s got the bald head and huge eyes… no wait, now it’s a buffalo.
Nope. Sorry, all I’m seeing is a mermaid smoking a cigar.
You’ve got issues.

See? It’s all about playing with us and between us and on top of us, just to get a reaction. And boy, don’t we! Need proof?

1. I’ve done this blog since November. What is my most common topic? The weather.
2. When people talk about the weather, what’s the ratio of good comments to negative comments? I’m thinking 20% good 80% bad.
3. Any life worth living is outside a significant portion of the day (one would hope) and to be outside is to be in the weather and to be in the weather is to be affected by the weather, and to be affected by the weather is to opine about the weather, and to opine about the weather is to react to the weather, and the clouds have won.

But on the other hand, isn’t it worth it anyway?