The Ghosts of Thousands of Plastic Army Men

The sun came out without anything having to die, which I think is a good deal, all around.

Today while driving back to work, I saw this gaunt man, smoking a cigarette at what might been a jaunty angle.  Except there were two of them, one at each side of his mouth.  So, instead of looking grizzled (think homeless Spike Spiegel), he resembled a sickly walrus.

I also saw a man wearing a shirt that said "Prison Jesus."  I don't know what that means.

I'm gonna water bend all the blood in your arm and make you punch yourself in the face.

There used to be mountain in the background, that all changed when the grey nation attacked.

It's been dark for three days.   I'm going to start crying and/or making soggy, soggy sacrifices to whatever god/hero/weather pattern can make the sun come out.

This is the end, Wiggin.

Wait, guys!  Noooo!

Doesn't this look like this guy is being chased by snakes?  Except one snake has already bit him, and he's falling and screaming out for his friends to help him, but his friends are jerkfaces and they're going to let him be devoured by snakes so they can save themselves.  

And if the floor is wet, it's wet from his tears of betrayal.

I've Seen All Kinds of Girls (And they were all therapists).

My co-worker likes to listen to 80's pop ballads.  I can hear them from my office.  I don't mind (I won an 80's Night quiz because of this), but the amount of cheese in these songs is kind of amazing.  So, today, I told her I would assign a dysfunction to each one I could hear (and if I had time to do it).  This is my list so far.  The analysis aren't as in-depth as I would like (I literally just jotted down whatever I could think of), but this is a pretty good sampling of the immense cheese I am exposed to on a daily basis.

Gloria - Laura Branigan
Paranoid Schizophrenic, delusions of grandeur, persecution complex

Eye in the Sky – Alan Parson
Stalking, delusional

Brass in Pocket – The Pretenders
This is definitely a stalking and torture fantasy.  I can’t think of it in any other way.

Sunglasses at Night – Corey Hart
Self-harm, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, substance use and abuse
Authority complex?  Fear of authority?
Social anxiety?

Endless Summer Nights – Richard Marx
Unhealthy obsession with the past, early onset Alzheimer’s?
Perhaps a kidnapping?
Suppressed memories
Dyscalculia

California Girls – Beach Boys
Prosopagnosia, Megalomania, blatant objectification of women, lack of better judgment.  

Lazy, undead mushrooms

I hate writing cover letters. It's like the essays I used to write in college, where I couldn't get the first sentence down.  Or even the second, third or fourth.  Except in this case, I need to write it.  Not that I didn't need to write those papers, but getting a bad grade isn't as dire as being out on the street.

Man, that's depressing.

So instead of writing that, or in between writing that, let me tell you about my drive to Lahaina this morning.

The drive is beautiful.  That's one thing about Maui:  It's stupidly pretty.  I see multiple rainbows on a 5 minute drive, sort of pretty.  It is travel brochure pretty and just a 15 minute drive from Costco.  And when you're constantly bombarded with this overwhelming beauty it just becomes...commonplace.  Like when you've date a smoking hot girl for years.  This girl has farted in front of you, and you've held her head over the toilet as she's vomited, and you've gone digging through her purse to hand her a tampon.  She's still a smoking hot babe, but she's also the girl who steals all the blankets.  That's what Maui is to me.

But that's completely off topic.  Anyway, on my drive there, sandwiched between mountains and ocean, I noticed these mushroom things on the side of the road.  Maybe about 5-8 inches tall, their mushroom head long and conical, reaching out of the ground like the lazy undead, stretching in the morning sun.

They looked a little bit like the creepy kodama spirits from Mononoke-hime, actually.

Give us your delicious souuuul!

And then I noticed the side of the road was swarming with them.  Before this, I had never even seen mushrooms that tall on Maui, much less dozens of them.  I keep Googling "tall mushrooms Lahaina" without anything helpful showing up.

And while I imagined piles of creepy mushroom baby dolls crawling from their roadside perches, covering my car like maggots swarming rotting meat, I felt the road bumps thump-thumping, warning me that I was straying from my designated lane.

Thump-thump-thump.

How To Work Out A Lot

I should go work out, but one of my brothers and the dog have fallen asleep on the floor, near my feet, and I don't want to wake them up.  I don't want to do anything productive (meaning looking for jobs, writing cover letters and reviewing my resume), but I don't really want to do nothing.

The dog is making weird sounds.  I think she's snoring.  It's kind of like a muffled farting sound from her mouth, so it must be snoring.

How To Work Out A Lot

Sure, you could be all, "Oh, I want to look bangin'," or "I want to improve my overall health."  But, for myself, I've got a gym membership that I don't really want to cancel (just in case I ever want to do the two aforementioned  reasons).  But, I don't really want to pay for something I never use.  So, I've got to convince myself to go to the gym for some other reason.  And it's this:  Develop a Gym Crush or alternately, Create An Imaginary Storyline/Timeline For All The Gym Regulars.  It works pretty well.

For the Gym Crush, it doesn't necessarily need to be a romantic crush.  Just find yourself looking for a certain person.  It helps if this is a regular or maybe staff.  And they should have at least one stand out quality.  For example, I was on the treadmill next to this guy whose sweat smelled like Cinnabon.  It was awesome running next to him.  My current gym crush is this amazing lady who always wears amazing, clashing colors and patterns.  She only stays on a machine for like 5 minutes, but seeing her just brightens up my day.

Pros:

1. You'll have a reason to go to the gym.
2. You'll have something to look forward to.

Cons:

1. It might develop into a real, romantic crush.  
2. You might become disappointed if they stop coming. 
3. Huge, awkward situations if they start interacting with you, since you've been pretending to be in love with them.

I'm a huge fan of creating story lines for people.  This works best with regulars.  You just take people and start making things up about their lives.  The guy on the stationary bike next to you?  His wife is having an affair, and he's just started noticing how distant they've become.  The jerkface girl who just got on the treadmill next to you and is challenging you to a treadmill race by aggressively sprinting?  Has a condition that if she doesn't sprint short distances on treadmills, next to people who have already been running for the past hour and are drenched in their own sweat, her legs will stop working.  Don't take it personally.

Pros:

1. You'll go to the gym.
2. You'll be distracted while you're working out.

Cons:

1. You'll scorn the Resolutioners for invading your storyline.
2. You'll worry when people stop coming in.  Did their evil twin brother kidnap them?  Maybe their Canadian relatives are keeping them hostage, thinking all this warm, Maui weather is affecting their temperament, making them too mellow and affecting their life goals?! 
3. Huge, awkward situations when they interact with you, since you've been an imaginary peeping-tom.

Or you could just go to the gym because you like working out.  There's that too.   But people who say that (and I sometimes find myself in this category, which is alarming and conflicting) make me want to eat all the food. ALL THE FOOD.

Oh, the brother and the dog woke up.  Better go.