Another Question Dump Because These Are Easy

What’s your best cold remedy?

If you could punch one author, who would it be?

To do you have an easier time relating to the hero or the villain in movies?

What’s your best drunk story?

How do you feel about the gender binary?

How tall do you think Hugh Jackman is?

How would you kill Wolverine?  (He’s got like, that crazy skeleton and healing abilities, remember?)  It needs to be detailed, not just “Drop him in a volcano.”

The beach or the mountains, and why?

Which is cuter, Kapibarasan or Mameshiba?

Where’s your favorite restaurant, why and what do you order?

What do you do on long plane rides/car rides/trips?

What type of pollution would  you be?

Dwarves versus dragons?  Support your answer.

Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever been?  What made it cool?

What is your “geekiest” hobby?

How do you feel about crepes?  (Dating-wise, this is a dealbreaker for me)

Who is the least important character in The Legend of Zelda?

Do you have any personal ghost stories?

What’s the weirdest date story you have?

What is the ultimate condiment/What’s your favorite condiment?

Do you follow any youtubers?

Your friends/family suddenly announces they NEED to stay with you for a few days.  What’s the first thing you hide?

Would you be comfortable sharing your browsing history with me?

I just want to write about cats, again.

Cotton is our neighbour’s cat.  And she’s a demon.  And I love her.  She’s grey, and has the fluffiness of a Persian, without any of that flat-faced indignation.  And she’s a ball of unadulterated rage. 

It would be safe to say that there’s something very wrong with her.  Or at least the aggression part of her brain has been painstakingly sharpened into a blade of charming malice.  Cotton will fight anything.  Dogs, trees, rocks. . .anything.  We come home to her engaging in tireless battle with the decorative stones in our front yard.  This is even more disconcerting, when you take into account that she is the same color as the stones, like she’s out to eradicate all imposters, regardless of creed or animal-status.

She seems to regard her fluffiness same way Napoleon felt about his height.   She jealously guards her fluffy fur by arming herself in prickly burrs.  Never pet her if you want to keep your hand in tact, and you must never, never pick her up by her middle.   Her once soft underbelly is just a minefield of fur and burrs.   

She has no sense of personal space.  Late one night, you’ll be in your house, wondering what to do with your life, and you’ll hear a soft jingling sound. You’ll continue analyzing and re-analyzing that awkward social-interaction you had weeks ago, without realizing the jingling is getting louder.  Finally, the jingling is a pounding at your door and lo, Cotton has infiltrated your house, giving you a look of bubbling ferocity, like she’s caught you burglaring her house.

Cotton comes and goes as she pleases.  Sometimes she’ll disappear for weeks, and we’ll worry she finally tried to fight the ocean or that she was crushed by a boulder, and then she’ll just appear on our second story porch, taunting the dog.

And sometimes, I see her stalking around the neighborhood covered in bright chalk.  I’m not sure why, but I guess that’s what demons do after they’ve successful terrorized a neighborhood.

There's going to be some changes around here. . .

I've got to wake up at 4am to get ready for an interview, and while I should be reviewing, I think I'm just going to mess around and go to bed.

What's different from the last time I blogged?  Let's see.

I resigned from a job.

I had a birthday.

I moved to Los Angeles.

Those are some pretty big changes, so I'd like to think my absence from writing is justified.  But that isn't true at all.  Some writers thrive in big changes, letting their laptop take up residence on packed suitcases.  I wish I were like those writers.  When the going gets tough, I don't turn to my craft.  I roll around on the floor.

Los Angeles is the way I remember it: big, loud and kind of dirty.  Like the person you used to invite to parties in college, but now that you're a little more settled in (and more importantly, don't want your significant other to know you slept with), you're a little wary of inviting back into your life.  Maybe they've straightened out, or maybe they'll tell your current squeeze about your old party trick.  You know, the one involving ping pong balls and beer cans?

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.

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.