Bad Move...

My boss left the keys to his Aston Martin here at my desk for the weekend. What was he thinking?!? Of course, I'd never actually do anything immoral/illegal with these keys, even though we all know that this is definitely the only opportunity I'll have in my middle class life to drive one of these. But I wouldn't, because I'm just that trustworthy. And because I fear the cold embrace of a jail cell. But mostly, it's my refreshing honesty and high moral standards that prevent me from doing anything exciting.

Still, I keep staring at them obsessively as if they're going to walk out of the office if I don't stare hard enough. It could happen. I open the drawer every five minutes to grope around for them, lest they skip town on my watch. Perhaps it's a good thing that I'm destined to have a moderate income for the rest of my life. If I'm this stressed over holding the keys to a nice car for a few days, I'd probably die a painfully premature death if I did it everyday.

Speaking of nice things, and why I'm not allowed to have any:

We just moved into a new apartment. It's bigger! It's better! It's in the "nice" section of town. As far as I can tell, the "nice" section of town is official douchebag central. We spent two years putting in our time at the crappy apartments in the high crime area with the loud parties and the drunken college dropouts. It was an okay place. The toilet didn't always flush properly and the ceiling leaked once or twice. But the neighbors was good people. The woman next door would offer me a cigarette and tell me about her child support troubles with her ex. The guy upstairs would tell us about his difficulties finding work as a pakistani-american. Joe from downstairs would always smile and wave as he rode his bike to work. And the guy to the right of us, well, he usually littered the porch with beer bongs and played music loud enough to vibrate our kitchen appliances, but he could chug a guiness faster than I could say "go."

But we're in the "nice" place now. It's gated. It's got alarm systems in every apartment and cameras in the parking lot. And what happens the first night there? Someone hits my parked car and leaves no note. I'd like to know how they rationalized that. I keep imagining some monacle-wearing, lexus-driving jackass swerving into my econobox after a night of overpriced mint juleps... probably thinking to himself that a mere thousand dollars worth of damage was hardly worth stopping for.

I did meet one woman who was nice... in a cluelessly priviledged kinda way atleast. As we were looking for a place to park the U-haul, she informed me that it was okay to park it in the handicapped spot directly in front of the door. 'Everyone does it and it's not like there's any handicapped people here anyway.' huh. Is this how the upper middle class makes small talk?

So, with that in mind, the Aston Martin keys stay firmly in the drawer. Maybe rich douchebaggery isn't contagious, but I don't want to take any chances.

Prince William replaces mapquest.com

According to yahoo's front page for news (talk about a slow news day) Prince William just received a Master's degree in geography.

Geography?!?!

Do they really give grad degrees for that? Maybe I'm just out of touch with the ever-changing reality of... the placement of countries, but wouldn't you probably get laid off the second your employer discovered maps? Seems like a fickle job market at best.

Nerds are the new black

Ol' Flavian recently alerted me to this breaking news story:

Nerds make better lovers.

He thinks this means his day has come. "First Christina Aguilera, then the world!" he said.

Of course, his excitement should probably be tempered with the reality that this is the same newspaper that breaks stories about pot-heads prank calling an ex-president and that feels that slang and nicknames are appropriate headline fodder.

Sexy Heroes!

My cousins, Jess and Becca are sexy heroes. I'm not exactly clear on why that is... but that's what they want me to say on my blog. Sexy heroes!

I went to visit them yesterday for the first time in... quite a while, I'll admit. Going to their house is always a learning experience. This time, I learned that while Johnny Depp is in fact hot, some poor, tortured white guy named Gerard is even more so. Gerard is some sort of tragically hip goth rocker from what I can tell. Think Trent Reznor with a snazzier webpage and you're pretty much on track. But he's in pain, mind you. Deep, searing pain that not even a tissue box of c-notes can erase.

I also learned that the sand at Pine Island Park in Spring Hill, Florida smells like rotten eggs. But don't make the same naiive mistake that I did! This does not mean that either of my younger cousins will hesitate to fling it at you. Thankfully, my aunt intervened to save me from the wrath of Jess and Becca.

As we were leaving the park, my uncle noted a bumpersticker on the car next to us. It said "I asked Jesus how much he loved me. He said "this much" then spread his arms and died." To which my uncle replied, "wouldn't you feel really bad if you had been the one to ask *that* question?"

So that was my day with my sacril-arious family! Sexy heroes, one and all!

Once Upon a Wankershanks

So, it seems that Brian (aka Flavian, aka GuyIncognito) has a girlfriend. I'll just let that soak in for a while.

Brian + Girlfriend = whaaaaaa?

For those of you who don't know the Flavinator like I do, the probability of this occurring is somewhat greater than the odds of him saying "Binary is dead to me!", but slightly less than that of him growing a third eyeball.

But I suppose stranger things have happened. To celebrate this momentous occassion, I'd like to regale you all with the greatest love story of all time: How Mr. and Ms Wankershanks met.

It's a rather lame tale. I generally cringe when people ask about it. As a wee lass, I'd always dreamt that I'd meet my future husband doing something exciting, or at the very least, sordid. If it had involved, let's say, a spatula, The Jerry Springer Show and a minimum of 2 rabid monkeys, it would have been acceptable. Throw in a few murderously rampaging gerbils and we're talkin. But it didn't. It involved...

a church camp.

That's right, a church camp. Now I could tell you that it was some crazed, alien-fearing, cultist deathcamp that we had been sold into by our slave-trading parents. But it wasn't. It was a Presbyterian church camp. And if you know anything about Presbyterians, you'll know that they're basically respectably aged hippies: generally pretty mellow folk. The camp was outside of Asheville, NC at a scenic private college called Montreat. Neither Scott nor I were religious folk, but we went because it meant getting away from our respective parents for an entire week. We met one afternoon outside the dining hall. He had his CD case open, revealling an array of Tori Amos CD's. It was sooo *hawt.*

We spent the week skipping church services together, which sounds entirely more rebellious than it was. It turns out that the Presbyterian Camp Overloards didn't really mind if we skipped church. Mostly, we just wandered around the hills and valleys talking about how much we liked math, and how Mad Magazine was really sucking ever since Sergio Aragones ditched. Occassionally, we had the "religion is like, soooo oppressive" discussion because we apparently had no concept of irony.

The week ended and we went back to our respective states- him in Alabama, and me in Florida. We kept in touch over the years, visited each other a lot, and eventually he moved down here. And that's the tale. You can see why I'm disappointed.

I had bigger dreams for Flavian's "how-we-met" tale. But he met his girlfriend through a coworker who made the astonishing connection that they both love the show Arrested Development. According to the Nielson Ratings, they're about the only ones, so I suspect she's just staying with him long enough to procreate... a lot... so she can get another few seasons of the Bluth Family Antics. Love is in the air.

Flavian's Last Ride

If you could choose how you died, what would you pick? Disturbingly enough, here's Flavian's answer:

"... skydive over a city (sans parachute AND clothes). I'd probably take some poison before I hit the ground, just to make it as painless as possible. Plus, it would confuse the fuck out of the medical examiner. (Not to mention everyone who witnessed my fall). It's raining men! Oh dear God, it's raining men! Take cover! OH! And I'd strap a huge boombox onto my back with that playing in loop. Man, I've got this all planned out!"

Don't worry. If he starts mentioning specific cities, I'll give you all a heads up.

A brief conversation overheard at the beach...

Here is a brief conversation that I heard while at Cocoa Beach on Monday. It's short, so please read slowly to savor the utter randomness of it.

Young girl, eyes alight with wonder: Wow- look at all the umbrellas on the beach!

Young boy, eyes alight with mischief: Your mama's an umbrella!

Oh, snap! You know, it's really good to see the non-sensical "your mama" insult being brought back by the youth of today. Some of the sayings from my youth just haven't outstayed their welcome yet, in my humble opinion. Of course, your mama did outstay her welcome. Booyah.