coming clean

WHOOO! It's been a while! I wish I had grand and glorious reasons for not updating my blog but, no, the excuses are a heady amalgam of procrastination, writer's block and a lot of parmesan cheese. I'm back and let the blogging continue with renewed vigor. I haven't made any resolutions this year but, updating frequently is a task which I will add to my mind's bulletin board next to the Garfield Post-it note that says "mini-wheats". I like Mini-Wheats because they look like bales of hay covered with a dusting of freshly fallen snow. They're a much better breakfast than a lot of morning alternatives like say, a pack of Marlboro Reds.

So, let me share a little secret which I happened upon a few weeks prior. It was during the middle of a heatwave. The walls which comprise my apartment are thin enough that I am able to discern the clumsy gruntings of my vegan neighbor couple downstairs but thick enough to trap the heat of a sunny day until way after sundown. After work, I came home to a toasty abode and quickly opened the windows to release the steam. Later that night, after fake-summertime antics like sitting around in my underwear with the refridgerator door open, I went about closing the windows before I went to sleep. As I peered out my bedroom window with one hand on the window crank, I looked below at the building next door. Through a back-lit frosted glass square, I made out the fuzzy silhouettes of bottles along the windowsill, presumably shampoo in a bathroom and then, after a moment's hesitation, not one, but TWO naked bodies. Rubber ducky! I couldn't see if they were both men or a man and a woman or a woman and a woman but they were tanned and had dark hair and oh yeah, they were definitely naked unless Dark Haired #1 was rinsing his/her dark hair while wearing swim trunks. Do their parents know they're taking tandem showers? I almost went for the camera but I thought better of it because a creepy weirdo I am not. Obviously the bathers were not aware of my presence and I waited for a second in order for them to start smushing their bodies together in a blurred frenzy. But alas, they stood apart and all I got was embarassed for lingering.

Depending on their relationship, I assume few people know those two shower together besides me. So, in the spirit of coming clean, I am going to share a few not so savory tidbits about me which few people know:

I take great pleasure in killing bugs.

I especially enjoy killing bugs which I find in my apartment. When I'm outside, I understand that I am in their world. But when I see a cockroach in my kitchen, it best know that it is in MY world and my world includes death by way of a heavy shoe placed on my right hand, the sole of which is hurled at them with unnecessary speed. God's creatures, fellow inhabitants of the planet earth...bullshit. A spider in my shower is getting flushed the fuck down the drain.

I am obsessive-compulsive when eating cereal.

I have this thing about soggy cereal. I just can't stand it when cereals absorb too much milk and becomes spongey blobs. So, I only add a small bit of cereal, enough for a few spoonfuls, at a time to my milk. With Mini-Wheats, it's three haystacks at a time, left to soak for about fifteen seconds. With Cracklin' Oat bran, it's eight to ten Os, for twenty seconds. With Sugar Smacks, it's enough to cover the surface area of the milk about two times, soak time: 5 seconds.

I'm freakishly good at spatial IQ tests.

I took a psych class in college and the professor administered different types of IQ tests to see if there was a difference between male and female proficiencies in various types of intelligence. I think this was part of his research which made me feel like my parents were unwittingly dumping an egregious amount of tuition to fund this dude's battle of the sexes thesis but hey, what ma and pa didn't know about my college experience didn't hurt 'em. Men are supposedly better at visualizing the orientation of things and women are better at remembering details and colors. So, we get these spatial tests which ask things like "Which of the following drawings will fold into this shape?" and not only do I score higher than all the girls, I score the highest in the entire class. I'm a freak. Click here to see what sex YOUR brain is.

I examine bodily excretions.

The proof is in the pudding, so they say. And I find out what's going on inside my body by taking a good look at what my body is discarding. From the color of my urine to the consistency of my snot, I like looking at the things that drip, shoot out of, flake off, protrude, and eventually fall from my various orifices.

I can recite the entire movie "Iron Eagle" from beginning to end.

You're still fixated on the bodily excretions but take a moment and then catch up. Is the plot completely implausible? Yes. Do the actors have bad hair and laughable wardrobe choices? Yes. Is "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister on the soundtrack? Yes. Is Louis Gossett Jr. awesome? Yes. Did I see a very aged Jason Gedrick at a Stuff magazine party four years ago, standing by himself looking washed up? Yes. Is this a product of a tormented summer spent at my family's cabin 100 miles outside of Toronto in the woods away from my friends and a telephone, with nothing but a black and white television, a VCR and a copy of Iron Eagle my dad taped off Channel 9 to entertain my sisters and me? Yes.

Scene: The night before the big mission. Interior, Chappy's trailer. Chappy (Louis Gosset Jr.) lives in a trailer.

"What are you still doing up?"
"I'm just relaxing. Watching some TV."
"I thought I told you to get some sleep!"
"I wasn't tired. Relax, Chappy, I'm ready."
"YOU AIN'T READY FOR SHIT, BOY!" Chappy throws an old photo album at Doug (Jason Gedrick). Doug looks at the photos.
"Are these pilots you flew with?"
"All of them."
"They look like kids around my age."
"All of them."
"So, what's the big deal, why are you showing this to me?"
"Because they're DEAD! ALL...OF...THEM."

And scene. Who knew that voice volume alone could convey such emotion.

There you have it, a carney handful of my dirty little secrets. Sadly though, I shower alone (with the exception of an occasional dead spider.)