Tired.

Today I decided to tackle something that I've been putting off, and that was the construction of my new dresser that I picked up with my friend Jennijen Newnew on Monday. Well, not so much picked up as gradually shuffled off the shelf onto a cart, and then from the cart to her car. And she pushed the cart, because I decided to buy a 50 cent hot dog but wanted to finish it quickly in case we ran into anyone I knew. I know it's not real food, but, seriously, 50 cents.

One thing I like about the Ikea cafeteria is how they present things as deals that aren't. Like, 2 hot dogs for $1 is a specific listing. Or 2 hot dogs and a drink ($1 on its own) for just $2. Even with basic math skills under my belt, I still find these offers tempting, as would anyone.

Anyways, eventually I shuffled the box to my apartment where I emptied it and then left it to sit until I had time. All the while, my old dresser continued its decent towards trash. I was bitter today when the weather decided to take a turn for the worst, since I was depending on not having to open any drawers containing warmer clothes, because I was pretty sure opening them would compromise basic structural stability, possibly leading to a chain reaction that would bring down the whole building. Did I say the whole building? I meant world. You should all be thankful that the weathers been pretty good lately.

So, today I spent 4 hours building a dresser. It wouldn't have taken quite so long were it not for the necessity for frequent mental health breaks. Ikea always seems like a good idea when you're eating cheap non-food, but like a very bad idea when you're constructing/living with the results. However, I survived without any major injuries or aneurysms, but I'm pretty tired and I think a rib is out. I'm pretty sure the rib is not due to the furniture building though, but just from life. I just wanted to throw it out there in case someone reading this wants to fix me tomorrow, perhaps someone who has been begging for a shout-out?

Song that is happy. Moving Right Along from The Muppet Movie. It's Shamus' favourite vacation song, and just generally a song that I like. I like it even though it's 50% bear, so you must imagine that it's pretty friggin' good.

You Can't Buy Happiness, Even if you Can Buy Monkey Butlers

It was my first day waking up on my BC trip, which means that I was up at 6am due my inability to sleep-in regardless of how late I stay up combined with a 3 hour time change. It was good because I got to see my brother Shamus before he went to work, but bad because then I spent hours waiting for anything interesting to happen. Periodically I would decide to try to befriend Alfred Von Bunnikins, but I think he must have somehow sensed my similarity to Elmyra from Tiny Toons and was smart enough to hide in his igloo whenever I came close.

Since the rabbit clearly wasn't planning on entertaining me, I found a book on baby names and leafed through it until it offended me, as tends to be the case with most books. It had a section on the first impressions that names make with lists of names under titles such as: "Arty", "Charming", "Friendly" etc. I thought, where are the negative adjectives? Then I found it, "Cranky". And what was there, nestled below "Doreen" and "Myrna"? None other than "Sharon". Really? And yet the name "Stormy" is under "Cheerful"? If I ruled the world, I would destroy all copies of this book. Wait, maybe my reaction is a bit cranky. No, I think it's normal, because that book was clearly out to get me. Also, evil.

It also had a list of famous pairs, I guess for those expecting twins. If I had twin boys, I probably wouldn't have much issue with naming them Bert and Ernie. They're solid names. I might call them Robert and Ernest for awhile, just to make it look like I didn't do it on purpose, all the while knowing that eventually someone is going to realize the obvious nicknames and then it will spread like wildfire. I guess it is true that some people shouldn't be allowed to have children, most notably my parents for giving me a cranky name.

So, after thinking about baby names for awhile, my mind drifted to yesterday, when I was at the Edmonton airport waiting for my connecting flight to Abbotsford and trying to steal WiFi to kill time. As you probably know, if you've read my other posts, I have no technical abilities, so I don't know how I did it, but I managed to get a few minutes of Facebook time in before it caught onto me and tried to make me pay. It was just enough time to notice a posting by my friend Birchington Wongstein that perked me up. I hadn't realized that I needed perking until I was perked, but was quite glad it had happened, because I really did need a good perking up, if only to allow me to overuse the word "perk" in my blog today.

When you wake up hours before anyone who might entertain you, it gives you a lot of time to think about things that perked you up (if you're wondering, I am trying to break the record for most instances of the word "perk" and its derivatives. It would probably be easier if I had some idea of what the record is, but I think I'm doing pretty well). Birchington is one of those people who doesn't really need to work to perk up someone's day. Once I tried to tell him this, but it didn't turn out well. First I tried, "You're special.....but not 'special' with quotations," then I went for "No, no, I don't mean it that way, I mean it more like you're precious....but not 'precious' with quotations." So, sitting there, WiFi-less, I spent the time thinking about the number of friends I've been lucky enough to have that can't be adequately described without a word that is also used in quotations when humoring "special" people.

I worry that this blog might be quickly descending towards a rather mushy side today, but I think I need to say that I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking about things that I want, like truckloads of money and monkey butlers. But, even a million monkey butlers could not replace knowing someone like Birchington Wongstein, Yelsel D'Stupid, Neyney Charmin, Byla Rong, Katarina Yashtastico, Bark Montes or the dozens of other magical people that I am yet to create clever pseudonyms for. Even if they were to all suddenly disappear from my life, I was beyond blessed to even know them for 2 seconds, so I should probably stop spending all my time thinking about how I might acquire an army of monkey butlers and appreciate what I already have instead. Yeah, I lied when I said I was worried about getting to mushy, because I totally went there, but I'm going to publish this anyways.

To make up for the mushiness, I'm going to tell you my truck stop laundry story. It begins with: Once I was doing my laundry with friends at a truck stop. There, we met a trucker, who we asked if we could drive his truck. He said he would be happy to let us, but didn't think we could handle the 18 gears. I think it was 18, it doesn't matter exactly how many though, because what really matters is that he then said, "That's more than I can count on my hands and feet." At that point you could see everyone looking at there hands and feet, trying to do some quick math in their head and thinking "Wait...somethings wrong..." After the proper timing for optimal effect he said, "That's right, I only have 2 toes" (or 3 toes or something...it doesn't matter, the point is, he was a trucker who was missing multiple toes and clearly used it as smalltalk on a regular basis.) The strangest part of the story is that I don't think anyone in our group thought to ask him how he lost his toes. Or, if they did, I don't remember it, which doesn't seem like me. I usually remember stories that involve anything being severed. So, like most of my stories, this has a lesson: If you meet a trucker and they tell you they are missing any organ or appendage, ask them how, because you'll regret it if you don't. I know I did.

No bad touch

I've been feeling a bit guilty, ever since implying yesterday that Jim Henson was somehow involved in bad touch with Ernie. I don't really think that, but I'm afraid that if the spirit of Jim Henson is reading my blog that he's highly offended, and will no longer consider being my friend in the afterlife, as has been my dream for many years.

I even drew a picture of it.

Yes, that is Kermit in the middle and it would have been wonderful, but now I can't even entertain my BFF dreams, because I fear they will be torn away from me at any moment by the angry spirit of Jim Henson. Except, I don't think he could be angry, because Jim Henson is way too awesome for anger, but he might be like "Man, I thought you were cool, but you're so not." Then I'll be sad, because Jim Henson thought I was cool but I blew it for cheap laughs. I tried to draw a new picture to cheer me up, but all that came out was this...
And can you blame me? All my dreams of skipping through the clouds singing the Rainbow Connection with Kermit were seemingly gone forever. Then I realized, perhaps the power of blog works for good as well. Maybe, just maybe, I could fix the slander from my last post if I made an apology so spectacular that Jim Henson would be forced to reconsider my BFF offer. So, I drew another picture.
That's right. "No Bad Touch." Right from Ernie's mouth. You can't argue with that kind of evidence. Now I'm going to bed, to dream of hangin' with the Swedish Chef. He will feed me some sort of talking food (potentially foam-based). It will be fabulous. Then tomorrow I will write a guilt-free blog. That will also be fabulous, and will probably involve less crayons. Or maybe more crayons. I haven't decided yet.

I wonder if you can get BFF halos...they do seem to be the accessory of choice up there.

Me like cookie.

Some of my friends are midway through exams right now. This is boring to me, because I want to play, but they have to study. But then, I'm also happy, because I'm not writing exams...until I remember I'm lonely and wish I had my textbooks to keep me company.

When I was writing exams, I liked to try to cope by using denial. I'd get up in the morning and stare at the wall for 20 minutes, thinking, "I wish I had something to do today." Eventually it would hit me and I would think, "Shit, study." I think this coping mechanism is better suited for those with severe head trauma (or those that are goldfish).

Sometimes, I try to pretend while studying, because pretending is fun. For example, when I'm studying pathology, I'll imagine I have whatever I'm studying. So, if I'm studying diabetes mellitus, I'll go to the washroom frequently and eat lots of pixie stix. The best part of this method is when I decide to take a break I have both the pay off of a break and the relief of discovering that I probably don't have prostate cancer.

When the joy of not having prostate cancer is not enough to pull me out of exam depression, I still have my standby guaranteed-joy-bringing-things. One is jumping. If I feel like exams are making me a little too crazy, I'll just jump for awhile. Try it sometime, you will see that it is impossible to be stressed about anything while jumping, unless the thing you are stressed about is some sort of joint injury, in which case you should probably stop jumping.

Another thing that will make you forget about exams, without aggravating your potentially arthritic joints, is all things muppet. The Muppet Movie is the best option for maximal happiness because it has ukulele playing Kermit, bike riding Kermit and dancing Kermit in it. Try watching a muppet-frog riding a bike and not being happy. You just can't do it (unless you are a robot or some sort of a demon, then I make no promises).

Similarly, Fraggle Rock can pull you out of any slump, while simultaneously teaching you important life lessons like: "Radishes are all you need for a balanced diet" and "Trash will give you advice if you ask it nicely."

Sometimes, people say that Bert and Ernie are in the closet. This irritates me, because what does it matter if two muppets share a bed when they don't even have genitalia. It's like saying that a pencil is gay. The pencil is not gay, it is a pencil. Muppets are the same as pencils in this respect, except muppets instead of pencils. So, in my opinion, attempting to determine the sexual preference of asexual muppets is futile. Unless the muppet you are referring to is some sort of novelty sex shop muppet; then you are free to speculate on whether the novelty sex shop muppet likes novelty sex shop males or females (but don't tell me about it, because asexual is how I like my muppets). Regardless, if anything, people shouldn't be talking about the relationship between Bert and Ernie, they should be talking about the relationship with the guys that have their hands inside them. That's where the real scandal lies.

My parents used to get mad at Cookie Monster. They said he was ruining my grammar, but me did not think so. Really, I think they should have been more concerned about the fact that I ate a cookie I found on the playground. It was an Oreo, and it was totally worth it.