Never write titles when, um, the thing is... wait what? No! I mean never write titles when you're high. I think?

I used to think it was ridiculous for people to get uptight about going to the dentist. Never bothered me, and I'd had all kinds of work done. Sure it's a bit uncomfortable having the ice pick they use to administer freezing hammered into the roof of your mouth, but once they're done that you just relax, let them do what they gotta do, and enjoy taking a nice little break from having to swallow your own spit all the time.

And then I aged out of the children's dentist and had to go to the grown ups' dentist. Things were different there. Well, one thing was different. That one thing changed everything, though.

The grown ups' dentist didn't give me the happy nose. I'd never actually known what the happy nose was. I knew that I must have looked very silly with that big rubber thing on my face, and I was a very self-conscious child as a rule. For some strange reason, though, I didn't mind the happy nose. I didn't mind the happy nose at all. It was heavy, it made me look funny, and it smelled strange, but I had absolutely no problem with the happy nose. No. Happy nose was fine. I was good with the happy nose.

I sure figured out what it was for in a hurry when it wasn't there anymore.

What gives? Why should kids get all the good drugs? Isn't it enough that they get all the best presents at Christmas, the piece of cake with the flower on it at birthday parties, free room and board and two months off every summer so that they can, shall we assume, work on their novels, renovate the kitchen, and attend to all of the other urgent priorities they have over getting an education so that they can start supporting themselves? They have all that and they have to hog the happy noses too?

Well frankly that is just plain ungracious. There. I've said it.

So it turns out I'm not as blissfully mellow about hearing the music of heavy industry emanating from my teeth as I'd thought. Evidently I simply lack the self awareness necessary to know when I'm completely stoned. Couple that with the fact that my grown ups' dentist doesn't have the decency to let me pick out a toy no matter how well I behave myself, and no. I do not like going to the dentist at all anymore. But get this - I saved the biggest injustice for last.

Apparently when these teeth fall out, I don't get to grow a new set. Unlike some sugar crunching, toy hoarding individuals I know. So it's not like I really have a choice, now is it?

That part where Shelley Duvall read this title backwards in the mirror was so cool.

In truth diaper commercials weren't the only things that scared me as a child. Only the most irrational. That was also, thankfully, a fear I easily grew out of. It's much harder to grow out of rational fears like falling from great heights, being bitten by a snake, or watching a puppet show. I appreciate that there will be some debate about how rational it may or may not be to fear puppets, but I do have to insist that it is completely rational. To support my position I offer the following substantiation:

Just LOOK at them!

Obviously everybody is now nodding and making comments such as "Very astute observation.", "A quite credible perspective.", and "Wait, WTF? Puppets? This isn't icanhascheezburger!", and generally agreeing that no further exposition is necessary. At this point, however, I'm sure everybody will also agree that the post is very short, so I will continue to add words.

Yesterday's post about pedo-selenophobia (fear of baby-moons) (just because I made it up doesn't make it less real) is not actually what instigated this one. It was a recent conversation about those horrifying wind up monkeys that clap cymbals (if you click that link and can't sleep for a week, don't come complaining to me. Did I say they were horrifying? Yes I did. Toughen up, sissy sissy cry-baby face) brought to my mind the movie Poltergeist. Movie fans will note that the movie Poltergeist has absolutely nothing to do with wind up monkeys that clap cymbals. Movie fans have undoubtedly also gone on to figure out that it was actually Close Encounters of the Third Kind that I was thinking of. I bet movie fans are even making fun of me using insider movie fan references that would go right over my head, too. Oh movie fans, you're incorrigible! You're right, though. Close Encounters is the one that has a wind-up monkey that claps cymbals in it. Poltergeist has the evil clown doll. I was clearly looking for Mona Lisa in the Last Supper there.

Because it turned out that I had spent valuable seconds, perhaps even minutes pointlessly thinking about Poltergeist, my ever resourceful brain devoted itself immediately to finding a productive reason for thinking about Poltergeist in order to keep me from feeling too stupid. Keeping me from feeling too stupid is one of the primary functions of my brain, second only to finding new and creative justifications for buying a purse. In a fit of inspired genius my brain then decided that I needed to find pictures of the dead bodies that had started bobbing around in the swimming pool excavation just in time for Jo Beth Williams's big screaming-in-a-wet-t-shirt scene. As everybody with a resourceful brain like mine knows, urban legend has it that real dead bodies were used for this scene. My intellectual curiosity is very naturally piqued by this possibility, because wow cool dead bodies.

It is really, really hard to find images of that scene. I've looked before and found nothing, but this time I was beyond successful. I found not only a very clear picture from that scene, but also the answer to a mystery that has plagued me since the days of my earliest memories.

I found out that there really was a movie made in the seventies about a psychotic, kill crazed wooden puppet, and this has filled my heart with joy like only a psychotic, kill crazed wooden puppet can. Because it means I'm not crazy. I didn't just imagine it. I really did get the idea - and I'm using the word idea as a synonym of knowledge here - in my head that puppets are bad, bad, bad from somewhere, not just from my imagination.

Why, perhaps the creators of that movie even had automatonophobia themselves. Oh no I didn't make that word up! Check out the sweet factual reference action there, baby. It totally makes all the stuff I actually do just make up credible.

The movie was Trilogy of Terror, and it was an ABC movie of the week that aired back in the halcyon days when parents allowed very small children to watch programs with the word terror in the title. While eating sugar. Without a helmet. It was awesome! Probably best if you don't let your kids read this.

All my life I've been haunted with fragments of images of a little wooden doll chattering through a house, chasing, it turns out, Karen Black (why was I not surprised?) and hacking at her ankles with it's little wooden knife. I don't remember any gore, and it wasn't so much the prospect of a puppet thing suddenly turning homicidal or someone getting hurt that freaked me out. It was the way the thing moved that gave me this case of the oogies that has lasted decades.

Puppets do not move like anything natural, innocent, or in any way good. They move like bad, bad, bad things. I'd describe it more eloquently, but that would require conjuring up a mental image, and I do not have anywhere near enough chocolate in the house to deal with that. Suffice it to say that little tiny human like things jerking around with fixed grins on their faces do not amuse me.

(Because I don't do political humor. You capitalize on it.)

So here I am, all these years later, not only gratified to know that I did not imagine this fiendish little made for tv gem, but with a video link to the very segment from that movie itself open in a tab on my computer! Finally I can satisfy the curiosity that has burned in me since childhood, and actually see this little monster that cast such a long, dark shadow over my life.

No freaking way. YOU watch it.

Am not a sissy sissy cry baby face. I just don't want to, that's all. Don't bug me!

Besides, I'm going to go play with my Feels Like Home award that the most interesting and ever engaging JenJen at Jen's Voices Gave me.


Thank you darling!

Everybody's going to see this title, aren't they?

I was never afraid of monsters as a child. They didn't exist, and never mind what the internet tries to tell you - they still don't. Shoving granny's old dentures in the mystery meat you found behind the taxidermist's and dropping it on a beach somewhere does not a monster make. That's just a fun activity for a blind date and nothing more.

Mummies were always slightly more probable, but they're in Egypt. The only old mummies we might have kicking around Canada would be the frozen variety. By the time one of those things thawed enough to reanimate it would be a heap of soggy, moldering mush, and nothing was getting past our dog smelling that deliciously putrid. The biggest worry there would have been whether or not reanimated corpses are a bit salty. Our dog couldn't handle salt, so that being the case they could have posed a legitimate risk to our rugs, or at least they would after they had cycled through the digestive system of their welcoming committee.

Wolfmen could happen in North America, but anyone with a dog knows how to handle one of those - just put some peanut butter on it's back and call the pound while he's trying to lick it off. As for vampires, that threat I've never understood at all. Kick 'em in the teeth. Now what are they going to do, turn into a bat and poop in your hair?

That's not to suggest that I was a brave child, though. I'd lie awake at night trembling under the covers too, but it wasn't horror movies that gave me nightmares. It was diaper commercials.

I used to love tormenting myself with the fear that my mother might have allowed me to have been used in diaper commercials when I was a baby. The efficiency of youth allowed me to skip over hindrances of probability that might have compromised my terror, like the fact that we'd never lived anywhere near anywhere that diaper commercials are produced or the fact that my mother had never said anything along the lines of "Sweetie, remember that time I let everybody in the whole wide world look at your naked bum?" It's good that she did never say that. If she had I might still be rocking in the corner, sucking my thumb.

Very neurotic, yes, thank you for noticing. I would actually mind having my fully blossomed into womanhood tush featured on national prime-time now less than I would have minded knowing anybody anywhere, other than my parents or pediatrician, had seen my fresh from the oven buns when I was a child. Of course I'd love to blame this neurosis on my parents - it's the done thing - but try as I might the finger just won't point there. They believed in conforming to the standard guidelines of legal decency, but that was more path of least resistance than it was an exercise in morality. Wearing clothes sort of just fell under the general blanket of it keeps the neighbours happy, so why question it? There was never any suggestion that being naked was in any way shameful. I very cleverly devised that little self torture all by my self.

That's why I'm glad my mother didn't have a blog. I like reading about other people's children's epic poos - we all know the rule: it's funny when you're not the one who has to clean it up - but I'm glad I'll never have the opportunity to read about mine. I'm just not that okay with myself I suppose. And I'm okay with that. Does that constitute a dangerous psychological paradox? If it does, watch this daredevil move: I'm okay with that, too.

I'm also glad legends of my epic poos won't be available for my kids to read. Or their kids. Come to think of it, I might be even more glad that my great great grandparents didn't have blogs, because I just might be less okay with reading about my grandparent's epic poos than I would be with the prospect of my grandchildren reading about mine.

Adults of tomorrow, good luck with your brave new world, and go forth without shame - we all know everything there is to know about your butts already anyway.

Did you even read this title?

A lot of people like to joke that the internet was invented for porn. Ah hahaha. You scamps! No. It was of course invented for arguing.

Wolf Spiders and Galapagos Tortoises each clear several hours of their schedule for mommy and daddy alone time. They're still at it long after the average human couple has unlocked the door, brushed their teeth, caught the first half of the late show and dozed off wearing their glasses. The average person just doesn't have the stamina to play that hard very long.

When it comes to arguing, though, our species can definitely go the distance. Many a baby has been born in an office chair because mommy was too busy debating the finer points of cloth vs disposable diapers in the forum thread she started the same day she peed on the stick. It's not that internet arguments go on for a long time, it's that they never end at all.

Some arguments get closed by moderators. Some arguments are abandoned when better arguments spring up somewhere else. No internet argument, however, is ever truly over. They wait. They incubate. They migrate. First to twitter. Then to the blog. Then back to the forums and the infectious cycle is complete. Less phoenix from a flame than forest fire from a cigarette butt, they rise again to consume all attention spans in their paths. A lot of people do their best to avoid them, but sometimes you don't even know you're in one until the marshmallow's melted off your stick and you can smell your burning hair. That's why it's so important to learn the warning signs:

Quotations:

If it's addressed specifically to you and it doesn't rhyme, odds are you're being argued at.

Religious quotations:

Uh oh. Now you're in trouble.

Nazi references:

Are you going to sit there and take that?

ALL CAPS:

Surely the computer wouldn't allow them to type it in ALL CAPS if it WASN'T TRUE, now would it?

Maturity level estimations:

I don't know what you said, but you clearly struck a nerve there. Also you just might be debating Pee Wee Herman.

LOL:

Okay they're officially running out of things to say.

I have more important things to do:

Well you won that one, but again, it's never really over. They'll be back in another thread.

And so will you.

My people do write the quaintest titles though, don't we?

I live in a small but very affluent city. In fact the first remark people make when they find out where I live is a stunned "they have a trailer park there?" Indeed they do, as a secret shopper noted during the grand opening of a nearby housing development. "Yes," the sales representative conceded,"but don't worry. It's fenced in."

Well the joke's on her. We trailer parkians are a freakishly agile bunch. Comes from all that crawling around shooing skunks out from under the skirting. Plumbers appreciate it when you do that before calling them out. They didn't at one of the trailers my plumber got called out to. He was already underneath the thing working when he made that discovery, and in his haste to get away forgot that the pipe he'd been working on was pretty much exactly at mouth level in the direction he was turning at approximately five thousand miles per hour.

That was the last he saw of those teeth. But still, agile! I mean he did get away, after all. Well most of him did, anyway.

No, it's not a glamorous life. Glamorous people don't live in houses that tilt at odd angles after heavy rain falls. Glamorous people don't have leaky taps that they refuse to fix because it keeps the pipes from freezing when it's forty below, and glamorous people don't generally have small mammals denning under their front door. The few that do probably spend more on haircare for those mammals than I do on dental.

Trailer park people are well aware that we're the laughing stock of, well, everywhere. We're a stereotype, a catch phrase, and a hilarious party theme all rolled into one. Let's be frank, we're the only distinct demographic that it's still okay to make fun of. We're the lovable chumps of North American society. Not poor enough to be scary poor, just poor enough to be ridiculous. Not an economically important enough population to worry about alienating, and not a socially troubled enough population to worry about being sensitive to. We're not tragedy poor, we're comedy poor. We're Jerry Springer poor!

One thing we're not, though, is house poor. My home isn't as desirably located, attractively architectured, or even as sedentary as I might ideally prefer, but the most important thing it isn't is the bank's. For me there can be no home sweet home sweeter than a home I can truly call my own. Well, mine and the skunks' I suppose.

Now I just need to make this title more interesting.

I'm having trouble finishing this book I'm reading. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it, so I really want to. Unfortunately, though, there's also a lot of:

Day 1: the bird flew away
Day 2: the bird flew back
Day 3: the bird flew away
Day 4: the bird didn't fly back
Day 5: the bird still didn't fly back
Day 6: my mistake, the bird did fly back. Anyway it flew away now.
Day 7: forgot to check on the bird

which goes on for entire, lengthy chapters before finally culminating in

Conclusion: I think I might have been watching the wrong bird.

I want to be smart, I really sincerely do, but damn. Why does being smart always have to be so boring? Why can't researchers pad out their accounts with a little hot nerd on nerd action or something? I mean come on, there are no tvs in an observation blind. We know they've got to get up to something to pass the time while they're waiting three days in the rain to see if the bird 5921-09 will peck meat specimen 31498 or meat specimen 31499. Document that! We're bored too!

No, I don't really think researchers should start writing erotica. In fact, I probably can't overstate that: I really, really don't think researchers should start writing erotica.

"Oh professor McCullough," she said in a weird, gaspy kind of voice, "I think perhaps a more appropriate topic of conversation at this point might be a comparison of contraceptive preferences."


"Of course, Monica," Professor McCullough replied, taking his glasses off carefully by gently grasping the frame in both hands because if you just take them off by one arm you'll twist the hinges, and even though they always do that in movies anybody who's actually worn glasses for any amount of time is going to know better, "I've studied and rated the tensile strengths of all the popular prophylactic brands."


Monica fainted, overwhelmed by the exactitude of the professor's scientific method.

Still, something has to be done. People are putting down smart stuff and picking up remote controls all across the nation. Why? Because smart stuff is so boring! We want to say clever stuff at cocktail parties too, but why should we have to suffer through boring learning stuff to earn that privilege?

This is exactly why we need to fund reverse evolution studies. With all the bird species in the world we should be able to crank out a couple dozen half decent dinosaurs within a decade or so. Or at least a mammoth. If I were reading a scientific account about a woolly mammoth not arriving when it was expected I would be intrigued and want to know more. Why not? Where did it go? Is it headed this way? How much direct force can the roof of my car withstand?

Ask anybody in any school - kindergartner or doctoral candidate - and they'll tell you that the more dinosaurs science has in it, the more interesting it is.

Compare:

Day 1: the bird flew away
Day 2: the bird flew back
Day 3: the bird flew away
Day 4: the bird didn't fly back
Day 5: Daryl was eaten by a Pterodactyl
Day 6: set up an observation blind in front of Deryl's remains
Day 7: the bird flew back

Conclusion: we need to replace Daryl

I rest my case and await my grant.

Where did I put that list of titles?

The Advantages of Keeping a Messy House

• Everything becomes infinitely more interesting when there's housework to avoid.
• Never having to search for a particular pot, pan or utensil. You know it's in the sink.
• If nobody can see the floor, nobody can tell you haven't vacuumed.
• Never having to worry about having enough refreshments on hand in case company drops by, considering there's absolutely no way on earth you're going to let them through that front door anyway.
• Nothing clean to wear is a perfectly valid excuse to go shopping.
• You always have available storage space if you never put anything away.
• Look around. Would you bother trying to rob you? Neither would anybody else. Enjoy your peaceful night's sleep!
• Not having to consciously prioritize. The important stuff always manages to sift itself to the top of the piles.
• Crossing a room without stepping over anything, and sitting down without having to move anything first? That kind of thing is exactly how people get lazy.
• Knowing that when you die, everybody's going to have to find something more substantial to compliment you on than for being a good housekeeper.