And so another year has come and gone, and it now makes three of these since Memoirs of an Evil Genius officially opened its doors in November of 2002. Oh, back in those days it was just me and Ma, and the McElroy kid, who used to sweep up and came in once a week to help with inventory. And look at us now: several facelifts and a few personnel changes later, and it�s just me. Damn it all.
But really, quite a lot has happened in the last year. There�s been comedy, there�s been horror, and there�s been, well, kind of both at the same time. There were definitely numerous ups and downs�many more than I had remembered before glancing back at the list of entries I�d made in the last 365 days, probably because (aside from a couple of downright gut-wrenchingly horrendous days) any drama would pale, walking in the shadow of the valley of Arts-Friendly.
Come to think of it, despite the aforementioned sprinkling of blood-curdling misery, This year was far better than the one before it. I mean, granted there was the �romance� that failed spectacularly, but there is the current romance that bodes quite well. There were parties and run-ins (runs-in? I guess it doesn�t matter, since there was only one.) and a move and several jobs, and even a couple of vacation-type trips.
All in all, though it was not as rocky a road, it was perhaps one more exciting. Interesting how I choose to deal with excitement by exhibiting a marked diminishment in my posts. But I was too busy having fun, y�all! Or, alternatively, dealing with Clyde and his crazy-ass issues! Update on that: we�re not speaking, although he appears to be stalking me online. Better online than in my apartment, I would say.
Anyway, here let me begin the annual stat round-up for Memoirs of an Evil Genius�
Number of Entries (not including this one): 488Number of Entries That Mention Rachael Ray: 15
Number of Entries That Mention Paris Fucking Hilton: 23
Number of Entries That Mention Charitable Works: 0
Number of Notes I�ve Received: 3! Hooray!
Most Popular Google Searches Involved: For the second year in a row, Rachael Ray takes home this crown.
Favorite Google Search of All Time: Still has to be �stupid members only jacket�.
Most Popular Entry: Patty Meltdown
Quickest Leap From Birth to the Top Ten: Bad News (within the same week)
My Favorite Entry Title From the Last Year: Throw Mama From the Train of Thought
And now the obligatory sampling of a year�s entries�My mother didn�t end up making me go shopping with her the day after Thanksgiving after all, which was really great. She did, however, make me explain to her what �teabagging� is, after overhearing it in a conversation at Starbucks, and the less said about that the better.
Four Days of the Candor (a Thanksgiving Tale)
I hate stupid people in the left turn lane who think that when the little green arrow turns into a little green circle, it means they should stop. This is not what that means. Just to clear up any confusion, the green circle never means �stop�. You may still go, just not with impunity. What you should really never do, at any cost, is hold up the flow of midday traffic by stopping at a green light. Also, don�t you give me dirty looks just because I�m leaning out of my open window and screaming profanities at you because you�re STOPPED AT A GREEN LIGHT.
These Are the Things I Can Do Without
I had sand inside my socks and seashells stuck to my bare ass, and when I scrambled over the rocks off the beach and back onto the road, gasping for air, with seaweed wrapped around me like the Creature From the Black Lagoon, I may have frightened a few bicyclists. But at least I survived.
The Deep End of the Ocean
If I turn my back on her for a minute or two�like, say, to go to the bathroom�she�ll sneak into the kitchen and try to make dinner. Then she bitches about how tired she is all the time and how her incision hurts, and how much worse she feels than she did after her last surgery. Which, of course she felt better the last time�last time she was on so many drugs, she practically reached nirvana.
Moms Away
The mattress became mashed down so badly over the years that it was practically like sleeping on a sheet of cellophane, so every time I�d get into bed, the metal bars would roll across my spine like a shiatsu massage by the Marquis de Sade, or something.
One Futon the Grave
If a person honestly believes him- or herself to be so important as to preclude them from the burdensome responsibility of looking both ways before jumping out onto the sidewalk, or even having to be conscientious of sharing said sidewalk with other living organisms, they are going to HELL. They are going to a deep, dark, stinky, fiery corner of the infernal abyss.
Clear the Runway
I�m not being judgmental or anything about it, I swear. It�s just that proclaiming various intimate activities to be Not Sex just smacks of trying to sidestep accountability � Whitewash it all you want, but a rock is a rock is a rock, you know? A rose by any other name is still rolling its eyes back in its head. It�s not like I�m even saying that rose is obviously a whore, either, by any stretch, but the more it equivocates about what is sex and what isn�t, and how some things �don�t count� and could you define the meaning of �is� and �I did not have sexual relations with that woman,� the more I�m waiting for Ken Starr to come running out of the back bedroom with a search warrant, waving an off-the-rack jizz napkin from Nordstrom�s in my face and screaming emotional impeachment.
Head of the Crass
Not to be mean about it, but when did Oprah lose her human soul?
Pretty Demanding Woman
Although Lois and I never exactly butted heads, and she could be terribly generous and fun, she trailed behind her a spreading cloud of drama -- like one of those skywriting airplanes, only one that spells out �DRAMA�, and then clips the top of a radio tower, bringing down communications for area for a good fortnight, during which time everyone starts accusing each other of being aliens and then eat each other to survive -- and it was all too easy to become implicated in the fallout.
A Death Ray of Sunshine
Anyway, I�ve already managed to snag some guy�s phone number, so don�t worry about me. I mean, okay, so it wasn�t so much �snagged� as much as sort of �creepily forced upon me�, and he wasn�t really �some guy� as much as he was �some guy hanging out the passenger window of an SUV that made his friend pull over twice before actually getting out of the car to physically stop me and thrust his phone number into my (clearly) unwilling hand�.
Hard to Do
We stopped in Santa Barbara to do some wine tasting, and then in a little town outside Santa Barbara so we could do a little wine tasting, and then we were going to stop somewhere to do a some wine tasting, but I think we all forgot about that because we were a little tipsy for some reason.
Whine Country
First of all, Kelly Preston needs to just shut the hell right up.
Miss Behavior
And even if it were �string-wanger�, what would that mean? Like, someone�s got a long, skinny, yarn-like hoo-ha? That�s a bizarre image. That would be like if, in the original The Fly, where Vincent Price exchanged heads with the eponymous insect, he had really just exchanged his man-parts with the fly�s proboscis. THAT would be a horror movie.
Word to Your Mother�s Generation
Wonder what next year will bring�
Someone Got Here By Searching For: japan bar fights I�m Watching: Tried to watch Seinfeld last night, fell asleep in the middle. I�m Reading: Still the same thing. I�ll be reading it for a while. As usual.