Not since the J. Peterman catalogue have I been so tempted to buy merchandise just for the sake of its fantastic copy. Or maybe this isn’t that good, and I’m slipping. Either way, I am the world’s best grandma and I want to eat pie.

Despite my having written thousands of letters to my congressional representative, America elected to hold Thanksgiving again. Obviously, this is not my favorite holiday because the central dish is meat meat meat and I am a vegetarian. I mean, not a literal vegetarian, because I do eat meat, but I am a vegetarian in my heart. And in my heart I also exercise regularly.

So anyway, Thanksgiving. My family used to have dinner with my uncle’s family every year. We had a solid tradition in place, where my uncle’s family would all bow their heads and one of my cousins would say grace, while my parents and I kept our heads up to indicate our unwillingness to bow beneath the yoke of the Church, the Pope, male chauvinism, Republicanism, Care Not Cash, Proposition 187, diminished school spending, overly aggressive foreign policies, sweatshops, and pre-packaged cranberry sauce.

But lately we’ve been holding our own holidays away from the Uncle clan, and my self-righteousness is all pent up with nowhere to go. We could take a tip from Sean’s family and play a cutthroat game of Scattergories, but then we’d have to somehow steal our Scattergories back from, well, Sean’s family. I guess we could make it into some kind of family-teamed Capture The Flag, if we had something that Sean’s family wanted. Maybe our flag could be Gene.

In conclusion, don’t fuck with Sparkles. Thank you, good night.

June 1, 2002

I woke up this morning and it was raining. I mean, not actually raining outside, because it’s summer, but it was raining in my heart. And everything was black like a bruise. You fooled me with your ruse. Hey, that’s pretty good, that could be a new song. And maybe for the chorus I could just wail out some vowels.

June 12, 2002

I met a girl at the carwash today. She was really attractive. We made out in the rinse cycle, just like on that one Ally McBeal episode. Afterwards she gave me her phone number and told me to call her for a date sometime, but I explained how eventually she would run off with my best friend and leave me broken and alone, so what would be the point of having Thai food and seeing the new Matrix movie when the whole thing was doomed to end in despair? This made her mad and she drove off. I knew she would leave. Now I can only grieve. Hey, that’s pretty good.

June 16, 2002

I went to my niece’s high school graduation ceremony today. I can’t believe she’s eighteen already. She looked so grown-up. Soon she’ll be in college, and then she’ll meet a nice man and get married and have kids. I just hope that her husband doesn’t run off with his secretary and leave my niece bitter and alone. But even if he doesn’t leave, she’ll still die someday. The entire concept of an optimistic graduation ceremony is such a farce. But the speeches were pretty good.

I haven’t been sick in three years. But sometimes I need a little self-administered TLC, so on Wednesday night after class I pretended I was sick. I rubbed my throat a lot and pretended it was painful to swallow and made myself a big mug of Theraflu and put on my flannel pajamas and watched Buffy in bed.

Happy birthday, Don of my heart.

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in a enormous room filled with dead, taxidermized animals. Christine’s father hunts big game like it’s going out of style (which it is, pretty much, at least in my set). His den is the size of a University lecture hall and filled with all manner of beasts from darkest Africa. The animals have been stuffed by the finest taxidermists, and are realistic down to the last detail.

Can you think what that last detail would be?

That’s right: testicles. Everywhere you look, testicles. Ocelot testicles, stag testicles, cheetah testicles, bear testicles, weird little marmot thing testicles. And lion testicles.

Well, of course I did. When else was I going to get a chance to touch the testicles of a lion?

Friday night: my android is walking over to the Lad’s house along darkest Noe Street. An SUV zips into the intersection without looking and stops just in time to avoid the pedestrian in the crosswalk ahead of my android. The pedestrian remains in the crosswalk, incensed and shouting. The SUV passengers and driver all shout back. The SUV slowly floats past, as the pedestrian uses the “F” word in a way his mother would surely not approve of. The SUV stops and a passenger comes tear-assing out and begins to smack the pedestrian around the head, screaming “You’re being beaten up by a gay man, motherfucker! How does that feel? Huh? How does it feel?” The pedestrian does not seem to feel good about it.

My android scrabbles through her bag and finds her cellphone. “I’m calling the cops!” she yells at them triumphantly. The two ignore her and begin to grapple in the manner of men unaccustomed to getting their fight on. “You guys!” screams my android, “seriously, time out! I’m serious! You guys, I’m really going to call the cops, so just stop it right now! You guys, come on, I said time out…”

The fight is eventually broken up by several large men who appear seemingly out of nowhere – because surely they can’t all have been lurking in the narrow-aisled convenience store on the corner; and if so, to what purpose? – and my android clumps on to the Lad’s house wearing a red hat and a warm glow of civic duty performed.

Didofoot is on the lam from the Yakuza and will return as soon as they get bored with chasing her.

Once again I find myself somewhere in the Midwest, hiding in a dusty hayloft from the gun-slinging representatives of my mortal enemies, the Yakuza. But nothing can stop the tireless clattering of my keyboard in pursuit of a few small paragraphs to brighten the days of my faithful readers.

Okay, faithful reader. Hi, Mom.

As you probably know, I have fallen afoul of the Yakuza more than once in my short life. How did it happen this time, you wonder? Well, I’ll tell you. Inspired by the success of my first chair kicking, I went on to kick another chair yesterday at the new Matrix movie. Two guys in front of me were yakking their way through the last scene, so I went right ahead and boot-whacked the back of the nearest seat.

Well, it turns out these gentlemen were not small skater boys. Instead, they were heavily armed members of the Yakuza. As a result of my past Yakuza experiences, every Yakuza in the world now has my face memorized, so they immediately recognized me and I was forced to exit the theater hastily, without even hearing the operatic techno nonsense that the Whack-owski Brothers chose to play over the closing credits. So that sucked.

And now here I am, alone in a hayloft which thankfully is within range of a wireless network, with nothing to do but chew straws, daydream, and use my laptop to remotely control the decoy android which is still living my old life back in San Francisco.

I will try to check in every few days. I’m sure the Yakuza will eventually get bored and give up, just like they always do. Until then, please enjoy my android.

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Award for costume that made me laugh the most goes to Christine as the Indie 500:

More pictures here.