JD loves Jeeps so much he creams MY pants when he sees them

Hahahaha. I'm watching Beverly Hills 90210. I love this show. I also love Melrose Place. Just so you know.

I just woke up from a dream in which my sister and I were running from the terminator. We had gone to an event of some sort at which there were two cheese balls, I was in charge of making sure they were put away. Then, Wendy Brewster appeared to sit at the place and wait for her ride. Then Arnold and his fellow terminator Linda Hamilton appeared and chased me and Jenny through the place, then we drove recklessly to a hotel, then like idiots we were staying in two different rooms, then I realized they were there looking for us so I went tearing through the hotel trying to find Jenny and telling all these kids I was just playing hide and seek, and then I came around this weird corner and Linda H was standing there and she turned toward me like a dinosaur and sniffed the air and I took off running and I heard her say something really creepy (can't remember what now) and I jumped down the lobby's flight of stairs and ran out into the parking lot, where jenny picked me up in the car and we drove away.

I woke up kind of scared, hahahaha.

A few days ago I had a dream where I was wearing football pads and fighting a war in my old Newburgh backyard. You guys were all there. I remember thinking the reason I hadn't been hurt in the war yet was that I had football pads on. ANd then Legolas was also wearing football pads, and we were hugging before the next battle began. We were at war with these huge zombie monsters. Haahaha

We bought a couch.
Can't wait to see you all.
So far the visit roster is such:
Late February: JD's sister
March 12th-21st: Jenny and Levi

All other times: Available

The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn Is Just To Love

I am so fucking happy to be back here. It actually felt like I was coming home, and there was so much stuff I missed that I didn't even realize I missed that made me smile. Like, my bed. Oh god I love my bed. and putting my flipflops on to go get the mail. and peeing with the door open if I feel like it. and the absolute absurdity of the fear these people have of rain. and the driving, which is so fast and well-planned out and safer-feeling than anything in Indiana. And my walk in closet. And the sunshine. I don't even claim to prefer summers over winter, but I think that's all but completely permanently changed after living here through a winter. Good god it's nice here. Perfect jacket weather.

And almost as soon as I stepped off the plane, my persistent cough went away. I love it. I hope you all can come and visit and stay forever.

I did arrive here only to find myself without any checked luggage to pick up, and as the OC has a strict set of rich-people-hate-noise policies in place for the airport, it basically had shut down by the time I got to the baggage claim. But then yesterday morning a representative from Northwest in EVANSVILLE called me and asked if I wanted my bag. Like, the evansville people DIDN'T EVEN PUT IT ON THE FIRST PLANE. Sheesh. I guess I missed the point where, after I asked that it be checked and they swiped it for bombs, I was supposed to say explicitly, "please send this along with me to my final destination which is santa ana/oc" thanks evansville. You are so lame.

I have to ease back into this blog thing. I've got big plans to hit up the Ikea winter sale (50% off, whee!) once jd gets home and I have an apartment to clean. And I'm sitting around bored until Tuesday, so call and write me. Lovels.

Damn...You Shit On Everything You've Ever Loved or Even Known...Whew...Vol.9

CYBERSPACE, EARLY MORNING. Our main characters LIZ, SHANE and REALITY have decided to meet for the very last time.

SHANE: A few days before Christmas, right when Liz came into town, her, Toni, Dustin, Ashleigh Cook were out at IHOP and invited me to come after work.

REALITY: Not true. Dustin invited you, to everyone's obvious dismay.

SHANE: Dustin casually asked me some questions, with the assumption being that they'd been talking about it already—which is never good. A rule of thumb Dustin and I had developed—if he makes a joke that seems like it came from nowhere, assume that Team Sarcasm had already made the joke and he was joining along (but he was the only one willing to do it in front of the others face).

REALITY: First of all, do you think this little arrangement between yourself and your "best friend" comes as a shock to anyone? I'm sure you giggled naughtily when you thought it up, but aside from being the most transparent fucking ruse, it makes people "awkward and uncomfortable" because your supposed "best friend" is the one constantly spearheading the shit-talking before, during, and after your arrival or departure. We had been talking about it already because your supposed "best friend" Dustin gleefully announced that you had a brand new idiot plan to further fuck up your life, offered to provide us with any details anyone might be interested in knowing, and then astutely observed that he didn't understand why you were moving to LA and planning to stay with Liz and JD when you "don't really get along with them anyway." Your apparent reply was to say that both Liz and JD had been at least decent in their replies to your intentions, with Dustin countering this glimmer of hope for any kind of applied friendship with "well, you guys'll probably hate each other by the time this break is over anyway." It is just so so amazing how well your "best friend" Dustin manages to predict the happenstances of your existence.

SHANE: I tried curbing the fear-induced silence I normally have around Liz, and asker her about her flight and such.

LIZ: You are a fucking pussy. Stop trying so goddamn hard to martyr yourself because your life sucks and I don't like you.

REALITY: Your attempt at this involved you taking a quick breather from the never-ending discussion of Who You Saw The Other Day That You Went to High School With to disinterestedly ask very forced-sounding (are you just that inept?) questions of Liz, Ashleigh Elizabeth Cook, R.N., and occasionally Toni, which you immediately followed up with a very pro-social and inclusive return to talking to your "best friend" Dustin about Who You Saw The Other Day That You Went to High School With.

SHANE: This might have come across as opportunistically insincere

REALITY: Yeah? You fucking think so? That's because it WAS opportunistically insincere, and obvious and awkward to boot. Nice job all around fielding that one.

SHANE: Maybe this is the opportunity for us to finally be friends, and not friends in theory

REALITY: You need to stop acting like you've been desperately trying to befriend Liz since Day One, and that her inconsistent, inconstant, ever-changing opinion of you has little or nothing to do with You, but rather is a by-product of The Universe Conspiring Against You. There was never any theory of the two of you being friends. There was never any inkling of any type of relationship. There was never even any discussion of a friendship. Your pretended interest now (especially in light of you A. needing a favor, and a big fat one at that, and B. wanting desperately to sound as victimized as possible for the benefit of anyone who has never had the absolute displeasure of sitting in a diner booth with you and your "best friend" Dustin for any length of time who might happen upon your blog) is unnecessary, offensive, and categorically rude.

SHANE: Aside from that night, I hadn't talked to JD or Liz since I originally sent out those emails at the beginning of the month.

REALITY: This is exactly why your behavior is crass and distasteful. You begged for a favor, received a gracious response, and promptly forgot all about any further obligation you may have to seeing your end of anything through; in a conversation, in asking for a favor, in planning for your future, in taking one grain of personal responsibility and choking it down instead of flinging it, chris-kattan-style at the people who inherently like you the least but are going the furthest distance for you.

SHANE: Dustin and Toni were invited out with Liz, and when she casually asked what I was doing, she quickly followed it up with, "That doesn't mean I want you to call him."

REALITY: Because your supposed "best friend" Dustin eagerly answered, "what is Shane up to?" with, "Why, do you want me to call him?"

SHANE: She went on further to say she wasn't "impressed" with my plan (was I supposed to have brought charts and three-ringed binders?).

REALITY: Your half-baked plan to CASH OUT YOUR LIFE INSURANCE POLICY? Really?!? You're indignant that someone was unimpressed with the amount of thought that had clearly gone into what you had decided? Astounding! Just for shits and giggles' sake, what might you have included in these charts and binders? Nothing? Because you have no fucking idea what you're doing, when you're doing it, how you're going to avoid starving to death, but considered things to be completely "A-Ok" because you had one triumphant email saying that you could stay in someone's apartment if it became absolutely necessary? Bravo. Really, your obvious apathy about what Liz or any other person in the known universe (the same one that's conspiring against you, incidentally) thinks about you is inspiring.

SHANE: She hadn't even decided if she was going to let me stay

REALITY: It had been a non-issue until, surprise, your supposed "best friend" Dustin informed Liz and JD ever-so-casually that you intended to stay with them as long as possible, and that you had no intention of contributing to the expenses this would incur. Liz then said, "well, if he stays for a really long time he would have to pay something." Dustin counters with "how much is your rent?" and liz says, "$1400 a month" to which Dustin, eyes gleaming with delight, nearly shouts, "so Shane would have to pay almost $500 a month to stay with you guys?!?" At this point, various others chimed in with stories about what a shitty roommate Shane is, the money he owes them, the messes he makes, the lack of motivation to do any kind of self-improving, the shoddy work ethic, you name it. And this all combined to make Liz and JD, unsure of where Shane had initially gotten the idea that he definitely should stay with them as long as needed (rather than as a last resort as was thought to be conveyed), rethink their hasty offer of a place to crash if needed. Yes, indeed, the offer was more or less withdrawn for more careful consideration.

SHANE: God knows what inspires that knee-jerk indignation of hers

REALITY: Maybe you should ask your loyal-to-the-end "best friend" Dustin just who inspires it. Maybe you should try and see things from another person's point of view. Indignation? At the idea that you expected to become a permanent houseguest in Liz's apartment with no means of contributing financially to the household? In an arrangement already rife with monetary burdens, you are fucking indignant and surprised that people who barely tolerate you in the first place and are occasionally "kind" to you only out of pity might not want you intruding on their lives for an untold and undefined amount of time? Are you serious?

LIZ: Shane, you are a giant turd monster.

SHANE: If you're me—or anyone wanting to impose on the lives of any of her friends she's annexed—it's when you happen to exist in her presence.

REALITY: It's just you. No one else. And, let's be clear, it's not an imposition thing, it's a stomach-turning disgust thing. But more on that in a minute.

SHANE: And rest assured that the minute you leave the room she'll air our whatever grief she has with you by going through every grief she's ever had with you—all of which contain the compassionate objective non-pettiness of a Klan lynching, and most of which have been overanalyzed in her anti-social boredom from selectively (and usually negatively) remembered impressions and hearsay.

LIZ: Wow, the air is so thick with your audacious hypocrisy I can barely breathe.

REALITY: I hope you have evidence to support this, which I am guessing you do, otherwise good sense would dictate that you shut your face (if you need help, maybe your angsty weenie loser friend Ryan Vincent Mullen could assist you by sticking his dick in your mouth). And as usual, we can guess that you and your supposed "best friend" Dustin have sat around comparing notes about when Liz said what about whom, and how viciously you could interpret or misinterpret it , missing the absolute point that LIZ WOULD NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS SAY A GODDAMN THING IN FRONT OF YOU THAT SHE WOULD NOT SAY TO OR IN FRONT OF THE PERSON OR PERSONS SHE WAS BITCHING ABOUT. Who the fuck do you think you're kidding? Do you really think she gets so caught up in her "all-consuming hatred" of whichever person is on the chopping block in that particular instance that she temporarily forgets that you and Dustin are eagerly lapping every morsel of it up in the hopes that someday it'll come in handy in making some sort of drama out of something that doesn't matter to anyone but the two of you just so you can later slap each other's backs and commend yourselves for being "such great friends?"

LIZ: You so badly want to think of me as a spineless, heartless, calculatingly cold fake-friend to all the people I care about, and you can dredge up any and every tiny nugget of WHATEVER you can remember me ever saying about anyone (and I'll be able to predict with ALARMING accuracy the specific on-the-fence people you'll target with this), but you miss the point that these relationships are complex, sometimes even more so than Dustin instructing you what to say, think, and feel about everything in the universe, and usually the given relationship was entered into voluntarily by both parties and no, everything is not all sunshine and kittens all the time, even though you cite such "convincing" evidence of my sullen refusal to partake in any social exchange, instead prefering to scowl sourly until the "offender" leaves so the floodgates open. Never, never again flatter yourself so much by thinking that I would include you in something that any person off the street would not also be invited to participate in. You must think you have a truly extensive stockpile of "dirt" or you wouldn't make the claim in the first place, but for future reference it is safe to say that You are the primary target of any reported outbursts. Your supposed "best friend" should have made that abundantly clear to you by now. Hmm, maybe he just tells you whatever he wants. Hmmm.

SHANE: And she'll also air out her griefs in front of your best friend, too.

REALITY: Not to invoke Mr. Belabor The Point here, but your "best friend" practically pees himself with excitement every time he smells an opportunity to encourage people to trash you behind your back.

SHANE: Then she'll wonder later where you get your "persecution complex" from

REALITY: No, she doesn't really care. Just thinks you're intensely maladjusted

SHANE: wonder on her blog why the world can't be the idealistic "eternal optimist" she is

LIZ: See above. No one forces you to read my blog, and in the midst of this oh-so-fitting, oh-so-karmically-sanctioned retaliation for all the millions of times you've felt wronged by me as you anxiously scan my blog for signs of your own name, please understand that the sweeping generalizations about love and loss and hope and despair are not written with you in mind, but instead, for people I care about. And quite often, for my own amusement, sometimes at your expense.

SHANE: then turn around and shit on everything she's ever loved or even known.

LIZ: Please, oh wise one, explain to all the rest of us how you have always and will continue to always understand -so completely it almost transcends knowledge entirely- the vastly complex and altogether mysterious -even to those involved, unlike yourself- workings of my heart, mind, or emotions, such that you find it wholly reasonable to sit back, fancying yourself comfortably seated in some sort of tower from whence you sneer down at what you perceive to be simple, or obvious, or meaningless and pass a judgement you cannot possibly have the capacity to make. No sir, you know nothing of any of the contents of my heart and you absolutely have no business referencing whatever cheap and vulgar shot you appear to be referencing with this statement. If ever I receive an inkling of proof that you are speaking to what I think you are, rest assured that I will personally see to it that you get the living shit kicked out of you. Please feel free to cite this in your suicide note. You are unequivocally craven to even presume that your mentioning this could somehow, what?

REALITY: What is it you expect to have happen? That she hears the Uncontestable Truth in your wise wise words and, suddenly violently ashamed, crumples under the weight and guilt you so hope to instill in her by tucking this in at the very end?

LIZ: How dare you slide that insipid, serpentine little remark into this vomitous mess? How dare you make these impotent little jabs, as though you think You have some power to rub my face in something that no one (myself included) had thought of doing until now? You have no business addressing these grown-up matters as though you have one iota of one speck of dust of one glimmer of a clouded understanding of what goes on in my head on a daily basis, or my comprehension of how badly and thoroughly I have hurt people I care irrationally about. How could you possibly even pretend to understand? How dare you presume to label as simple something you have only read about in books and seen in movies? And how dare you, how fucking dare you presume to tell me and mine how you think I or we should feel or react? You are an absolute coward.

SHANE: If you're reading this Liz, you might be thinking, Gee, Shane has no fucking clue what he's talking about in my life. Those were mean blanket statements of me as a person, which he barely knows. How can he do that? Now you know how I felt—nothing like public character assassinations via the web blogger, eh?

REALITY: Hey, it's safe to say that Liz couldn't care less what you have to think or say about her, that you can shout it from the mountaintops with little or none of the desired effect, and this sniveling (my, how often the word "sniveling" is associated with you, Shane) attempt to make jabs at something your "best friend" Dustin has explicitly instructed you to attack by virtue of its being a "known" weak spot in her armor is just bullshit.

LIZ: There is nothing you can say to hurt or break me. When you drag people I care for -in a way you can only hope to comprehend one day- into your petty, pointless, useless and fucking unnecessarily melodramatic attempt to get back at me for not pretending to like you, yeah, the claws come out. I hope you're acutely aware of the fact that no one on whose behalf I am speaking now has ever fucking wronged you, and your pusillanimous horseshit is not very well aimed at just Me. If you had anyone you genuinely loved in your life, rest assured that I would be directing this at them instead of you, as you live entirely in a fictional world created specifically for you by your supposed "best friend" Dustin.

And nice choice of wording with "character assassination." Don't flatter yourself. You're not telling anyone anything about me that they didn't already know, or at least suspect.

SHANE: Burn this bridge, you remorseless fucking bitch.

LIZ: Done. Done such a long time ago I'm insulted that you think that there still existed any sort of bridge for you to impose any sort of will upon. Fuck you and your pathetic last-ditch attempt to hurt my feelings.