Sable: Mom…mom…mom…mom…MOM…MOM. MOM! MOM MOM MOM MOM!
Me: For crying out loud, WHAT??
Sable: Hi Mom.
Me: Hi..go back to sleep!
Sable: Mom?
Me: …what?
Sable: Whatcha doin?
Me: SABLE. IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. I WAS ASLEEP.
Sable: But I missed yooooooou.
Me: GO TO SLEEP SABLE!
Sable: ….fiiiine.
(a few mins pass)
Sable: I LOVE YOUUUUU MOM WHY DON’T YOU LOVE MEEEEEE? LOVE ME MOOOOOM!
Me: Sigh.
And then this happens. I don’t even know what I was initially comparing or how the scoring went, but I decided Joffrey was the biggest asshole of them all. Nerd life.
I’m sitting here listening to Jen Robbins on The Web Ahead talk about GNN and early web design. (GNN being the first commercial website. It turns 20 this year. Cripes.) It made me curious as to whether or not I could find an archived version of the first website I ever attempted. Luckily for me, they have a whole website that archives things like that.
The year was 1999. It was a tripod-hosted site. A little bit of background: at the time, I was married to this other guy and was one of those born-again people.
Note the Jesus fish. And that awesome drop shadow. Each page was a different color. I positively loved gradients. That dove actually flapped its wings and there was a midi loop. Oh, and Web Rings! Who can’t forget Web Rings? Now I know what you’re thinking: Who are you and what did you offer? The Who Are We page was under construction. I can only hope that I had an animated construction guy on it, but a lot of the images are not archived. The offerings consisted of awful, horrible pamphlets that were heavily overcharged for. I was not the brains of the operation, funny enough, so I just went along with whatever my ex said. That also sums up most of our marriage. My brain checked out for a few years. (I was young and stupid, after all.) There was one pamphlet written by my ex that consisted of all the ways “men were dogs”. I couldn’t tell you the point of that pamphlet (or brochure, as my ex used to call them, like we were a damn tourist attraction). I think I wrote one, complete with cute ducks and a pacifier, on how having a baby really doesn’t need to change your life. (Again, young and stupid, what the hell did I know? Also, I would like to point out that at the time, I was not a party-type of person and I had pretty much no friends thanks to my stupid life choices, so of course my days of staying in and doing nothing had not changed at all.) My ex also wrote one about his life story, because no one has ever screwed up their life royally with drugs before, and thought that people would easily give up hard earned money to have it printed on a piece of paper, folded up and mailed to them. He’d make a really good blogger, come to think of it. Suffice to say, it really wasn’t a well-laid business plan.
Jump ahead to late 2000/ early 2001. By this time, I have divorced my ex, grew a backbone, and had a little bit of an anger issues. Not necessarily in that order:
THIS is more awkward and embarrassing for me to admit to than the first one, and I was on the fence about coming clean here. But hell, why not? So despite the divorce and my insistence that I did not want to talk to my ex any more, he seemingly refused to accept that we were no longer together. For several months, I was on the receiving end of all sorts of emails, calls, and letters from people I didn’t know telling me what an awful, horrible person I was for divorcing him while he was..er..uh..unavailable. (That’s another story for another time, perhaps.) See, if this stuff happened in these days, it would be strange people tweeting at me and poking me on Facebook, no doubt. My, have times have changed. Those were handwritten letters telling me that I sucked. How quaint. Anyway, so here is the result of a really angry 21 year old deciding to splatter the internet with this shit.
Yes, before MonkeyThoughts, it was “Home of the Nakie Monkeys”.
…
Dear god, I thought I was such a badass. I cringe just looking at this. At that point I was stepping far enough away from the church to throw in a “What the f***”, but not far enough to not censor myself. Oh and it’s complete with a winky face afterwards. I must have thought that was the pinnacle of edgy and that all those God-fearing people who came my way where going to be like “Wuuut!?!” and run away. Add the tattoo name drop, as my ex hated tattoos and this news would no doubt get back to him and make him rage (or so I was thinking). The most cringe-worthy moment comes here:
my tattoo doesn’t blink- I don’t think… I can ask my man about it..he sees it better than I do. *wink wink*
Not only did I wink-wink, I ADDED A WINKY FACE. Also, that particular tattoo is on the back of my shoulder, not somewhere explicit. And the man? There was no man at that time. I was clearly trying to get a rise out of people. Again, thank god there was no Facebook at the time cause who knows what I would have done to embarrass myself.
Just a few months later, I somewhat came to my senses and replaced the above with a cleaner, partially saner page:
I’ve removed the particularly passive-aggressive language or identifying markers. Look, I’m all for embarrassing myself, but that was little too shameful. The first paragraph was an explanation of version one of the site as told by an angry woman. Take note of this sentence:
We have a new addition to the family, so you will probably see pics of my new baby boy, Orion.
Orion was a dog, and I managed to make it sound like I popped out another kid and went hippy twee with the name. Why? Because I figured it would stick in someone’s craw, no doubt. I would have been a therapist’s dream.
Two months later, I really came to my senses and took it down for good. I went back to school, got my shit in order, and didn’t make a return to the personal web scene until 2004. While I’m sure that I have some cringe-worthy moments in the archives, none of them hold a candle to that site.
Let this torrid tale be a lesson to you, kiddos:
I need to find a way to sign off everything with “CRAZY MONKEY GIRL WUZ HERE”.
So Merry Christmas and all that jazz. I’ve been down for the count. Sunday, I fell in my shower despite two prominent safety bars. I won’t say what I was doing to save some embarrassment, but rest assured I was being a jackass at the time and goofing off. Oddly enough, most of my accidents happen when I’m being normal and the circumstances are shifty. But this time, I decided to goof off in a slippery tub.
At the time, I just broke out in laughter and commented to the husband that I think my back may have been pulled during that. I felt no pain, so
I carried on as usual. We had a visit with our foster dog’s potential adopters. I was able to walk him around their yard with no sign of the pain that was going to hit me. It started to ache on the way home. By the time I got home, I could barely walk into my house. I’ve pretty much been in bed since, with a few attempts at doing things. Our annual Christmas Eve dinner with my family was torturous thanks to two hours on a hard wooden chair. I’ve been avoiding the doctor because I’m certain this will go away on its own. I mean, it should, right? In the meantime, it’s been ice packs, anti-inflammatories, and a lot of Netflix. And a lot of boredom. I hate staying put for this long.
Anyway, what does this have to do with a giant penguin? Nothing at all, except that I bet *his* back doesn’t hurt.
Yes, do tell. Nevermind getting my dogs to stop opening the closet or running laps in the neighborhood; I need them to eat spaghetti all romantic-like.
If that even is his real name.
The real reason he and silent bird friend Zee have disappeared without a word from Nick, Jr?
Because Moose E. Moose is a dirty, dirty plagiarist.
Remember this fun little ditty?
Sound familiar? And I don’t mean familiar in the “yes, my kid makes me watch Nick Jr. all the time” familiar. I mean “hey this kinda sounds like something else” familiar.
Unless you are a fan of Bob Crosby, music of the late 40s, or an avid player of the awesomeness that is Fallout 3, I’m guessing that answer is no.
So I present Bob Crosby’s Way Back Home:
Good stuff, isn’t? So good, Mr. Moose couldn’t keep his grubby hooves off of it. Sure, you can argue that it’s a parody, or in the very least a homage to the original. But Moose E. Moose is too cunning for that. He damn well knew no 3 year old would call him on his song of lies, so he just slipped it right in there like he owned it.
Someone must have noticed though. Who discovered your dirty little secret, Moose E. Moose? Was your disappearance in exchange for their silence? Or was it simply out of shame for entertaining thousands of young, impressionable minds with your music of deception?
Take this as a lesson, people of the internets. Plagiarism is not a joke. It hurts real cartoons, like the perpetually mute Zee. Did Zee have to disappear? Probably not, but what preschooler do you know could handle a whole block of programming hosted by a mute bird? Not many, I assure you. Even the devil spawn of the UK, aka the Teletubbies, had to utter some nonsense sounds. Zee didn’t stand a chance.
It’s that time of year again, when everyone decides to provide holiday gift guides to the masses! I have to wonder if people ever buy things suggested by random bloggers they don’t actually know. It’s fascinating to me, in a weird sort of way. The best way to shop for someone you care about is to give a shit about what their interests are. Or ask them for an Amazon Wish List. Therefore, I’m not going to suggest what you should buy people; I’m going to suggest what you should avoid buying because they make lame gifts.
Keep this list. Reference it when in need, and I guarantee you will buy less sucky presents for the holidays.
Peanut has to do a presentation on family holiday traditions for school. I’m a little stressed about it as we don’t have traditions in the classical sense of the word. Our holidays can be…tricky. We never know what sort of disaster will present itself as the holidays come around. The important thing is that our family is together and a time is had; magnitudes of gifts are irrelevant.
Holidays were definitely more traditional when I was a child. We went to certain relatives’ houses on certain holidays. Some of the most memorable ones were the ones spent at my grandma’s house. My grandma passed away when I was 10, so I’m almost surprised that so much of those early years are ingrained in my memory. Christmas was no exception. I remember most vividly my grandma’s Christmas tree. I would stare at the ornaments, positively transfixed. My favorite were the bubble ornaments.
These brightly colored bulbs would bubble up with some sort of liquid. I’m not sure what designated them as being “holiday”, but considering the weird cheetah print ornaments I saw today, I’ll take bubble ones any day. The only issue is that they get super hot. I’ve burned my fingers more than once touching the stems, which was not the brightest move but I was just a kid.
I did find a video of these things in action:
Fascinating, aren’t they? I was considering finding some on eBay, but I’ll probably end up burning myself again.
A holiday tradition in my family was this odd little driving game my dad invented, no doubt to keep us kids occupied during car drives. My dad would start each round by saying something like “Who can find all red lights?” My brothers and I would start searching the passing houses for the one that had the red Christmas lights, so that we could be the first one to yell it out and win the round. The prize was always the promise of money. The problem was, it was never a tangible amount of money. It would start out normal: five dollars one round, ten for another. The prize dollars would go up as the game went on, till it was up to millions of dollars. I don’t think we even considered that we wouldn’t actually get any of the money. We just wanted to win. It was a wonderful way to keep us from moaning and groaning during drives back home from relatives’ parties.
I still have a fondness for Christmas lights. I love looking at houses all decorated up, but not with excessive decorations. This will be the first year that we get to decorate our own house, but we have to decide on an aesthetic. I’m more partial to blue lights; they were always the hardest to find.
Also, I’m pretty sure my dad owes me like 100 million dollars, because I was awesome at that game.