WHOA!

AHAHAHAHAA...I mean, wow. That sucks

You know it's going to be an interesting day when your dad wakes you up by yelling, "SOMEBODY SHOT SANTA CLAUS IN THE FACE!!!"

From The Ventura County Star

Nyeland Acres Santa statue shot in the face

By Sylvia Moore, smoore@VenturaCountyStar.com
December 19, 2004

Oxnard police are looking for the person who shot Santa.

Early Saturday morning, police officers were dispatched to the large Santa Claus statue off Highway 101 in Nyeland Acres after receiving a call about shots fired at the statue. The statue stands in a decorated lot in the 2800 block of Ventura Boulevard.

When officers arrived just after 7 a.m., they found five bullet holes marring the jolly face of old St. Nick. Five 9 mm casings were lying on the street nearby, police said.

Mike Barber, Santa's caretaker, got a phone call from police telling him about the incident. Barber was on his way to the statue to set up a Saturday toy drive for local children. Barber said the gunshots shattered the lenses on Santa's glasses and broke the frames. He and a friend used screws, glue and wire to patch the frames back together.

Barber said this is the first vandalism incident at the Santa statue since it was moved from Carpinteria nearly two years ago.

"A week before Christmas! This is totally unacceptable," said Barber, president of Garden Acres Mutual Water Co. "You've got to be a pretty strange individual to want to shoot Santa Claus."

Police said the anonymous tipster said the suspect was a man wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants. After firing the shots, the shooter left the scene in a faded burgundy two-door car of unknown make and model.

Fortunately, the children arriving for the toy drive seemed oblivious to the pockmarks on Santa's face and merrily greeted the live volunteer Santa sitting at the statue's base.

Cary Verstynen, 53, of Port Hueneme, who arrived to bring gifts to the toy drive, was miffed over the vandalism.

"I don't know if he was drunk or sober or just mean-spirited. It's not cool at all," Verstynen said.

The 20-foot, nearly five-ton plaster Santa statue was moved in January 2003 from Santa Barbara County to the lot on Ventura Boulevard off Highway 101. The statue had stood for 50 years on top of a malt shop and candy store near Carpinteria.

Police are still investigating the incident.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Crime Tip Hotline at 486-8362.

My Cat Hates You!

I've been in California for the past five days, participating in such thrilling tasks as vacuuming, going to the grocery store, and addressing Christmas cards to family friends, all while trying my desperatest to hoist myself out of yet another major depressive episode. For those of you who've never had to deal with this, I salute you and your excellent luck. Do not take it for granted. Life's much easier when you're not either at war with yourself or collapsed exhausted on the floor.

Anyway, my aunt is arriving this weekend, and my sister's coming a couple of days after that, so hopefully the presence of those in a saner frame of mind will brighten things up a bit. We may even actually get a fucking Christmas tree. To paraphrase my sister, stick three depressed people in a house together and watch how successful they are at getting nothing done. I love my parents, but Christ, is there ever a black cloud enveloping the pink-stuccoed two-story on Grapevine Drive. I guess we really are related.

On a brighter note, I got some wild salmon jerky today, and it was pretty good.

Unplugged

I'm disabling comments until further notice. Got something to say? You can e-mail me at quandarical@gmail.com.

I'm going out on the town tonight--gotta go shellack my face. Catchya later!

Things to Write About

• The weather sucks
  
• My cat's first playdate
  
• My cat is a sleazy RAPIST
  
• The med students downstairs won't let me play my music loud
  
• The Catholic sect next door (name: The Missionaries of the Precious Blood)
  
• Christine needs a date
  
• I bought a 10x magnifying mirror at Sally Beauty Supply
  
• Eyebrows
  
• Facial imperfections
  
• Pores
  
• I'm out of money
  
• I need to do the dishes
  
• This quarter sucked
  
• Why does every movie I want to see get bad reviews
  
• My lightbox
  
• Waitressing gives me PTSD and a nervous twitch
  
• Oversensitivity
  
• Gold stars
  
• Monsters
  
• Aliens from outer space
  
• Obscure references to children's literature

Well, I don't have anything else to write about.

Here are the answers to my friendtest:

1. When I was four, I stood outside the La Brea Tarpits and wished on a star that my favorite toy would talk. What toy was it?

It was indeed my My Little Pony, Dancing Butterflies. The googly-eyed santa puppy exists and in fact is lying facedown on my pillow right now. But I didn't get him until I was nine. Incidentally, my sister gave me a little smackdown on the phone about how although my My Little Pony was technically named Dancing Butterflies, to us, she was always Dancing Butterfly, technicalities be damned. I stand corrected. But if that's the case, Kirsten, then although your Milky Way unicorn was TECHNICALLY a girl, to US, he was a BOY. He was Dancing Butterfly's HUSBAND. ADMIT IT.

2. Name childhood hobby I did NOT have:

I was surprised at the number of people that guessed the Juicy Fruit thing. You'd think the fact that I remembered the slogan and everything would add credence to it...and, yes, sadly, I did do that. My sister and I also ran a short-lived detective service, inspired by Encyclopedia Brown (and Chip 'n Dale), but never actually got any mysteries to solve. Our kindly old next-door neighbor Rex did leave a quarter for us, though. The hobby I did NOT have, however, was creating a little world with my animal friends. I was too busy pretending to be an actress in front of my mirror to carry on much of a dialogue with my toys. I just stole that idea from There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom, by Louis Sachar of Holes fame. Louis Sachar. Another major player in my formative years.

3. Name the celebrity crush I DID NOT have (points are otherwise inversely proportional to length of crush):

I did not have a crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt. My sister was the one with a wrinkled picture from Bop tacked on her wall. So that means...I did have a crush, at one time, on all the other ones I said. Macaulay Culkin was the longest. No, I'm not kidding...

4. All of these are things people have called me...EXCEPT ONE. Which?

The best insult I have ever gotten, hands down, was from my boss at the Pelican Bay Cafe & Bakery, where I worked my senior year of high school. He was holding the door open for me because I was carrying several cartons of eggs, and I said, "What a gentleman!" And he said, "Are you always such a smart aleck, antagonistic little punk?" I try to drop that one into conversation whenever possible. It's pure poetry. Otherwise...my old roommate Jose called me a "monogamous mental slut," which means I fantasize about having a lot of sex with one person (not one person in particular, just in general). My co-worker AJ, upon hearing about all my various food allergies/intolerances, called me "fragile," causing Burcu and I to dissolve into giggles like the antagonistic little punks we are. And in third grade, Valerie Russell told me that I wasn't as good a singer as I thought I was. Or maybe it was that I wasn't as pretty as I thought I was. Something along those lines, but singer is more likely, because in third grade I was very open about my high opinion of my own vocal talent. So that leaves the tagline to this very website, "a sad little shatter-brained creature." I wish someone would call me that, but sadly, it's just my favorite line from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

5. Name the food I have NOT avoided for a significant amount of time:

Always the ascetic, I have avoided practically every food known to man at one time. But I have not avoided soy, at least not actively. But maybe passively. Soy's kinda gross.

6. What is my FAVORITE movie?

I am not ashamed: my favorite movie is Sleepless in Seattle. Maybe because I associate it with summers spent visiting my grandparents in Wyoming--I'd watch it and then my grandmother would put on the soundtrack and now I associate it with small-town beauty, security, family. It's so comforting to me. I have the whole thing memorized and when I was incredibly depressed my first year I'd whisper lines from it to myself before I fell asleep to make myself feel better. I know it's cliched and unrealistic. That's irrelevant. I'll never get tired of it. It's one of the few things I can unequivocally call a "favorite."

7. Not that anyone could possibly know this (so I'll be generous with points for wrong answers), but I told myself the other day that I'll know I've found The One if he...

Eats and enjoys my peanut butter and spelt pancakes. I admit that they're an acquired taste, but I love them! Especially when they've sat in the fridge all night and the chunks of peanut butter sort of freeze and they start to taste like cookies...so, if he (or she, I'm not terribly picky at this point) likes me enough to put forth the time required to really appreciate this delicacy, than putting the time in to make a relationship work will be a piece.of.cake. (or pancake. Sorry, couldn't resist).

8. I'm 17, and IT'S MY FIRST TIME EVER SNEAKING OUT OF THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! (pant pant pant) I grab my keys, creep quietly out the front door, and go...where?

No one guessed a party! Am I really so transparently square? Wait: don't answer that. Or at least wait until I tell you what I did. I picked up my best pal Loreal and went to Denny's, where over hot tea and Coke with grenadine we worked on our Frankenstein essays for AP English. That's right: I sneaked out to work on an essay. At Denny's. Over tea.

9. Name the one falsehood about my Crazy Internet Past (tm)

You were hoping it was false, but it's true, and no, I don't want to talk about it. Unless you ask. The REAL falsehood is this: I have never written slash fiction! What kind of sick person do you think I am---I WOULD NEVER PIONEER AN ENTIRE SUBCULTURE UNDER A PSEUDONYM AND NEVER TELL ANYONE!

10. Which is the only of these embarrassing songs that I really hate?

I really, really, REALLY hate only one song on this list, so much that I'd rather pour ground glass down my ears than listen to it. That song is "Follow Me" by Uncle Kracker. I HATE that song. I hate its smug rat-voiced lyrics, I hate its repetitiveness, I hate how I can run but I can't hide from it because even to this day, on some radio station, somewhere, somebody is playing it.
"My Immortal"--I can take it or leave it. The lyrics are stupid but it's not a bad song. The other three ("Open Your Heart," "Don't Stop Believin'," and "If You Ask Me To") I LOVE. In fact, they're on my playlist now. WOOHOO!

In other news: Who is Natalie and how the hell does she know me so well? Natalie, are you my soulmate?

Right, so here I was all sad that nobody had taken my little friendtest, and then my sister informed me that I hadn't actually posted the link. Whoops!

My Friendtest

I Made a FriendTest!

I made one of these my first year and people who took it did horribly. Now I have completely different friends (by that I mean...I have friends) and I'm curious how well you all know me (by that I mean...how well you can guess random, unimportant trivia about my past).

I saw House of Flying Daggers last night and was pretty underwhelmed. The dialogue was insipid (along the lines of: "I thought you were the wind, carefree and wild, but you are really like the ocean, stationary and ice-cold"), the action scenes obviously (to use old-school Cali slang) bit off of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the cool parts were too self-conscious, often humorously so. I mean, they used slo-mo. Slo-mo.

Also, all I ask for in an overly serious epic film is one hot sex scene, and this one was pretty good, but it didn't measure up to my all-time favorite, which is in, yep, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Tussling with a vagabond thief right after you've stabbed him in the chest--that's what I'm talkin' about.

Time to go snuggle with my cat.