twitter murder!

The first twitter murder came to pass, sooner than anyone expected. The police didn't know what to do. They tried cordoning off hashtags, confiscating twitpics and issuing warrants for usernames. Mostly they stood around scratching their heads and saying, "What the fuck is a hashtag?"

shitty day

I was at summer camp with a bunch of people from high school, and it was the last night. I came back from a hike in the woods to discover that the camp owner had left early, giving this creepy guy from my math class a ride back into town. I guess he just got sick of running his camp. The thing is, the camp was the scariest place any of us had ever been. Think Jason scary, or any other horror movie about scary shit happening in the woods. Just about everyone else was taking their chances and hiking out, hoping to get home before dark. Three kids had elected to stay, and I'd been nominated as their chaperone. Great.

So we barricaded ourselves in the camp owner's office, climbed into our sleeping bags, and prepared for a long, sleepless night.

The long, sleepless night dragged on and on, so we started poking around, only to discover old newspaper clippings from the seventies about how the camp owner had gone crazy one night and murdered an entire set of campers with a machine gun. The articles did not specify where he obtained said machine gun, or why he was allowed to continue running his camp after the incident.

"We have to notify the authorities!" I said.

Everyone else disagreed. "If we tell on him, we won't get to camp here next summer," they argued.

"Suit yourself," I said. "I'm out of here." Displaying horrible leadership skills, I abandoned the kids, walked out into the woods, and somehow found my way back to town just in time to run a half marathon. They gave us a free bus ride back to the start line, but I had to hide under a blanket because the camp owner was on the bus, posing as a doctor for the race. They would bring injured people on the bus, and he would immediately determine that amputation was the only option. His saw blades glinted in the sun, and his eyes grew large like a rabid loris' as blood splattered on his new white doctor coat. So I got off the bus.

The full marathon was starting just as I arrived. A cop stopped me from running right in front of the starting line to find my parents. As the marathon runners streamed out of the gate, I noticed my mother near the back. She started running, at a pace way too fast to sustain for the full 26.2 miles. She ran about a hundred yards, then disappeared into an open sewer grate, Wile E. Coyote style. She wasn't moving when they pulled her out. I screamed and screamed and fought to make my way across through the marathon runners, who were not making it easy for me. Everything went dark before I could get close. It was a shitty day all around.

my famous friends can't help me now

I was hanging out with Michelle Obama, my best friend from college. We were getting breakfast for dinner at Denny's. Every person in the restaurant turned and stared when her husband slid into the booth, but I played it cool. We just sat around, drinking milkshakes and shooting the shit.

But I had to get going to the film set where I was an assistant and occasional babysitter for the movie's eight-year-old star. The set itself was on a beach, about twenty feet out on a sand bar made of aquamarine bathroom tiles. I waded with the young starlet and worried about my upcoming appearance on the Today show.

I had no idea what to wear, and this being a beach feature, the set wardrobe offered little in the way of emergency help. I finally settled on a nice pink blouse before promptly spilling my coffee all over it. No big deal, I thought. The rest of the cast and crew convinced me otherwise. So I found some other shirt and rushed over to the Today show, arriving thirty minutes late.

Katie Couric was back in the host role, and I prepared myself to answer whatever question she decided to throw my way. They tossed me in the interview chair, turned on the lights, and let the camera roll. Katie Couric stared at me in silence. Was I supposed to say something? I drew a complete blank. No cute anecdotes, no funny jokes, not even a boring story about what I had for breakfast. I was convinced she was supposed to be the one to kick things off, but she just raised one eyebrow and smirked. America watched me sweat and squirm. This was not going well.

new place

My roommates and I moved into a new apartment. We liked all the shelf space, and the exposed brick walls. But there were several drawbacks---the giant, gym-locker-room style bathroom that took up about half the apartment and flooded on a daily basis was less than ideal. I also wasn't a big fan of the fake New Orleans interior design scheme. Each of the bedroom doors had a stained glass window etched with the name of a street in New Orleans and a stylized drawing of a jazz musician. Neon light sculptures of additional jazz musicians hung from the brick walls. Classy. I got there late, and my roommates had taken up all that wonderful shelf space with their books, DVDs and CDs, leaving me none. I threw a big fit, screaming and yelling and maybe throwing some things. Later, I apologized, embarrassed for my outburst, but things remained pretty tense.

snakes!

I encountered a number of pestilences. Tornadoes. Fires. Earthquakes. The worst was the room full of snakes. This big purple cobra cornered me. I thought I was fast enough to get around it and out the door. Boy, was I wrong.

the new world

I joined an improv troupe, but our chemistry was all wrong. We just weren't funny, and I think two of the other girls were clinically depressed. The rest of the group decided to order in some fried chicken, stay up all night, and work everything out, but I jumped ship and headed to Michigan to hang out with my coworkers.

They were eating dinner at the house of one of the publicity assistants' parents, which was on a Manhattan city block transposed over one of the hilly forested areas near Ann Arbor. The publicity assistant was mad because one of the publicists had taken over her bedroom and filled it with baby-related gear. The really annoying part was that the publicist doesn't even have a baby. Still, I liked what she'd done with the place. Everyone was debating whether or not to head over to a party on 6th Ave. It was only one block away, but that block was steep and icy and covered with heavy forest.

We decided to drive to the frozen yogurt place instead. It was a no-name Pinkberry imitator, and they weren't doing so well. The place was a mess, with napkins and fruit bits and yogurt residue covering every surface. I was almost to the front of the line when the place totally broke down and became two narrow strips of land running in parallel across the Atlantic Ocean. A neverending train of prehistoric animals, from pink brontosauruses to baby-blue woolly mammoths, trudged along the isthmuses toward their new homes.

I cut a perilous path between all those giant, adorable legs and soon found myself in a small port city somewhere in Spain, full of notable architecture and elevated causeways. At every corner, there was a park with artfully arranged bushes and benches, so that the heads of the people who sat there poked up like rows of cabbage, making out, taking naps, or just taking in the scenery.

carless in Los Angeles

Getting around Los Angeles without a car can be a real pain, especially if all the trains are full of zombies. I was visiting friends up in the hills, but had to get to a high school reunion on another hill. I'm not quite sure how I made it, but it definitely involved a lot of running and quick-footed zombie evasion down by the train tracks. I arrived just in time to hear this girl who used to live down the street from me out her little brother. He didn't seem to be expecting it, but he handled it well.

My friends got me a room in a really nice bed and breakfast up on the hillbilly side of town. Getting there was also a challenge, but it was worth it. The next day I even snuck back in to use the bathroom after I checked out because it was just the nicest place around to do my business. Then I walked down the hill to the local fruit stand. The line for this place was around the block. A local lumberjack told me that their recent popularity was due to their delicious waffles and jalapeno tacos, but they still slept out back in the mud with their pigs. I was glad to hear that success hadn't changed them (although in their case a little upgrade probably wouldn't have hurt).