Crap i've found in my basement

ha

2008-07-22T10:08:00.000-04:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080721/od_nm/bugs_odd_dc;_ylt=At51xfLZ3JaKRlniHA03beCs0NUE

cooties

2008-07-21T23:24:00.003-04:00

While i was supposed to be reading The Masterpiece by Emile Zola, http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/f05/jcfields/cezanne_and_zolas_the_masterpiece.html
i was actually watching this movie instead.
http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/nakedlunch/ watching this movie and then seeing bugs had me weirded out tremendously. well, just watching this movie had me weirded out tremendously, but catching sight of nasty unknown bugs while watching it weirded me out, and also made me pee a little.

I've been trying to figure out what this little tasty is, but i am not having any luck identifying it. needless to say, i now think that my basement is the breeding ground for a new species of evil-blood-sucking-bug-of-death. whatever it is, its given me a serious case of the creeping icks, and i want them to die horrible deaths. i thought it kind of looked tick-ish, but as you can see, its kind of huge, so my professional opinion is that i have some sort of mutant bug populating my basement, the thought of which make me want to scrub my skin off and burn my house down.
so, they are either here to build their forces up until they can attack and kill us, enabling them to commandeer the microwave so they can make microwave popcorn, or, they had a mad hankering to play cootie. either way, i'm officially creeped out.

rock on!

2008-06-26T00:27:00.004-04:00

Your DJ Name Is:

DJ Midnight Nerd

What's" Your DJ Name?

happily i am done with my first set of accelerated summer classes. now for a relaxing 6 days off and then back to the grind. maybe i should have the professors call me DJ Midnight Nerd just to make things interesting..

smack down

2008-06-22T12:51:00.003-04:00

ok, so i am currently supposed to be writing a paper about the yanomamo (http://www.indian-cultures.com/Cultures/yanomamo.html) that is due tomorrow. crap attack! instead i have taken a nap, eaten some most delicious cherry fudge ice cream, and watched paula deen whip up some tasty down home cooking. My paper is supposed to make connections to the wild west and buffalo bill, i haven't quite figured out the connection, though i guess it would help if i had read the course material. whoops! guess i should maybe get to it, um, after i cook lunch, re-grout the bathroom tiles, and construct a statue which moderately resembles the virgin mary out of nothing but a cardboard box and dryer lint. then, perhaps i will be sufficiently motivated to finish my sweet sweet paper of love and indigenous nudity, ohhh yeah.

soul eating 101

2008-06-13T01:25:00.002-04:00

with 2 accelerated summer classes currently eating my soul, i believe i shall never again see the dank dungeon that once was my love, my life, my basement. alas. what is a moderately obsessive compulsive girl such as myself to do? apparently the answer to this tremendously important query is to have reoccurring dreams of cleaning the basement. wild and crazy fun. its what i do.

Detroit rocks!

2008-05-30T23:14:00.003-04:00

The electronic music festival was more fun than a barrel of monkeys! i don't fully understand that expression really, seems like a barrel of monkeys, if anything, would be most everything but fun. and also really stinky. However, not even the thought of that can detract from the happy vibe i am still riding on from the past weekend. Benny Benassi ( www.myspace.com/benassi ) played on sunday night at 8, here he is in all his cute genius rocking my pants off, or um, something like that. Whoever set him up in one of the smallest event areas was a big ol' nut cake, because people packed in there like nobodies business, i am in there in the general vicinity of my well placed pink arrow in the next pic, probably on my tippy toes busily squealing or something equally as dignified.
On saturday i got to see the Egyptian lover himself. Pelvic gyrating was involved on his part, and more squealing was once again involved on my part. he sang freakaholic. holy holy moly. if you care to see more of his sexy sexiness (you know you want to) www.myspace.com/therealegyptianlover
During one of his songs he walked up into the audience... he eventually stood about 5 feet from me and sang, but in this pic he is just on his way in, i am probably about 6 yards in the direction of my green arrow of awesomeness. at that exact moment i am probably busing myself trying hard not to have a stroke. though if i did stroke out, i don't think anyone would have noticed, thinking i was just a really spastic dancer or something. which i am, but thats beside the point.
Another cool thing on saturday was getting a chance to see Moby. i put in the wrong pic here without my arrow, but i was up on the balcony right above the sign..ish. somewhere in there amidst the throbbing masses. and you know how i love the throbbing masses, or, wait, what? I had so much fun, and by the looks of this blog, i also managed to killed several important brain cells removing the ability to articulate myself any better than saying it was awesome about 40 times. but, no really, really, it was awesome.

awesomely awesome awesomeness

2008-05-15T08:59:00.003-04:00

We had a garage sale! Granted, it was several weeks ago, but whatever, i've been too busy running around in circles and freaking out about school to blog. Anyway let me tell you, this was the most awesome garage sale in the whole world! It was comprised of crap that my mom had hoarded away through out the basement cleaning process. 99% of which i would have chucked, and/or tried to chuck in the first place. It was bad enough that i was on the verge of being embarrassed to be seen outside in association with this junk. I thought of disguising myself in some neon leg warmers, golf hat and Una bomber beard kit (never leave home without it), but as it turns out no one came to the sale, so i had no one to hide from.

The day was overcast, with rain predicted. i think we had a total of 6 shoppers, and 3 buyers, netting a total of 2.25$. Then it rained, and mom cracked, and decided the sale was over after a mere hour and a half. we ended up in the hole 1.25$ being we had to shell out 3.50$ to join the block sale in the first place. And so, all the crap was soon hauled to the salvation army in a last ditch attempt to prevent it from being trashed. So, overall, this garage sale totally rocked my world. But at least it got a lot of stupid crap out of the basement, one more step toward my basements enlightenment and ultimate bliss. Or something.

The classic pirate

2008-04-30T01:14:00.004-04:00

Holly, avert your eyes! Never fear, its a double, your dreams of completing your NKOTB collection can still be realized, i wont desecrate (m)any more.
There isn't much i wont do in order to escape writing my paper, though i admit, i am running out of good procrastination helpers, this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

oh, oh no.

2008-04-26T23:00:00.005-04:00

Sometimes digging in your basement can have dire consequences. like finding that for some unknown reason you have saved a box full of New Kids on the Block cards. oh. In a pathetic fit of peer pressure, my 6th grade self succumbed to the gnarly teen bop of NKOTB. and for some even more pathetic reason, my 29 year old self has unearthed, and not yet thrown away, a hoard of new kids collectors cards. i feel that an e-gads is in order, as well as a swift kick to my cerebellum, and a tall glass of cheap cooking wine. For in my slightly more mature days, those are the only things that keep my from choking on my tongue when i remember my NKOTB days.
So, i find myself feeling somewhat conflicted. while my first reaction to finding the cards is to draw mustaches on them and then douse them in lighter fluid, i have somehow resisted thus far. i think it is perhaps in memory of my 6th grade self, and how much she kind-a-sort-a like the new kids. after all, they are a symbolic remnant of my sad and peer pressured awkward adolescence. though i have resisted long enough, the time has come! tonight the moustaches begin. . .

Sally

2008-04-23T22:44:00.003-04:00

Quite mysteriously, a rather hairy looking bottle of holy oil has appeared in our basement. should i take this as a good sign? or as i am more prone to doing, a rather ominous sign of weirdness? though maybe i am making too big of a deal out of this find. maybe everybody just happens to have mysteriously appearing bottles of holy oil that flit about their basements, you know, just in case they have to exorcise their demon possessed sock puppet named sally. or you know, for whatever. word up sally!

The basement mourns.

2008-04-22T22:55:00.003-04:00

Alas my faithful chickens, it is time we part company and go our separate ways. It is indeed a sad day, though i shall always remember you and your love of corn and malt liquor.

let there be cake!

2008-04-22T00:06:00.003-04:00

I have approximately 1,211 papers to write, the house is a wreck, my child is off somewhere eating crayons and trying to cram his stuffed elmo down the heating vent, and what do i do? clean the basement. i found this lovely cake stand, and it looked so terribly lonely. and as everyone knows lonely cake stands are sacrilegious and are considered by the Pope to be a modern day sin. so, in light of having nothing better to do, and because i am a God fearing woman, i baked the yummiest cake in the world to keep the cake stand company. at 9:30 at night. because that's how i roll.

Benny Benassi + Egyptian Lover = Me Peeing My Pants

2008-04-04T00:04:00.009-04:00

Benny Benassi is coming to detroit for the techno fest! http://www.demf.com/ The Egyptian Lover is also coming for the festival. dude. i am so excited that the left hemisphere of my brain could theoretically explode with joy and/or a massive hemorrhage do to my excessively excited blood pressure. now seriously, it doesn't get any better than that. unless it involves pudding.

chock-a-block!

2008-03-29T22:46:00.004-04:00

I almost cleaned my basement today. i give myself credit for seriously considering it, but eventually i decided to read this book instead.

Nothing says good times like a book chock-a-block full of serial killer hi-jinks, let me tell you! i've laughed, i've cried, i've engorged my spleen. It's a rollicking good time, even better than doing my laundry (or cleaning the basement...) truly a dream come true! This book can do many things, including making me forget enough of my day to get to sleep without drinking mouthwash, but unfortunately, it kept me away from cleaning my poor neglected basement for one more day. The bastard.

mmm ping pong

2008-03-25T23:17:00.003-04:00

Basement update! we are finally down to having just one ping-pong table in our basement. yes, we actually had two down there, because apparently we really really love us some ping-pong, we are ping-pong fanatics, ping-pong-aholics even. or not. we used to play, (badly), but recently the stacks of crap piled three feet deep on the tables kind of got in the way. they do that. so last night we cleared one completely off and chucked it. well, we chucked it after dragging it up the stairs, bumping a hole in the ceiling with it, and hefting it out the door and through the garage. It was so much fun i almost peed my pants.

Do i think about pudding too much?

2008-03-19T22:07:00.002-04:00

I think i may have to change the name of my blog, because cleaning anything, especially my basement, is the furthest thing from my mind right now. What is on my mind, you ask? My son, because 2 year olds refuse to be off your mind for longer than approximately 3 seconds, especially when there are cookies involved. School, because it is sucking the life out of me. And pudding, um, because it is delicious. The way things are going now, my basement could have evaporated for all i know, (as they are known to do from time to time in order to escape religious persecution). But i still cling to the hope that one day my crazy mutant professors will stop hounding me for my life blood, and i will once again be free to roam amidst the majestic glory that is my basement. It's always good to have something to look forward to. Even if it is really pathetic.

laundry tubs unite!

2008-02-26T22:15:00.003-05:00

Ok. i'm still not cleaning. but now i have a good excuse for not cleaning, which makes all the difference in the world. in my head at least. A few days ago our basement laundry tub decided that it had been neglected long enough, and so in its final act of protest, decided to allow all the water in its u-bend to dry up. This seeming innocent act of rebellion allowed sewer gas into our home, and so the stank began. in our valiant efforts to air out this horrible stink of all stanks, our basement window was opened. and it hasn't been closed since, and its freezing! so, unless i decide to don a parka and some nice woolly mittens in order to clean, there will be no cleaning in basement-ville. its a tragedy of great proportions. well, i suppose i could force myself to go down there and close the window... nah. excuses are nice.

hoo doggie!

2008-02-10T22:40:00.000-05:00

Once again, nothing highly exciting has been happening in my basement, unless you count the uninhibited reproduction of assorted creepies and crawlies as exciting. in that case it has been a rip-roaring good time down there. i previously had made enough headway so that i can study down there, as yummy as that may sound, but i think its so cold my brain freezes up. its not working out quite as i had imagined it, but its not so bad. school is eating up a good deal of my time, and the rest, well, i just dont feel inspired to clean. who knew you had to be inspired to clean? perhaps its just an excuse not to clean because i am lazy, but until i know for sure, i think i'll sit there on the couch and wait for the muse of basement cleaning to come inspire me. i do wonder what such a muse would look like, for some reason i picture oscar the grouches friend grouchetta emerging mysteriously from the depth of the junk piles, and proceeding to yell at me. that would be awesome.

sadly, my brain has deserted me.

2008-01-25T22:24:00.001-05:00

i have no pictures for you of stupid stuff from my basement, nor do i even have tales of the cleaning projects of epic proportion. what i do have is a headache, blurry memories of school and babysitting, and a strange desire to clean the refrigerator with a toothbrush. which in combination lead to conversations such as these:

1.
(me, cooking dinner) hey mom, do we have one of those thing-a-ma-jigs? i want to thing-a-ma-jig the meat..

(mom, sitting at the computer) of course! its in one of those drawers there.

2.
(me sitting in the passengers seat) hey we're by those peoples house aren't we, those whats-its-faces people..

(mom, driving) the whos?

(me) you know, those people you baked that thing for that one time.

(mom) oh yeah! the whatsitsdiddles. they live right down there somewhere.

i don't know what more disturbing. the fact that my mom understands what the crap i am talking about? or that she talks the same way. egads, what is this what-ya-call-it coming to?

cookies...

2008-01-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

I have recently started a new semester at school, i am currently enrolled in two community colleges, and one university. all of this means what? stress baking. and also unfortunately, stress eating. eventually this will turn into stress cleaning, and i will get back to cleaning the basement. maybe. if i can fit through the doorway by then.

Goggle update!

2008-01-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

And now, as requested, it is time once again for my moderately non-interesting german neighbor update. after much anticipation, it turns of that walt does not wear his multi-purpose goggles of love for snow shoveling, as i had previously hypothesized that he might. Here we see our fine specimen shoveling the back patio. because as we all know it is of great importance that the patio be clear, in case an emergency sub-zero picnic must occur. maybe then he'll wear his goggles. that would be awesome.

stamp hoarders R' us

2008-01-05T23:32:00.000-05:00

I must say, this is the weirdest stamp i have seen in a while. my grandmas stamp collection has taken on a life of its own in our basement, and these little beauties are just a small sample of the weirdness. I wasn't expecting to find anything like this down there, but why should i be surprised? who knew my sweet little old grandma was a seemingly obsessive compulsive stamp hoarder? and is it wrong that i seriously just want to use them to mail all my letters?

what the..?

2007-12-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

There are moments in life when all becomes brilliantly clear. now is one of those moments. when i suddenly realise, i am in way over my head. i foolishly decided to tackle the blatant misuse of space in the basement tonight. little did i know, the basement was planning a counter attack of mass proportions, involving magic junk multiplication, bug warfare, and icky icky unknown substances. tonight i retreat, tomorrow, i bring reinforcements as well as sale storage bins from meijer. touche! you craptastic basement of evil and damnation! or, something maybe a tad less over dramatic, but whatever.

I told you i was cool (read: a big nerd)

2007-12-19T22:16:00.000-05:00

The only problem being, that i am perhaps by far cooler than any individual should ever be allowed to be at one time. this being demonstrated by my Fat Boys tapes. i need help, maybe even a 12 step program. hello, my name is jennifer, and i am a victim of unintentional coolness via The Fat Boys music. i cant stop! what makes it even worse, is that i cant bring myself to throw them out, and worse still, i will probably find myself down in the basement listening to them later tonight. because seriously, the Jellyroll song? classic.

She-ra

2007-12-13T23:29:00.000-05:00

Did you know She-ra was twin sister of He-man? i guess that subtle intricacy escaped me when i was little. that explains why they never hooked up though. at least publicly. I remember the day i got this coloring book, it was in the second grade, and there was a book fair going on, and i wanted nothing to do with the books you actually had to read. just give me a She-ra princess of power coloring book, yo. somehow i convinced my mother that this was obviously the smart choice, and viola! years of mind numbingly good she-ra fun.

PEEP!

2007-12-13T11:23:00.001-05:00

I love peep. is that wrong? i look forward to watching peep with the boys as one looks forward to a talking-bird filled refuge from a world seemingly under the tyrannical rule of two year olds who are out for blood, vengeance, and snacks. it used to just be a show that the boys would actually sit down and put the hair pulling and junk-on-the-floor-eating on hold for, but now i think i get even more excited about watching it than they do. what have i become? (answer: a Quack loving weirdo.) Quack is the blue one, for those of you who have yet to experience the joy that is peep. that kind of makes it sound like i am about to start a cult, which by the way, would be the most awesome cult ever. the cult of Quack. anyway.. i love peep.

In other news, things are actually getting cleaned! the basement is looking much better these days. granted this better i speak of still = crappy, but its better than before, and i once again have a clear vision of what i need to do, and it doesn't even involve garden gnomes, pudding, or burning the house down. amazing! i would go take a picture of these fabled improvements, but due to the subzero temperatures often reached in the basement-of-eternal-despair, the pictures will have to wait. because currently i am freezing and also a wuss. i have also unearthed many great tid bits of love to share soon, so in my next post i might actually have something to say! or, not, as usual, but be excited!! (!) quack.

what to watch while not cleaning anything even remotely resembling a basement.

2007-12-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYxCSXjhLI

Bernz O Matic!

2007-12-02T22:37:00.000-05:00

We have a bernz o matic master torch! we have a bernz o matic master torch? why? well, according to the "101" uses booklet, which incidentally only lists 25 uses, we have this master torch to do such things as melt ice off of our steps, (because apparently my neighbors don't already think we are crazy enough as it is,) burn leaves, burn tent worms, and to use in my laboratory. how did they know i have a laboratory? but the list left off the number one use that comes to mind when i think fondly of our adorable bernz o matic torch, that being, accidentally burning down the house because we have a bazillion-dy year old moderately unstable freaking propane tank in our freaking basement. but that would make the list 102 (aka 26) uses for your fiery-death-o-matic-torch, and that just wouldn't be as catchy as 101 uses. and after all, where else are you supposed to store your rusty canister o' flammable materials that you are never going to use because its old and scary, right? i mean really. how could i have questioned it?

sneaky

2007-11-27T22:08:00.000-05:00

What better to get you in a festive holiday mood than a blow up cacti? after having a fabulous fiesta birthday for a friend several months ago (at which blow up cacti are mandatory, i am sure you are aware), this thing somehow managed to sneak into our basement, and take up residence next to my cabbage patch kid collection of yore. after you stop feeling that sad mixture of pity and contempt toward me (and perhaps jealousy?) because i openly admitted to having a hoard of cabbage patch kids living in my basement, you will realize just how strange this wandering cacti is. it must be that special genus of migrating plastic cacti you always read about but never see, because no one in the household knows how it got downstairs. spoooky!next thing you know i will wake up at 4 in the morning and it will be standing over my bed holding a cabbage patch kids head in its arms.

yum?

2007-11-19T22:25:00.000-05:00

Infestation! well, not really, my mom brought the pigs home from her school for the holiday weekend, and they have been cursed once again with basement dwelling. the white one is named sugarplum, and she is a mouthy little pig. the brown ones name is fudge ripple, shes very quiet and shy, and never purrs, thus making her my favorite, because shes not your typical pig. i am allergic to guinea pigs, i get mad hives all over if i even think about touching their cute little fuzzy fluffy (delicious, according to that dude on that 'bizarre foods' show) bodies. but its fun to have them down there with me, keeping me company with their cute little piggy twitterings and noises. and its also quite convenient, you know, if i get hungry or anything...

why i dont accomplish more in life

2007-11-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSkLfVp2fQ&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzwOsIh7FDE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKgjmrqmRI

what was i thinking?

2007-11-18T21:50:00.000-05:00

Mild humiliation is good for you, right? so, my mom insisted on putting this first painting on the wall in the basement. its from my stint in oil painting class. i was in 6th grade, and i seriously thought i rocked the very foundations of the oil painting world, with my, uhh, superior pine tree and shrubbery making skills. oh yeah. i mean i guess its not terrible for a 6th graders first time painting with oils. but on the other hand, its mocking me with its sad sad mediocrity, and

i secretly wish it would spontaneously combust already and leave me in peace.

I can honestly say that this second painting is a complete mystery to me. i have no idea why i painted it, and am equally confused as to why its still living in my moms basement, i thought i threw it out once already... like 10 years ago or something. and what to do with my buxom friend now? i fear she may soon meet an untimely end. she may not have any eyes, but she sure has boobs (in the middle of her stomach?) to make up for her short comings. what was wrong with me? the only thing cool, at least in my book of cool(io), about this painting and the next, are that they are painted on toilet paper. this one had a backing of plastic, the next is affixed to a cardboard box, on top of which i crumpled toilet paper and then saturated it with a mixture of elmer's glue and water. once it was dry, it made a really groovy surface to paint on. now if only i had something decent to paint. like chickens maybe.

This one was inspired by a black and white picture in a psych text of mine. i obviously was delirious when making my color selections, but at the time i thought i was so profound. deep man. deeply retarded, but whatever.

i've got nothing

2007-11-16T23:17:00.000-05:00

Really. i guess little cross dressing gender confused moose bears enjoy frolicking in deep dank habitats such as my basement. how else do you explain its existence? i've got nothing. and seriously, pink and orange? that's so last season.
in other news, essentially all i have accomplished in the past week of cleaning has been the rearrangement of crap. rewarding; the only word to describe it. i mean, other than superific.

winter wonderland

2007-11-14T23:49:00.000-05:00

Upon entering a side room of the basement the other night, i realized that we are all set for winter, in a weird crazy family kind of way. because you all know what a fan of snowshoeing i am. i apparently come from an avid snowshoe(r)? family though, because in the background there is a second pair of snowshoes, in case you forget where you put the first ones? i don't know. i don't think they have been used since i was born, but they are so crazy cool, and they hardly take up any space, i can totally see why we still have them hanging around our basement. i mean, after all, you never know when you and a bunch of friends will be hanging out, and they will be all, 'oh my gosh, you know what? we should all go snowshoeing!' and if you didn't happen to have a pair, and a spare pair, you would be all embarrassed and have to make up an excuse like, 'oh, sorry guys, i, err, have to go shampoo my cat. maybe later'. then you would just have to go home, dreaming of them all out having a snowshoeing good time, while you sat alone drinking your chocolate milk. cant have that. also, apparently my family and i enjoy sledding as well as skiing! who knew?

i found me teef!

2007-11-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

Most people may not be super excited to find teeth in their moderately creepy basements, and under normal circumstances i would join their ranks, because, eww! but really, i love my wisdom teeth, so much that even though i found them a bit ago, i must share. now, if i were to find more teeth down in the subterranean depths of my house, i might have to do the freak out dance, but here's to a relatively tooth free basement. yay! When i was little i couldn't wait to get my wisdom teeth, because i really thought they would bring the wisdom of adulthood with them, and poof! i would become a wise adult. ahh, the disillusioned days of childhood, when i actually thought adulthood=wisdom. i remember being crushed when i learned that i would eventually have to have them pulled. so, as i grew, i formulated a plan (muuha ha ah!) to have the oral surgeon save them for me. when i asked him to save them for me, he looked at me like i had asked him to slap me and call me sally, but eventually agreed to let me have them. and so here they are, encased in a lovely sample size jelly jar, the traditional tooth holder in our family.

neilmed?

2007-11-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

now i can decimate the ant population and irrigate my sinuses at the same time! wow, and really, who doesn't enjoy a good nasal flush? apparently no one at our house, because this gem was hiding downstairs next to all of our varied buggie poisons. unless it was intended to join our arsenal, because perhaps there is nothing like a good sinus rinse to convince the bugs that they should leave your premises. then if that doesn't work we could give them pedicures and a high colonic, thus causing a mass exodus of the basement. awesome. that almost sounds better than admitting that we have a spare nasal irrigation kit in the basement. as though we are saving it for a rainy day, or keeping it just in case we run out of stock. but really, why was it hiding ashamed and unused with the ant poison? who goes out and makes a purchase like this and then decides to ferret it away in the most remote nether lands of their basement? my family, i say with a tear in my eye, my family.

excuses, how i love you

2007-11-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

So, i am once again neglecting my basement. i just saw my mother hefting a heaping load of junk down the basement stairs the other day, um, eeek! by the time i get back down there it will look like i have never started to clean it in the first place. whats a girl to do? besides cartwheels and headstands, i mean.
instead of cleaning, i have been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the many fine aspects of American Sign Language. i want to become an interpreter, however at times i doubt my abilities. i love the language, but it is currently making me want to gouge my eyes out with a shrimp fork. While i was searching for more ASL related stuff to torment myself with, i came across these pictures, so i thought i would share my madness. if you would like to share even more of my madness, or at least get an idea of whats driving me to drink (water, and lots of it by jove!) check out www.deafvideo.tv/ maybe its just me, but it makes me want to pee my pants. no. its probably just me. but its still way cool.

give me a hand!

2007-10-17T02:25:00.000-04:00

Slowly but surely things have once again begun to improve deep within the subterranean depths of my basement. hurrah. still lots of crap and a heck of a lot of brick-a-brack to sort through, lets hear it for brick-a-brack! but i will remain positive, positive-ish, anyway. while cleaning i found a mysterious drawer that doesn't appear to go with anything, just a drawer sitting around, filled with strange stuff from my younger, and slightly weirder days. a call to arms? some teens have crazy signs on their bedroom doors, do not enter, warning! or maybe popular band posters or whatever. i on the other hand had this string of arms hanging across my door. kind of like the pile of skulls at the entrance to the dragons lair? big lots used to rock my world, who couldn't use a bargain on a bag of arms? seriously.

crap i listen to in my basement

2007-10-12T01:14:00.000-04:00

In The Morning by Junior Boys. wonderfully lovely cleaning groove. I am sure the knowledge that i listen to them whilst digging myself out of a heap in my crappy basement would become the highlight of their career. surely. Shirley.

chompy chomp

2007-10-11T22:58:00.000-04:00

Tasty! My first night back in the basement cleaning mode, and i was (un)fortunate enough to make this gruesomely sparkly discovery! These were my retainers way back in the day. Back in the day when apparently purple and clear retainers with sparkles were really cool, and i was (what am i talking was?) also really cool, as long as really cool = DORK. So, not only have i not lost my dork style, i haven't lost my dork retainers either. Awesome! I also found a jar of my wisdom teeth next to my retainers, i am assuming that they have made friends, my teeth and my retainers, and often reminisce about my terrible flossing habits. Oh! and on a side note, Ewwww!

the lurking bishop. he's #1!

2007-10-09T01:12:00.000-04:00

This is the bishop of my interesting church, and no, he is not currently lurking in my basement. At least i don't believe him to be, though i have not set foot downstairs in , what day is it now? Tuesday ? um, about 12 years. I may be exaggerating by about 11 and three-quarter-ish years, but that's kind of what it feels like these days. So for all i know he is nesting in the insulation down there as i speak, but i doubt it, its too warm out to be bishop nesting season. Am i right or am i right? Anyway, why do i have his picture on here if he is not in my basement you ask? Because i was feeling a bit off, my son has been out of town with my ex-husband for 4 out of 5 days now, and i am really feeling his absence. But, when i was looking through my pictures this one totally cracked me up, and made me feel better. The pic was taken a few months ago at a surprise birthday party some church members threw for him. My friend holly and i made him a cake that kind of accidentally turned out looking like it was diseased, and there was a lady there who, unbeknownst to her, did a dead on impression of the cowardly lion when she laughed. Remembering how loopy it was still has me cracking up like a nut, so while i have effectively avoided cleaning anything that even slightly resembles a basement, at least i don't feel so lonely without my son anymore. Well, kind-a.

crap i have not found in my basement..

2007-10-05T03:04:00.000-04:00

As i have been neglecting my basement, so i have also neglected my blog. eeeek! blog neglect, punishable by death in at least 4 countries. or not, but whatever. though i do fear my basement is suffering most of all. as we speak the buggies of doom are repopulating their habitats, regrouping and reformatting their e-vile plans to conquer the basement, and enslave the natives.

school has been eating away most of my free time. this semester is not incredibly difficult, just time consuming. so while i fritter away my time with those pesky assignments and study guides, i have let my guard down. but i figure, as long as i am not letting my pants down as well, things are still in pretty good shape. I will eventually get back to the bottomless basement, to fight the buggie hoards and battle the bulk, but it may have to wait until after mid terms, and then perhaps til after the summer of 2009. unless i can persuade myself to get cleaning in some way. hmmmm, maybe i'll bribe myself with a pudding pop, but i guarantee nothing.

Hot stuff!

2007-08-29T22:20:00.000-04:00

After far too long i have once again journeyed to the basement in search of organization. While i found nothing close to organization, i did manage to find a somewhat mangled looking copy of the 'Pictorial History of Philosophy'. All considering, i was way too excited about my find, there may have even been an awesome happy dance involved, but i can neither confirm nor deny this.

I have yet to read it, though it is next on my list, but just flipping through it looks really interesting, if you happen to be a dork like me i suppose. And dude, too bad Sartre is dead, because he totally looks like he would want to date me.

nice

2007-08-04T20:21:00.001-04:00

Your Rapper Name Is...

Busta Gangsta

What's" Your Rapper Name?

Really?

2007-08-03T14:31:00.000-04:00

Now, i don't know about you all, but we here at the home above the beastly basement enjoy keeping our jelly beans in the deep dark basement for safe keeping. This also allows them to mellow and age in the occasionally creepy environment, which brings out the height of flavor in the sophisticated life saver jelly beans that we all love and adore. And one more thing, WHAT? According to my mom, these suckers have been down in the basement for over 3 years, who does that? I mean really, after seeing pictures of my basement, would you have the great desire to eat anything that had been living and perhaps mutating, down there? And yet, thus far, i have not been able to bring myself to throw them out, i fear that unaware, i have contracted the infectious hoarding virus, send help!

Steve or Cory?

2007-07-29T10:58:00.000-04:00

While i tried to ignore the basement and all its hideous glory, i could hear it in the night calling me "Jennifer" because we are on a first name basis apparently, "you're full of crap! no wait, hows that go? oh yeah yeah yeah, OK, let me start over. Jennifer, I'm full of crap! come clean me!" maniacal laughter inserted here. Yes, the lure of the basement, and its pathetic need to be cleaned, lured me back into its deadly snare. And as a reward for my efforts, i found me a poncho! and not just any poncho, a deluxe rain poncho with a picture of one disgruntled poncho wearing man on the package! He is crazy cool! i imagine if you panned down him his acid washed pants would be tight-rolled. I think his name would be Steve, he would love Charles In Charge, and secretly desire to take over the world. But i could be wrong, i suppose his name could also be Cory.

how could i forget!

2007-07-23T01:32:00.000-04:00

OK, so right before i left for up north, who do i spy out my window but my awesome german neighbor, wonderful-walt. Apparently the goggles are not only for grilling, they are multi-purpose, and are now grilling/lawn maintenance goggles. This now leaves me wondering, what else does he wear them for? Inquiring minds want to know. As for my basement cleaning adventures, alas, i was forced to read Harry Potter in my spare time, and so have still not ventured into the basement. OK, so not really forced, but lets pretend. But since i finished reading the book today, and can at last exhale, i will be back to my basement mission in no time*.

*
Above stated "no time" is defined as being less than a week, but longer than 2 days, allowing appropriate time for mandated procrastination and/or complete denial that said basement actually exists.

baby butts

2007-07-20T14:34:00.000-04:00

I meant this blog to be an inspiration (the wind beneath my wings perhaps?) of sorts for me to get cleaning, only since i have started the blog i seem to have done more procrastinating than ever.
I just got back from vacationing up north in Manistee, and since i was not going to clean my Aunt and Uncles basement, i have no basement stories to share. So i figured i would share some gratuitous nudity with you instead, just until i can force myself back into the basement with all its surely new-and-improved beasties, that is. Oh how i love the beasties.

Anna the bear

2007-07-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

During the past week we were lucky enough to have my awesome 5 year old niece Payton come visit for a few days. One of the many exciting things i promised her we could do was paint her very first mural in the basement on the back of a storage closet door. After a lot of debate she decided that she wanted to paint a picture from a book that was one of my favorites when i was little, The Fourteen Bears. I drew the outline for her, and away she painted! i think she's a little genius, but i suppose i am biased. And now i have a little piece of happiness to keep me company in the dark lair that is my basement.

huh?

2007-07-12T15:27:00.000-04:00

Just when i think it's safe, i find this thing. I was sitting in one of the storage rooms in the basement pondering my plan of attack against the junk, when there amidst the caulk, paint and strange bottles of nails, i saw this in all its marvelous wonder. While it seems to fit seamlessly in with all the other junk piled around it, i still have no idea what the heck it is, or what the heck it is used for. And yet i love it just the same. I believe that my parents inherited it along with the house, but the question of why they kept it will forever haunt me. Perhaps it has some way cool workmanly like function, or perhaps i have foiled the basement-bugs nefarious plot against me in confiscating their evil genius bug-o-matic-death-ray.

scuba dude

2007-07-06T23:50:00.000-04:00

As i clean and uncover these sadly interesting items, i thought that i would be questioning 'what the heck?' but as i press on and keep digging, i find that the true question is 'why?' Take these scuba flipper thingies here, which are so old that i fear they would dissolve if they actually ever came in contact with water, why oh why do we have them? I may be able to understand if someone in our family actually ever went diving, or snorkeling, or anything else that actually involved wearing these flippers, but we are just not that kind of family. we are more of the type of family to sit on the dock and laugh at the people who do wear flippers such as these. Unless back in the 80's my dad wore them in the bathtub for a good time, i cant imagine why we had them in the first place, let alone still have them.

i go for the bathtub theory.

I was seriously considering putting the flippers on to model them for you all, but i couldn't muster the courage. For i am afraid that they may have become a rest home for invalid spiders and heebeegeebies of all sorts. I found a creepy crawly worm thing the other night on the floor, it was fine while i thought it to be dead, but it was when it began to wriggle and have a little wormy seizure that i lost a good deal of my well maintained composure and totally freaked out. since then i trust nothing down there. it is war. i am confident that i shall conquer the junk, but suspect that the heebeegeebies and creepy-crawlies may out number me as well as the state of Iowa.

*-*-

PS if anyone wants to give me a random assortment of verbs, nouns, adjectives, plural nouns, numbers and a variety of liquids (i think i have covered all of my mad lib bases here, if you think of anything else just throw 'em in) i'll pick a mad lib and put in your words for you and put the story on the blog :) if anyone is interested that is.

NAN

2007-07-06T01:08:00.000-04:00

I don't know about the greatest party game in the world, i would hope that some where else in the world there would be something a little better, but perhaps if you're like 12 or something, or apparently, if you're me, mad libs are awesome. I was so busy looking back over all the stupid mad libs that i didn't actually get a whole lot cleaned, although the pile of mad libs has never looked better, if i do say so myself. here's one that my friend holly and i did, in elementary school you ask? no, afraid not, in high school, because even back then we were the crazy party animals, mad libs and paper mache. i blame my parents.

....

What do you do when you have a cold?

You can always tell when you're getting a cold because your puffalump will feel stuffy and you will have a Nan ache. The first thing to do is take a couple of toasters. Then get into your jolly-green-giant and rest, and drink plenty of prune juice. Sometimes it's fun being sick. Food is brought to you on a hula hoop so you can eat and watch TV, and your temperature is taken by putting an ass in your Frito's. If your temperature goes over 628 degrees, a doctor should be called. He will thump you on the door bell and say "ahhh!" Then he will ask you what bumper stickers you ate the night before and x-ray your stomach. Finally, he will give you freaky advice on how to get well. If you do just what he says, you'll feel lumpy in no time at all.

Retarded? yes. and so goes my life.

grilling-goggles

2007-07-05T13:33:00.000-04:00

as much as i actually kind of enjoy cleaning in the depths of my basement and finding the strange things we have felt it necessary to pile and save, i needed a day off. so i must confess that i didn't clean in my basement yesterday. i kept myself busy cooking like a crazy cooking fiend. i don't know if fiends really like to cook all that much, but perhaps there is a crazy obsessive compulsive fiend off somewhere cooking up a storm of pies, i don't know. anyway, my mom is on some sort of wacky diet for 2 weeks in which she can have no iodine, which means no prepared products with sodium in them, no seafood and no dairy products. So i have taken on the task of preparing some meals for her from scratch, using iodine free salt, and no dairy. it definitely is eye opening to have to read the labels and see what it is exactly that we are consuming on a regular basis, and just how prevalent sodium is in just about everything. I even had to make my own ketchup to put on the meat loaf i made. who knew ketchup took almost an entire day to cook? And who knew there was sodium in a bag of coconut that i wanted to use for my coconut kisses? seriously. so i decided to try my hand at whacking open a real coconut or 2 myself. The glass in the picture contains the coconut milk, which was interesting in its own right, i still cant decide if i liked the taste of it or not. at first i really liked it, but then i tasted it today and was a little grossed out by the fact that i liked it last night. so, i had a day of great adventure cooking and brewing. and while i was a-cooking and a-brewing i happened to look out my window and see my neighbor Walt. I love my neighbors, on both sides of our house there are cute little German couples who are very sweet and very tolerant of us and our curious ways. they put up with my moms lawnmower which shoots grass 6 feet in the air while it mows, and my car alarm going off when it rains a little too hard, and apparently when people set off fire-works. they may cuss at us in German in their houses, but they are very nice when outside. so i was cooking along, and looked out the window to see our nice neighbor grilling with his little grilling goggles on, i thought it was so cute i had to take a picture of him. also note his bling-bling going crazy in the sun, he is big pimp'n! that was my great excitement for the day, whoo-hoo Walt!

well, i think i'll head off to the basement while the baby is still sleeping, to see what other wonders i can unearth and share, and get back to my regular routine, alas.

meat grinder anyone?

2007-07-03T20:46:00.000-04:00

Apparently our basement is not only full of crap, but full of hidden dangers as well. To the untrained eye, the note which has been taped to the door of one of our many side storage closets, is obvious and stupid. But to the trained eye, this note is very amusingly stupid. see, our walls were finished with a lovely faux- wood, and the doors to the storage rooms are simply cut out of the wood, which makes them blend in with the walls, whether the doors themselves are closed or open. this note that alerts passers by that the door is indeed open appeared after my father ventured into the basement one evening for a night of gay frivolity and slipper stashing. nothing was ever said to explain the note, but i can only imagine that my dad wasn't paying careful attention and walked into the door that was standing open, and not wanting this to happen again, thought it would be genius to put up a note for himself. its kind of like when people walk into glass sliding doors, but in this case not so much glass, but wood. i would have totally paid money to see that. oh, and rusty meat grinder anyone? because you can never tell when one of those will come in handy. you know, when you have that craving for a delicious hamburger with creamy tetnus sauce and tomato? i gotcha covered homey. word-em-up. so, it will never be used, but we need to save it, because, um, you can never have too many meat grinders. isn't that how the saying goes?

crack crazed bird

2007-07-02T21:08:00.000-04:00

What wondrous things lurk in the basement? i found this lovely toxic mutant bird the other day while cleaning, aint he a beaut? while he looks a little like he has smoked some toxic crack, he has a good reason for looking wacky in that my brother created him in elementary school. if you look at it from that perspective, its not so bad. but other than that, its the toxic crack thing, kind of like Whitney Houston, all that crack does weird things to ya. not that all that many birds are known for the smoking of the cracks and all, but you never know, maybe he had a rough childhood or something. I believe there to be a crazy looking turtle and a bear-sphinx-cat-thing that match the wonderousness of toxic bird somewhere in the basement as well, but i have yet to come across them and their loveliness. when i find them i fully intend to put them in a safe place so that one day i can proudly display them in my house, because my brother is an artistic genius. come to think about it, perhaps he was the one on crack instead of the bird...the mysteries continue.

the basement, in all its hideous glory

2007-07-01T21:09:00.000-04:00

OK, this is the view as soon as you walk down the basements terribly pea-green steps and emerge into our over-grown basement. a sneak peek into another realm known only as craptopia. i know, it kind of makes you want to run far far away and pretend that basements don't exist in the happy world you've created in your mind. or at least that's what it makes my mom feel like, because that is exactly what she does, well, except when she carries more loads of crap down there to pile mindlessly on top of the other crud. it's overwhelming to her. but i hate to break it to you, putting more crap down there will not help it. or will it? and so, this is the end product of many moons of hoarding and over piling, the cave of eternal sorrows, also known as my basement. up until now i haven't been any help, being the majority of my earthly belongings are piled there near my red couch, but so begins my journey of discovery and growth as well as a holy crap load of cleaning. it will be great, and lucky as you are, i will share my stimulating discoveries with you as go. yee haaa!

swirling vortex of crazy

2007-06-29T16:26:00.000-04:00

OK, lets just get it out in the open, the horrible and painful truth. i am 28, recently divorced, i have one beautiful and wacky son who lives with me, and gasp... i live with my parent. its not as terrible as it had potential to be, but this background info may help explain why our basement has slowly been transformed into a swirling vortex of crazy. why, you may ask, is my basement so entirely nuts? well, see, its not only all of my worldly possessions down there in a heap, but a good number of odds-and-ends from my parents lives as well. the emphasis on odds in the odds- and-ends there by the way, some of the things they save makes me wonder what goes on in their heads, and if medication is needed. i think we have some sort of ancient pack rat genes in our family, and therefore feel the need to save everything, even though all this stuff has taken over the basement like some kind of mold that just keeps spreading, and which i believe has secretly begun planning to emerge late one night and devour our family. but its just a hunch, i could be way off. perhaps its just down there planning a surprise brunch for me, but more likely its the family devouring bit. anyway. i have recently begun project 'clean this crap before it becomes a health code violation', and while it has been well under way for approximately a month now, everything still appears as though it hasn't been touched since September when i moved in and hastily piled my junk next to, in, under, and sometimes precariously balanced on top of, all my parents pre-existing heap. its a sight to behold. i'll try to take some pictures soon, so that i may share our family's dirty secrets with the world, or at least with who ever is still reading this, which may be more than my mom would care to share our basement mess with, but its necessary. well, not really, but thats what i'll tell her if she asks.