speech therapy

this morning, as i sent my congratulatory 'YAY!' to kristine, via our perpetual scrabble game, for finally being able to present her 50-page MASTERpiece, i began to reminisce about all the many times i've had to present some work of mine in front of a class. now, nothing i have done can even come close to her intense MASTER research, but is more along the lines of trying not to get beat up or thrown in detention in high school.

the scariest assignment was when i had to work with the girl who was goth ahead of her time, back when everyone else was still rocking the lumberjack flannels and kurt cobain was alive. not only did she wear a plastic barbie doll leg with red sharpie on it to look like blood around her neck as a decorative accessory, but she also hated me. i was too scared of her to talk shit about her then, she just hated me because she could, i guess.

after two awkward afternoons at the local library where i spent the time reading the collected works and countless biographies of william blake, while she spent the time drawing pictures of me hanging from a noose (i'm assuming it was me, she got the bangs just right), i pretty much wrote my presentation and figured she could say whatever she wanted to after i talked. well, as it turned out, what she ended up saying was that i stole her speech and that she had nothing left to say. consequently she failed, and spent the rest of our time in high school giving me death looks and kicking my shins from under her desk.

there was also the time that and i got drunk on my free period from the convenient stash of my mom's foster's keg cans and then 40 minutes later was swinging my legs from my history teacher's desk babbling something about jacksonian democracy. kristine sat there burning me up and laughing the whole time because she knew how wasted i was. she got yelled at and i got an A+.

considering that my oratory skills seem to have been somewhat successful in the past, i find myself now wondering if there's a way that i can exploit my natural talent to work for me.

well, maybe there's no need for me to go that far, but at the very least i can spend ten years making this fabulous picture in paint instead of showering like i should be doing.

ps. i had to look up how to spell 'speech' in my scrabble game, just to make sure.

i'll translate if i have to

i'm not sure if it's a matter of my age or my lack of proper training, but i am completely illiterate when it comes to chat/text speak. sure i can send texts and chats, but it will take me about five years for one message because i type the whole entire thing out.

some of the basics are easy and i've picked up on their proper usage; omg, wtf, got it. others however, make me annoyed because i took fucking six years of latin and i was so proficient i could converse with cicero if i wanted to, and yet i still don't know what the fuck 'rofl' means.

the frustrating part about this was that when i received a chat from someone who used this term, my first impulse was to google it. i stopped because i realized that i have no idea what rofl could possibly mean, and the last thing i need is to google some weird porno term and have dirty things pop up on my computer and never ever leave (cause that's what i heard happens when you look up online porn).

so my next move was to email the human dictionary that is kristine for a quick answer:

me: don't burn me up, but i really don't know what 'rofl' means

k: ok, first, tell whoever used it that he/she is a tool. second, it means 'rolling on the floor, laughing'.

that's the dumbest shit i've ever heard. shouldn't all laughter at something written be covered by the all-encompassing 'lol'?

ok, i'm already over it. now i can talk about how much i love microsoft paint.

the amazingly awesome sour sent me this fabulous shirt as a trade for my wack bird shirt.

right away, you can see the sweet sunshine lines i made coming off the shirt, which could be perceived to be stink lines, except that i'm telling you they're not. i can't decide what my favorite part of the shirt is. it could be that the pat of butter melting onto pancake stack's right eye totally looks like a black eye, making him that much more badass. or it could be this:

who's trapped under stack? how did he get stuck there? what was he looking for? so many questions, it's brilliant. so a HUGE THANKS to sour, for spreading her canadian love my way!

i could take pictures and paint things on them all day, but in truth, i'd never become as talented as this. you're welcome for the link. and now, feel free to da mihi multi baccii please.