WanderingAmylessly 2.0

Ever feel trapped? In your own skin. In the moment. In a perception. Heart races, toes tap, fingers tingle, heart goes numb. Can't catch your breath. Breathe too much. Brain thinking of everything, making sense of nothing. Wishing for strong arms and gentle kisses. Shuddering at a touch. Needing attention. Desperate for solitude. Silence screams. Trapped inside your shackled self. 'Normal' slips from your grasp, floats out an open window. Pulling the blinds shut as it goes.

Whilst I was searching for that lovely song about the snatched bird, I discovered that many people were missing things much more importnat than a wing or drumstick. Rampant thievery, I tell you. And once again, we owe our knowledge to Google, which dug up the following from the Internet dregs: Organized Konfusion one-upped our tune, creating "Who stole my LAST piece of chicken." Satan Stole My Teddy Bear is a music review site. Some sort of atmospheric science site on a University web site pondered, "Who Stole my Rain?!" A dude named Albino Blacksheep says someone stole his HTML. One person wrote an essay on "How Hamster Dance stole my soul." Another claimed "Aliens stole my handbag." A book on customer loyalty is titled, specifically enough, "Who Stole My Customer?" Promethius stole my robot. That's what it said. Huh? In Nigeria, a mob beat a government official to death after he was accused of causing a man's penis to disappea...

Sometimes I can't remember where I put my keys (my husband would say "Sometimes? Try three times a day.") Quite often, I wander around the office parking lot trying to remember where I parked my car. I'm horrible at remembering people's names. Even after I have known them for months. Memory is an odd thing. How come, when I have such troubles as listed above, am I haunted by an occurrence that happened seven or eight years ago while dining at a cajun/creole restaurant in Utah with my then-fiancé? While we were enjoying our jambalaya and such, we were caught up in a simple song playing semi-softly on the establishment's stereo system. "Who stole my chicken" Those four words, repeated again and again in the chorus of this song, for whatever reason, sent us into hysterics. We now mention it when we eat chicken. See chickens. Talk about chickens on Old MacDonald's farm. We replace the word chicken with an array of nouns (or is it an adjective? or adv...

When the Monday ickies overwhelm you, you gotta bring out the big guns (if you're with Dick right now, you might want to duck). Babies and Puppies. Who can resist babies and puppies.

Writing is a voice that calls us from dreams, that peeks out of the corner of our eyes when we think no one is looking, the longing that breaks our hearts even when we think we should be happiest, and to which we cannot give a name. -- Judy Collins

Headline: Study shows fast food ice dirtier than toilet water

There are some days when the thoughts just don't jel. The ideas flow fast and furious, but I have not the effort to string together sentences in a crisp, coherent fashion. So instead, you get the following bits and pieces: * The head of my department threw out this tidbit during a meeting recently..."The Hokey Pokey: What if that really IS what it's all about?" * Competitive Tiddlywinks. There really is such a thing. On Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird web site, he tells the tale of a family who tiddles their winks together. Or whatever. According to Chuck, the object of the game is this: You mash a "squidger" down on a "wink" to propel it either into the "pot" or to "squop" it onto an opponent's wink to temporarily disable it. Again I say, whatever. * Is anyone going to be surprised if Scott Hamilton gets so worked up during his blade-by-blade Olympic figure skating commentary that he actually has an orgasm? He came ...

FROM my hotmail account, I e-mailed myself a message TO my hotmail account with some information I didn't want to forget. Hotmail sent it to my junk e-mail folder. Said it couldn't verify the I.D. Puts the HIGH in high-tech...

It's in very poor taste to snicker when someone gets shot. It's unacceptable behavior to laugh aloud upon news of someone's heart attack. I acknowledge that I behaved quite badly. I apologize. However, what does it say about a person -- in particular, the FREAKING VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FREE WORLD -- who: 1. Shoots his 78-year-old hunting companion who was completely decked out in blaze orange. 2. Sneaks said hunting companion to the hospital without telling the local authorities. 3. Doesn't bother to notify the White House Press Corps. 4. Refuses to personally make public statements about the incident or appear in public or in any way apologize for mistaking a human for a BIRD. I'm sure there are more items I could include on the list, but I'll leave them to punchy pundits. Just watch Jon Stewart .

Found one of those really goofy online calculators today. This one, appropriately, was the "love calculator." Type in your full name and your sweeetie's name. See what happens. My spouse and I were a whopping 90-something %, which is higher than any other two names I typed in. I tried T with Kelly Monaco and, thankfully, got a mediocre 51%. You'll be happy to know that Anderson Cooper & Michael Jackson were only a 19% love match, interestingly enough only two percentage points lower than MY INLAWS. And, in perhaps the funniest and most fitting fashion, Dick Cheney & George Bush...85%. Bet we can guess who's the top and who's the bottom in that relationship.

From CNN Correspondent Randi Kaye, on the AC 360 Blog, CNN.com: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 You too can be a 40-year-old virgin Someone told me that women are having their vaginas rejuvenated. That's right, rejuvenated and reconstructed and revirginized even. I thought they were kidding. But my producer and I looked into it, and sure enough, it's an emerging surgical trend. Vaginal rejuvenation costs thousands of dollars and is done with a laser. It includes a variety of procedures, such as women getting their labia made smaller because it is uncomfortable for them to engage in physical activity or have intercourse, women getting their vaginal canal tightened as it was pre-baby delivery, and other women going one step further by getting their hymen (the gateway to the vaginal canal) tightened. This last procedure can, in a sense, make a woman a virgin again. In many instances, the women who get this surgery need it for medical reasons. But not all. Some women do this as a gift t...

To you... When You Say Nothing At All Lyrics by Alison Krauss It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart Without saying a word you can light up the dark Try as I may I could never explain What I hear when you don't say a thing The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me The touch of your hand says you'll catch me if ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all All day long I can hear people talking out loud But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd Old Mr. Webster could never define What's being said between your heart and mine The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me The touch of your hand says you'll catch me if ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all

I'm not sure how big a secret it ever was. It's not like I actively hid it. People who are close to me have known about my clinical depression since I was officially diagnosed four years ago. And some of those people probably knew it before the doctors ever put a label on it. But it wasn't the first thing I mentioned to new friends or coworkers. I'm not sure anyone in my new office has any idea. Millions of Americans have dealt with serious depression, and almost everyone has moaned "I'm so depressed" at least once, whether distraught over a relationship break-up or simply the fact that Diet Crystal Pepsi went off the market (yeah, bummed me out, too). This new wrinkle -- in the already wadded-up-in-the-bottom-of-the-hamper-linen-suit known as my mental health -- has even me freaked out. Depression, while serious and potentially debilitating or even life-threatening, has advertising. It has a cute little cartoon bubble that bounces around on screen sighing...

Check out this list: Virginia Woolf Rosemary Clooney Hans Christian Anderson Kurt Cobain Ralph Waldo Emerson Vincent Van Gogh Tennessee Williams Jimi Hendrix Ernest Hemingway Vivian Leigh Isaac Newton Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) What do these people have in common? Let's see, we have a writer, singer, writer, musician, writer, painter, playwright, musician, writer, actress, inventor, writer... Lot of people who acted on that notion that everyone has at least one good book in 'em. In general, creative folks -- all very successful, a few who had haunted souls (including at least one guy who offed himself and another who chopped off his own ear - yowza). I learned this week that they all had something else in common. They all are or were reported to have bipolar disorder. From the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to functio...

I hesitate to even bring this up for fear of inciting more violence and hatred. Then again: how many bazillion blogs exist? Somehow, I think the clerics aren't surfing for questionable topics written by a 34-year-old wife and mom from Iowa. Anyhoo....how about those Muslims. The ones blowing up stuff and threatening worse because some Danish editorial cartoon depicted Mohammed in a less-than-flattering light. I can completely understand how offensive that must be for them. In the same way Christians get all in a snit over negative depictions of Jesus...remember the Last Temptation of Christ? When someone dared suggest that Jesus had had a love affair with Mary Magdalene. *Gasp* I think I might have been more offended by the fact that the lord and savior was being portrayed by Willem Dafoe. But that's a discussion for another day. Yes, the cartoons perpetuate stereotypes. They come at a time when a little sensitivity and tact could go a long way. All the cliches come to mind: ru...

Check out the latest post from "Wombat" at the "kissnblog" (by clicking the headline of this post). To make a long, wonderful, joyous, fact-filled story short and sweet: Cellulite is gender- and genetics-based. And 85 percent of women have it. Wombat claims that most men appreciate confident women, whether or not they have dimpled skin or extra pounds. I question this. But I won't argue, for now. I'll just enjoy the moment and refrain from kicking myself for not wearing a size "0" or having a flat tummy. I still wish I lived in the day of Peter Paul Rubens. Bless you man, for painting real women. Not drug-addled, airbrushed ones. *sigh* Time for breakfast. Care to share my Slim-Fast shake?

This Just In: Possible Tornado Slams New Orleans Airport Is it just me, or do you think SOMEONE IS TRYING TO TELL THEM SOMETHING!!!!!