If you’ve been reading the site for at least the last two weeks, you know I talk about Craigslist a lot. Which probably makes you suspect that I spend most of my days cruising the Missed Connections, trying to negotiate myself into being a “tattooed Filipina” or someone who has a reason to go to a bank.

Harsh realities aside, sometimes I’ll take a break and comb the writing gigs for something that suits me. I haven’t found any ads looking for someone who knows way too much about Blossom’s hat collection yet, but I have found this:

It’s brave to actually come out and admit – in caps lock – that you have a story so devoid of quality that you’re unanimously told that it needs to be on Lifetime. Unless they’ve left out “TEEN PREGNANCIES AND A CYBER STALKER” in between “HARDSHIP” and “FUN LAUGHTER,” I don’t see it taking off. But I’m probably just bitter because no one seems to want “Tall blonde with numerous ranch dressing stains.”

Surprises don’t exist in my life. Neither does moderation when it comes to bacon, but bacon is only partially involved this time. I’ve ruined every surprise ever planned for me, usually by guessing ‘cake’ or ‘petting zoo’, but it’s even worse when I’m the one with the surprise.

This time, my surprise came in the form of a hot air balloon ride. I’ve always wanted to go up in one because it just seems like something a circus ringleader would do on their day off and since my goals closely resemble that of a circus performer, it sounded like the perfect Saturday morning activity. All I had to do was keep it under wraps for two days. I was pretty successful, until about the sixth hour after making the reservation. I had already slipped by emailing my boyfriend and telling him I was bursting about my surprise, but that was a pretty subtle pun so I was at least temporarily safe. Then he came home and I started telling him, in very selective terms, that I was flying high about this surprise and how much of a basket case I was because I couldn’t tell him. He finally ended what was turning into a very Life Goes On moment and said, “It’s a hot air balloon ride, isn’t it?”

With another successfully spoiled surprise under my belt, I was free to let my mind wander about how rough and tumble the pilot would be and if he had been involved in any hijackings. Unfortunately, what I ended up getting was a guy with a Nickelback ringtone and a decent knowledge of the crops that are grown in Napa Valley.

Despite having to wake up at 4am that morning, I was giddy once we finally got there. I was doing all of my best dances, trying to remember the lyrics to ‘Electric Avenue’ and making everyone around me wish that they could reschedule. Right as I was about to do what is admittedly a pretty weak Elmo impression, my boyfriend looks at me and says, “I can’t believe you’re allowed to have a credit card.” I thought about making him look like a total ass by listing the responsible things I buy on a regular basis, but all I could come up with was a sketchbook and even that is used solely for drawing cats eating different kinds of snack foods. Seconds after this realization, he unearthed the truth I was trying to hide and said, “All you use it for is candy and balloon rides.”

After promising to change my account passwords since he must’ve been looking at my statements, I finished my second muffin and boarded the van that was driving us to the lift-off site.

I wish I could say more about the balloon ride itself. It was like being in a marshmallow that sometimes emitted fire and everything below looked like a series of Josef Albers paintings. More importantly though, there was bacon at the brunch afterward, which is what I was paying for anyway.

Once I was done eating my boat of candied pork, I bought chocolate covered toffee almonds. Partially because I really wanted them, but mostly so my credit card company wouldn’t detect any unusual activity.

No one has ever been able to either spell or pronounce my name upon meeting me for the first time and in most cases, six months after that. Well aside from my mom, on occasion, but she’s obligated since she’s the one who gave me this verbal jockstrap of a name in the first place. I’ve gotten everything from Abry to Obree, and while all of those give me the same queasy feeling I had when I slowly realized that the porn I borrowed from my best friend in high school was actually about a step-dad fucking his step-daughter and oh my god he gets off to this and we share cheese fries at lunch, ‘Audrey’ is what ultimately makes me dig my nails in my palms and force a polite ‘I think I have a hemorrhoid’ smile.

When asked for my name at a coffee shop or cafe, I typically offer something short that couldn’t possibly be maimed in the way that I’ve become accustomed. Jen, Amy, and Kim are in the rotation right now, among others, but I’ll stop there and let Lou Bega have the monopoly on setting a Hooters employee schedule to music and claiming it as a creative process. Usually these names are ones I lusted after as a child because of their ability to be put in anyone’s mouth and, assuming they know at least half of the alphabet, not come out looking like boiled dog food.

There are times, however, when I forget or just simply want to amuse myself by learning all the new ways that my name can be turned into something Cookie Monster might say. But today, as I sat down with my $4 cup of justification to leech as much wireless and electricity as I want, I noticed that nothing was out of place. There was no missing ‘e’, no added syllables, and no reason for me to break their display case and carve my name into all of the pastries.

Now thoroughly on my way to developing superstition, I began retracing my steps so I could duplicate these results and abandon my life as ‘Audrey’ forever. Turns out it’s pretty simple – all I need is someone who can read and a credit card boasting an accurate spelling of ‘Aubrey.’

I’m still not optimistic.

Anyone else turned on?

It’s a bit of a habit of mine to pick up a stuffed animal or puppet on every IKEA visit I make once moving to a new city. I have a pretty decent collection so far – hippo, moose, some sort of ambiguous reptile, and now finally, a cat.

I guess I do it because moving is kind of scary and since I never developed a taste for alcohol, I need something to calm my nerves. Although, those sewn on nipples admittedly don’t do much for my peace of mind.

Packing all of my belongings into boxes has provided me an opportunity to look back on all of the things I’ve wasted my money on. So far, I’ve found a pair of shoes adorned with a tiny sterling silver fork and spoon, an overweight sex doll who goes by the name of  ‘Fatima’ and this:

A ski mask that I just had to have to survive the Oregon winters. Aside from the fact that it’s thinner than most of my underwear, this ski mask just screams, ‘douche who doesn’t condone sweatshop labor but only cares enough to spend $15 on a useless and totally clever balaclava.’

Oh and the shirt proves that I will buy anything with a cat on it.

I watch a lot of poor quality television, and while I stand by my Designing Women, one bargain basement I won’t venture into is the exploitative dankness of TLC.

The TLC network is a Bristol Stool Scale of mediocrity and while it stands to reason that eventually, they will choose to replace at least one component of their overweight, pregnant, little person trifecta with actual substance, it now seems more probable that they will just combine them all and mix in the ups and downs of owning and operating a frozen yogurt shop.

But, until they find their new star of Twist and Shout: Pregnant, Obese and Little, they will have to do what they can to glorify pregnancy and parenthood through average women. Reading through the casting description reveals that this will be a “web video series,” which is second only to internet petitions in efficacy, and will likely consist mostly of women displaying their morbid collection of unused baby paraphernalia on suspiciously nice couches.

I admit, my knowledge of TV production is so crippled that well, TLC would probably want to come film it and turn it into a desperate quest for ratings. But, I do know that using women to film their own experiences while solidifying a lucrative deal with Church & Dwight in exchange for closeups of the golden shower that their First Response pregnancy tests will receive is pretty savvy. Savvy here means the same thing it does in TLC’s show description – shameless.

However, in their defense, subtly perpetuating the intrinsic xenophobia and subordination of the Quiverfull movement is a full-time job. So while TLC is still actively searching for ‘triplets or more’ in a casting for Make Room for Multiples, it’s only fair that women who can only produce one uninteresting, non-obese baby at a time film their own “emotional passage to pregnancy.”

The best part though is that they use a gmail address, which clearly reflects all the foresight you can expect from a network that boasts a show dedicated entirely to babies being born in toilets. Come on TLC, I use gmail and it’s usually just to order pizza online. Get your shit together or at least honor this colossal joke with a hotmail account.

I found this ‘Heart in Oregon’ sticker today while packing. I bought it weeks after moving here with the intention of putting it on the rear window of my car just to show everyone how not insecure I was about being an outsider. Since I still had Florida plates, it sat unpeeled in my nightstand for months because I didn’t want to illicit any ‘wait a minute’ epiphanies from cops who could pull me over for not registering the car 30 days after relocating.

Eventually, I registered with the state of Oregon. The plates came in the mail a few days ago, nearly hours after making the decision to leave.

I’m still debating whether I should use the sticker or put it in my ‘what could’ve been’ box along with my unsent letters to Tucker Carlson and a VHS tape in which I perform the voices of a googly eyed banana and a unibrowed jar of Pace Picante Sauce in order to explain the dangers of drunk driving. It seems hypocritical to claim that my heart is in a place where I lived for less time than the duration of Freaks and Geeks, but in a lot of ways, it’s accurate. Oregon represents the first time I drove across the U.S. as an adult, the first time I irresponsibly blew a significant amount of money to go overseas, and the first time I realized that people will put venison in anything.

I hope we can be together sometime in the future, Oregon. Just know that I’ll always remember you for your fondness of seasoned tater tots, more breweries than I’ve had orgasms, and the abundance of unkempt but practical facial hair.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. The reason for this is because when that fucking desiccated tootsie roll RUSHED out of those corn fields like they were on fire, my four-year-old heart couldn’t take it and from that point on, I would only watch movies that guaranteed carbon based characters or ideally, plots entirely absent of science. For years, E.T. haunted me. Every dark hallway or stairwell was an invitation for him to come hurdling toward me. To do what, I’m not sure. The most diabolical thing he ever did in the movie was befriend a 10-year-old boy and dress in women’s clothes. And while that’s unsettling for some, it’s not necessarily scary.

Still, I was petrified of him. A few years later, however, I saw a behind the scenes special that revealed the means of locomotion for E.T. – wheels. Even at eight years old, where my world allowed a reality in which The Muppets were living beings, I knew what wheels were. I knew they weren’t scary and even though there was a screeching uterus with a nose attached to them, I was able to watch the movie and meet E.T.’s beady eyes without turning away until the Reese’s Pieces showed up.

Despite my victory over E.T., I was ruined for any future interest in the horror genre. Movies that depend almost entirely on the inevitability that something is going to be forcibly removed by a sharp object or vagina dentata are not something my anxiety has the aptitude to deal with. The only horror movies I watch, understandably, are ones so bad that they reveal their parlor tricks as they go along. Films starring wrestlers or Gary Busey, usually. From the beginning, they admit to the fact that they’re full of shit, instead of attempting to peddle the idea that corn syrup and red food coloring are worthy of soiling yourself or more importantly, real.

I’m not a fan of severity, which is why I’m struggling with the fact that in less than two weeks, I’ll be moving. Again. A little over six months ago, I moved from Florida to Oregon. It was my ‘fuck you Southeast I’m going to live in the Pacific Northwest and eat fresh sustainable fish not because I like fish since I really don’t but just because I can‘ tour. It’s been successful so far, but I’m realizing that more than anything, I was simply proving to myself that I could escape from the straight jacket that manifested itself from the familiarity of my former surroundings. Somehow, I did it. But the point is, I’ve done it and I need to move on.

It’s uncomfortable to stare into a future so fertile with doubt and the unavoidable truth that I will ingest Nyquil at least once to comfortably fall asleep before 9pm. But since I have a poor sense of impulse control and an insatiable need to challenge the limits of a rapidly dwindling savings account, I will be Danny Tanner-ing it into San Francisco before January ends.

The way I see it, if I can overcome that creep E.T., I can do just about anything. All I need is for the situation to reveal its wheels.

You may recall a few weeks ago, I mentioned being nominated for Best Humor Blog in the 2009 Weblog Awards. Finalists were supposed to be announced in late December, with voting starting today. Turns out though, it’s not happening at all due to hosting issues or The Dust Bowl or more realistically, socialism.

Initially, I blamed myself. It’s illogical of course, but there’s still this residual guilt from grade school where I lead myself to believe that whichever team I was placed on in gym class lost because of me. Sometimes though, that was probably true because I spent most of the time pretending to tie my shoes or trying to figure out if my teacher was a lesbian and if so, was her girlfriend pretty?

This time, I’m almost certain this had nothing to do with me. You’d think it did, since it took these people months to actually let the losers (me) who were nominated know what’s up, but I’d like to think even I am not that disconnected from my tenuous internet responsibilities.

Regardless, being nominated gave me a total roll-over and I ended up meeting some cool people in the process. So if you voted for me, thank you and if you didn’t, I’m going to refrain from doling out petty threats.