February 5th 8:35am - Feces and Fracas

While in the South Island, the dad I au-pair for judged it logical to bring his five children under the age of ten to his great-aunt's house.

We entered the house, the four-year-old in tears, the two-year-old screaming, the three-month-old shrieking. The house rambled geriatrics. Great Aunt Maude's immaculate white carpet, walls covered in yesteryear, and ancient baby grand piano paralleled the White House, if the White House housed chronologically advanced elders of a youth-challenged sort. The place echoed silence.

The last time a litter of five offspring spurted through the house, gas cost twenty cents a gallon, Cinderella opened in theaters, and CBS began broadcasting in color.

Great Aunt Maude chronicled her WWII nurse experience, fortified by vein-snaked finger-points to framed black-and-white photos on the wall.

Concurrently, the two-year-old physically assaulted the baby grand piano. Great Aunt Maude verbally persevered through the erupting sounds of ivory keys being finger-raped. Her hearing aids weren't functioning properly.

The four, six, and nine-year-olds concentrated charmingly on her stories. They had been told that, pending good behavior, they wouldn't be left on the side of the road for the homeless man to adopt as money-makers.

As Great Aunt Maude divulged to the adults that a surprising number of the army nurses were dirty whores, the two-year-old elevated piano sheet music books and bombed them onto the floor. When I shuffled through the floral upholstered chairs to retrieve the rogue hellion, my nostrils ignited with a stench resembling hair burning in raw sewage.

I retrieved the fossilized deranged sheet music books from the ground and turned to look at the mom. Our eyes clamped. She pointed at her baby's ass and mouthed changing pad, car to me. Her eyes breathed run.

I rotated back to see the hellion launch a white ceramic picture frame off the top of the piano. I recovered the photo of Great Aunt Maude clasping a certificate in her nurse's uniform, corralled the other seventeen photographs of Great Aunt Maude's life in my arms, and showered them into a corner of the room. I left the two-year-old seated at the piano wailing like a branded calf. I sprinted to the car, the heinous smell still raiding my nose. I had forgotten the keys. I flung myself back up the house steps, in the door, into the sitting room, into the mom's purse, and back outside, down the steps, and to the car. I seized the mat and surged up to the house.

The mom sat, clenching her baby in his armpits at arm's length. Liquid yellow excreta oozed through his onesie in the diaper's outline. I hurled the shit blanket on the floor and she pitched the baby on his back onto the material. She expertly shredded back the onesie at the crotch and detached the front of the diaper. Fluid sunflower-yellow shit cascaded from his submerged diaper onto his legs and shrouded the changing pad in lemon-colored film. Fecal matter slipped towards the pear carpet.

Great Aunt Maude postured in her chair, observing. The mom abundantly apologized. The three older children and dad sat, shrouded in silence. The two-year-old exclaimed from the piano bench, "Ooooh. He did big poos!"

February 4th 9:20am - Vomit and Tampons

Yesterday the two-year-old torpedoed tears, bull-charged down the hallway, and collided with my shin. I folded him in my arms and stood. His forearms blanketed my shoulders. My left fingertips smoothed the back of his neck. I murmured, asking why he was crying. He vomited in my hair.

Two hours later, I started my period. The parents, five kids, and I were on a two-week-long vacation on the South Island in a midget-sized beach town called Karitane. Population four hundred and twenty-seven.

Intelligent females track their periods. I never know. Each month it's a shock and surprise. Like my deteriorating driving record. After stripping my bags and raping my purse, I located two tampons. The solitary town store closed at five-thirty, and it was six.

I inserted one tampon and stationed the other on my bed. By midnight, the tampon had absconded. I reconnaissanced the surrounding area for the woman plug. It wasn't on or in my bed, shelves, bags, or bathroom. I queried my brain on if I had fabricated the existence of the second one. I audited the living room, sitting room, and ping pong room. I stalked the hallway, yard, and two bedrooms. I interrogated my mental capability. I thought I had a second one.

An hour later, I detected it. The kids had used the still-wrapped unused tampon as a boat. It was accompanied by plastic warships in the kitchen sink.

* Published by The Short Humor Site in May 2010

February 2nd 9:08am - Day 2: Excreta

Day Two:

I know as much about babysitting as I do about cultural practices in Tonga. The country name sounds fake. It sounds like a name I would bequeath on a pot-bellied pig.

When the four-year-old shit in the hot tub, cradled the pellet in her hand, held it out to me, and said, "I did poos," I laughed. Her eyes drooled tears.

I then realized that I was an adult. I shed my grin from my face and evolved my brain from a juvenile state to a more sophisticated age. I told her that she was a very naughty girl and I was very disappointed in her.

The tears tripped down her cheeks.

I let her stay in the spa. Ten minutes later, the four-year-old extended her hand to me. In it, she fondled excrement. Again. I laughed.

February 1st 8:05pm - Day 1: Hospital

The extent of my babysitting experience comprises eyeballing and beaming at young chance children. I occasionally cuddle them... if their parents are absent and alcohol breathes into my brain.

In Thailand, after Chang beer and Thai whiskey, my cranium capacity deteriorated from ardor for all mankind to loss of bodily function, speech, and memory. I reclaimed consciousness without friends, but holding a Thai five-month-old that could fit in my overweight uncle's pocket. Extreme maternal instincts inhabited my body. I don't recall if it was a boy or girl.

When I resolved to be an au pair instead of enlisting in the Navy, I needed references. My two references: one of my best friends, and my cousin. I estimated functioning as an au pair would be easier than dog walking. I calculated that acting as an au pair for five children would be easier than bathing my dog. Kids listen.

Day One: I careened off the plane at three-fifty in the morning. The mom, two daughters, and baby fetched me from the airport at nine-ten.

By noon I drifted in the pool, shelling the surface with my back. My eyes dripped into the clouds and my limbs feasted on leisure. And then I heard the shrieking.

The nine- and six-year-olds howled like they had just seen their bunny decapitated. I charged upwards and dog-paddled to the deep end to see what was wrong. They hopped onto me, bawling, their arms entwining my neck. I sank.

The kids' mom and grandma surged from the house to find me asphyxiated and drowning. They detached the kids from my head and established through the screaming that they had been stung by wasps. The nine-year-old in the head, the six-year-old on the finger. The six-year-old wouldn't cease the hysterics. The grandma took her to the hospital.

January 29th 12:51pm - January 2010 Photo of the Month

Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Sky Tower

January 22nd 7:32pm - Flight=Kiwis+Booze

My flights frequently place me between two boom bobbas and thunder thighs, and in front of a young child with restless legs syndrome.

When I boarded my flight from San Francisco to Auckland five hours after initially planned, I almost went into apopleptic shock upon shuffling to my seat. My chair was between two men who didn't look like they ate a thirty-pound baby for lunch. Instead, they appeared to have jogged within the last decade. I am not disciplined towards physical exertion, but I don't weight over three hundred pounds. Yet.

As they both flaunted their foreign Kiwi tongues, I comprehended one-sixth of their words. I craftily construed that they were Army intel guys. They repeatedly referred to it. My grasp at their language hastily fled after I had two wine refills at dinner.

Twenty-Something streaked a smile across his face and got us beer. Four times. After the wine and beer consumption, the native-English speakers may as well have been communicating in Codswallop, Kara's fictitious/secret drunken form of verbal intercourse.

The only conversation I clearly recall concerned Kiwi pre-flight videos. Air New Zealand stewards and stewardesses conduct the pre-flight video nude. Their bodies are painted as if they wore uniformed clothing.

January 21st 10:05am - January 2010 Quote of the Month

2-year-old: "The baby does poos out of his belly button."

January 19th 8:12pm - Airports Hate Me

We lost my friend's aunt.

My flight to New Zealand departed at 4:35pm.

10am: I arrived in San Francisco with bags, plans to see five friends, and no transportation. Selling my car almost a year ago has been as heinous as not having access to deodorant. I sweat more than a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound male alcoholic.

1pm: My friend Nickle drove me to San Fran's downtown Westfield shopping center to converge with our friend Citi.

1:30pm: After dying and forgotten cell phone afflictions, we located our friend. She was hysterically looking for her aunt. The three of us backtracked to every store Citi was at with her phone-less aunt. We never found the aunt.

2:30pm: Nickle and I realized that we needed to abandon Citi to get to the airport on time. Citi deserted the aunt-chase to accompany us to the car.

2:40pm: A comatose frog would have had a better idea where we parked. Neither Nickle nor I recalled the floor, section, or color we parked in.

2:42pm: This had happened to me before. I regaled my friends with multiple recollections of a golf cart driving me around the structure to find my misplaced car. Enough drivers lose cars to justify a full-time golf-cart-car-locator employee.

2:53pm: The golf cart materialized and we signaled the driver SOS. When he didn't instantly freeze upon seeing us, I considered flashing him.

2:54pm: Nickle accompanied Savior while Citi and I stalked the car on foot. We ran from floor to floor, sumo-wrestler-sweating with perturbed legs. Citi and I passed the golf cart on five floors, looping identical paths.

3:10pm: Nickle called me. The car was on the fourth floor.

After a cheetah-speed good-bye to Citi, Nickle and I bombed into the car. She drove like a caffeine fiend madwoman to the airport.

3:36pm: At the international terminal, I ejected myself from the car and into the building. My booking confirmation told me I was flying Qantas Airways to LA, and then to Auckland. Qantas Airways was not listed as an airline.

3:39pm: I found the Qantas Airways check-in desks. Every desk was closed.

3:42pm: I asked the Information Desk man why Qantas Airways was closed when I needed them.

3:45pm: Info Man informed me I was actually flying United Airlines to LA, then Qantas from LA to Auckland.

"Reservations read wrong all the time," he told me. "You need to walk to the opposite side of the airport and catch the United flight in domestics, not international."

3:46pm: I elevated my backpack on my left arm, my four-foot-long black body bag on my right, my backpacker's bag on my back, and commenced the trek.

3:49pm: I coprolalia-cursed my laptop-laden backpack and shoulder-strapless body bag.

3:51pm: Sweat spiraled down my temples.

3:52pm: My arms cried.

3:53pm: My legs cried.

3:54pm: I cried.

3:59pm: I reached the domestic terminal and United Airlines check-in counter.

4:01pm: Electronic self-check reported an error. Check-In Counter Woman looked at my still-perspiring, befuddled mess of self and imparted with her eyes that she thought I was retarded.

4:03pm:

Counter Woman: (sighed): "The system isn't letting you check in because you don't have a ticket. Where's your ticket?"

Me: "What? I'm at the check-in counter to get my ticket. Here's my reservation" (brandished my reservation page in her face like a cocky bastard with a flag).

Counter Woman: "You have been issued a ticket. It has to be somewhere. You do not have an electronic ticket. I cannot let you on the plane unless you have your ticket."

Me: (Recollected a hung-over morning conversation with the booking agent where he said they were sending my ticket in the mail. Twenty dollars for one-day delivery and insurance. I responded with, "Fuck no, I'm not paying twenty dollars! I don't leave for three weeks. I'm sure the ticket can get here by then." In my brain-damaged state, it didn't occur to me to question the electronic ticket. Or check the mail in subsequent days.)

"Well, I never received a ticket. Can't you just print one out for me? My flight's in a half hour."

Counter Woman: "You have to call whoever you booked through. It's not United Airline's responsibility."

4:06pm: I sat directly in front of the counter on my bags. I didn't have internet capabilities on my archaic phone. I called my brother. Four times. My eyes were crotch-level for the perpetual line checking in.

4:09pm: I phoned STA Travel and explained the situation in bewildered verbal diarrhea gibberish. They put me on hold.

4:35pm: My flight departed. I still sat, leaning against the check-in counter.

4:39pm: STA electronically issued a ticket and booked me on a direct flight with Air New Zealand to Auckland. Instead of arriving at 9:10am, the flight was slated to land at 3:50am. My phone died. I had no way of contacting my ride to let them know.

January 17th 9:00pm - Da Hukilau

In college, for years I lived in San Francisco above a Hawaiian restaurant and bar, and below drug dealing brothers. The brother dealers were in their thirties and lived with their dad. My housemates and I deduced that at least one of the three living above us was a crackhead, as we unceasingly heard mutterings driveling from mouths punctuated by clusters of obscenities. One of those residing above us may have had turrets.

The Hawaiian restaurant and bar was baptized Hukilau. Our Hukilau apartment's paint exfoliated itself, the kitchen floor sloped, and none of the rooms had closets. The garbage cans dwelled two feet from our front door, and because of the proximity to the restaurant, we had pig-sized rats living under our disintegrating wooden stairs. The rats flying-squirrel-flew at us every six hours. Their eyes scintillated sabotage in dissolving sunlight.

Our habitat housed ants, flies, rats, cockroaches, mold, leaks, and unclassified vermin. When we contacted the landlord because a roof leak drooled onto my housemate's bed, the native Frenchman arrived howling that we were spoiled Americans, and we should just move the bed. He then tore apart our trash, shrieking that we were lazy Americans who didn't know how to break down boxes.

Our alluring abode engrossed a whale-penis-length hallway. Four bedrooms, one bathroom, a hall closet, kitchen, and living room all veered from the hallway like a sociopath's sense of direction.

One day, without any aggravation, food we had disposed of down the sink ejaculated into the bathtub.

One birthday, my housemate Fi-T received a year's steak supply from her parents. She had wanted a camera. One April night, she thawed some frozen steak in our bathroom sink. Thirty minutes later, Hukilau's manager body-slammed our front door. The meat had barred the drain. Sink water discharged through the floor and showered Hukilau's bar-seated customers' drinks, bar staff, and the business' alcohol apparatus.

In our apartment, Fi-T and I shared a sliding wall, and the kitchen counter space was as limited as a brothel's.

Hukilau's owners divulged that during Prohibition our apartment used to be a whore house, when Hukilau was an ice cream parlor with an underground tunnel to a bar across the street. They exposed the basement wall to us, with scalped paint sketching life-sized African Americans. Their lips, noses and asses looked like collagen had been catapulted into them.

The drug dealers disclosed that our apartment used to be an elite ganja-growing den with high pressure sodium lamps roping the ceilings.

Hawaiian Hukilau's Mexican chef had gold-rimmed teeth and an obese gold chain. My housemates, friends, and I frequented Hukilau's bar whenever we wanted a beer, and Hukilau's bathroom whenever our toilet backed up. The chef provided complimentary garlic fries. A lesbian manager Hukilau possessed for a year sacrificed money masses by administering beer pitchers to us. One weekend, after the manager's one-and-a-half second persistence to stay after closing, three o'clock in the morning found one of my friends vomiting in the bathroom, one fox-trotting behind the bar, one caroling on top of the bar, and my carcass slumped over the bar with my forehead incapacitating forearms like a plastered rum pirate. We hadn't paid for any booze. We never fingered why she got fired.

A bottle of Crown Royal whiskey daily escorted one of Hukilau's owners. After our beer pitchers, Owner would send us shots from his personal reservoir. For two years, Fi-T consistently thanked Steve for the Crown. His name wasn't Steve.

One night, Fi-T, our friend Mgs, and I soberly penetrated Hukilau to say hi. The night before had been saturated with incoherent babble, loss of bodily functions, and erroneous beliefs of elegance and beauty. Thus, the next night, we were sober. Owner greeted us with a shot of Crown each. Six rounds and impaired vision later, I couldn't execute a phone call. Two rounds after that, Mgs caught a cab the five blocks back to her apartment. An irresolute amount of shots after that, my brain comprehension faded with my ability to walk.

The next morning, my body catatonic, I questioned Fi-T from my bed. My vocal dilations, which more resembled grieved moans, reached her in her bed in the next room. She didn't know what happened either. Four hours later, when we belly-flopped downstairs to ask where our night went, we were told that we left our lives at the bar. Hukilau's staff had erected a small mountain from our belongings: my jacket and purse, Mgs' camera, and Fi-T's phone and wallet. Someone said they saw me and Fi-T crawling up the stairs.

It's been a year and a half since we lived above Hukilau. My college housemates and I visited the bar for drinks. Decorations have altered, managers have shifted, prices and menus have revolved. But, the Mexican chef is still there, and the ceiling stain from Fi-T's steak presides over the bar.

January 13th 9:15am - Me=Tramp

My life has as much planning and order as a deranged deer's day calendar.

I record dates inaccurately, times incorrectly, and am spontaneous to the point of causing self-inflicted retardation to my cranial lobe. This, coupled with the fact that people forget to tell me imperative details, like the death of a great-aunt, or relocation to Yemen, causes my brain mammoth malfunctions.

The day I returned from India, I resolved to withdraw from the Navy. Instead, I'd be an au-pair in some magnificent location, like Ireland, Australia, or South Africa. I selected New Zealand three minutes later because they refer to themselves as kiwis: small, fecal-matter-brown, flightless birds.

Having completed MEPS and DEPped in, the military had a quasi-sumo-wrestler hold on me. I fabricated a story, flinging around the words "pregnant" and "cancerous" like a monkey launching manure. The Navy notified me that I'd have to physically present myself at the office for an official resignation. They scheduled a mandatory meeting for January 12th.

The night of January 11th I consumed enough moonshine to fell an overweight cow. My conference was at ten the next morning, and I was in Marin without a car.

At sunup my friend Fi-Town dropped me off at the bus station, and I embarked on the enterprise of returning to Santa Rosa. I exhibited my trademark twelve dollar black sandals from eight years ago, my brother's gang-red Montgomery High School basketball sweatshirt, and my paint pants. Paint sprinkled my jeans, as well as dirt, dog saliva, and urine. The last time I showered and washed my hair, Jesus was alive. My pores exuded alcohol. My mouth birthed stale booze. Decaying rat savored my tongue.

In a car, the ride from Marin to Santa Rosa is forty minutes. In public transit, the ride is three hours. I slipped into the comatose sleep of the sloshed. Hours later, the bus deposited me on the sidewalk two miles from the Navy office. As I stepped off the bus, rain cascaded from the sky.

I had arrived in San Francisco two days prior, after a week in Southern California. My black four-foot-long bag of excess was my only accessory. None of my friends or family members responded to my phone-harassment. I had to walk the two miles to the Navy office to formally resign. In the rain. In sandals, a gang-red sweatshirt, and paint pants. With a black body bag on my back.

My feet slid in my tractionless sandals as I shuffled down the slippery sidewalk. A homeless man asked me if I wanted a ride. He didn't have a car, but did own a shopping cart. I declined.

Eight blocks later, rain pelting me like an adulteress getting stoned, a police officer pulled over and beckoned me to his car window.

"Hi Officer, is there a problem?" I asked, as muddled as the time a cop pulled me over for jaywalking.

"Are you okay?"

"Ya, I'm fine."

"So you're not in trouble," he iterated.

"No Sir. I'm just walking to the military recruiting center."

"Oh, you joined the military?"

"Actually, yes, but I'm walking there today to quit."

His eyes roamed up and down, his nostrils mushroomed, and he inhaled my scent. "You might want to re-think that."

The policeman left.

When I arrived, twenty minutes late, discharging rain and methanol, the military informed me that as of the fourth I was dropped from the program and didn't need to come in at all.

January 7th 1:20pm - Vegas 2010 You Know You're Drunk When...

Vegas 2010. You Know You're Drunk When...

* You calculate walking on your knees feasible.

* You get kicked out of a casino for sitting on the floor without shoes.

* You were going to take two girls to a strip club and hook up with one of them, but you were too tired. You didn't go to the strip club.

* You put your hand down your friend's dress, fingering her boob. She doesn't notice. There is picture evidence.

* You buy a man shots at a bar because he asks the guy you're drinking with if he's in the military. Five shots later, the man escorts you and your friend up to your group's hotel room. You don't remember his name. You continually call him Ryan when his name is Brian. You leave with him, and return shit-housed at eight-thirty in the morning after gambling all night. You pass some friends in the hallway who ask you where Brian is. Your response: "Who's Brian?" Theirs: "Oh God. Room's that way."

* You dance with a forty-five-year-old black woman with an afro. After dancing for an hour, you say, "Alright, let's go up to your room." You black-out and don't remember her response. You assume she said no.

* You fall asleep in the bed. Your friend falls asleep fully clothed lying in the wrong direction on top of the covers. A hot Aussie awakens him at 4:30am by dripping water on his head.

* You leave your switchblade open in the bed. The girl also sleeping in the bed wakes up with the blade digging into her neck.

* You entice two Aussies to go with you to the hotel room you share with eight others. You want the hot one but hook up with the less attractive one instead, in a room already occupied.

* You are in Vegas for two nights. Someone walks you home both nights. While everyone packs up cars the morning of departure, you lie on the cement outside the casino.

January 6th 9:55am - Vegas 2010 You Know You're Drunk When...

Vegas 2010. New Years. You Know You're Drunk When...

* On New Year's Eve you exit the casino you're staying in for five minutes to watch the countdown. Then you return to the casino. The entire night, you're outside five minutes total.

* You black-out and don't remember ass-flashing anyone. You also don't remember having sex with a girl in the closet, putting her midget-hat on your bare ass, or picking up your ex-girlfriend over your shoulder until you crash to the ground. You missed midnight because you passed out on top of the bed.

* You eye-rape a male thinking it's a female.

* You have a four-some between two couples. The only thing you say the next morning to combat the accusations: "Captain Morgan is the only one who will ever know." You never admit to the four-some.

* The five o'clock evening sun (i.e. natural sunlight) blinds you because you've been inside drinking all day.

* You and your friend switch girlfriends for the night.

* You attempt handstand push-ups. As do two of your friends. You fall on each other.

* You (a man) slow dance with another man in your hotel room. Without music.

* Nobody in your group knows where the black hairy mustache came from.

* You deem it okay to descend into the casino wearing only a white bathrobe.

* You cease life-functioning while standing in the front row at a live band performance.

*You dry-sex/dry-ass-rape-dance with a girl for forty minutes. The next morning you don't recall dancing with her.

January 5th 4:15pm - Las Vegas 2010 Quotebook #2

New Years 2010. We did Vegas. Again.

Stripper to Ass-Flash: "You look like a paraplegic bartender. I call them Shorty."

Parrot: "Where'd this come from? And why is it in the bed? It looks like a mustache."

Me: "Oh, that must be from the gorilla suit I wore last night."

Parrot: "If I post this picture on Facebook, all my gay guy friends will go nuts."

Me: "You guys, Ryan saved Stripper!"

New Bryan with an I: "My name's not Ryan. It's Brian."

Me: "You guys, Ryan carried Stripper up here!"

New Bryan with an I: "My name's Brian."

Me: "Ya. Thanks Ryan."

New Bryan with an I: "Don't worry, I'll bring her back in one piece."

Murph: "We're not too worried about that."

New Bryan with an I: "Is Stripper still breathing?"

Murph: "Don't worry, this is normal for us."

Natty Light: "I'm allergic to alcohol now."

Murph: "I'd fucking love a hard woody right now."

T-Rex: "I hate natural light. It really upsets me."

Murph: "Hey, where you at?"

Ass-Flash: "Drinking."

Murph: "Where in the casino are you?"

Ass-Flash: "Fun Bar."

Murph: "Where in the casino are you drinking at?"

Ass-Flash: "y a ti."

Me: "Hey, where are you guys?"

Ash-Flash: "The best bar in the world."

Me: "And where's that?"

Ash-Flash: "The world famous party bar."

Me: "I hate you."

T-Rex: "I need to go to Euro to meet more Aussies."

T-Rex: "Dude, you're a one-trick pony."

T-Rex: "I want to go overseas. Kara, how do I do that?"

Me: "Not an option. They wouldn't let you overseas."

T-Rex: "The blonde Swede from Australia took my belt off and whipped me with it last night."

T-Rex (after hooking up for twenty minutes in one of the rooms): "Is someone in here?"

J: "Yes. Can you guys please go somewhere else?"

T-Rex: "Earmuffs. Earmuffs."

Natty Light: "In what state is it legal to leave a hotel room like this?"

Me: "Las Vegas?"

January 4th 10:00am - Las Vegas 2010 Quotebook #1

New Years 2010: We did Vegas. Again.

T-Rex: "She was a really nice girl. We're going to fuck tomorrow. Her name's Salina."

J: "Isn't her name Sonia?"

Parrot: "There were five of us in that room last night. Captain Morgan was one of the people."

Natty Light to LSU: "Is it okay with you if I feel up your girlfriend before her breast reduction?"

Me: "Dude, you look ripped! Take off your shirt."

Stripper (strips): "Okay."

Parrot: "Your pectorails are amazing!"

Me: "Pectorials? Is that code for pectorals?"

Stripper: "I've seen a lot of fucked-up shit, but last night a guy puked, pissed, and then whacked off in the living room in front of people."

Pakistan: "I was going to take the girls out to a strip club last night. And I was going to fuck her. But I was feeling tired."

Pakistan (playing a drinking game called land-mines): "Oh my god. I'm still perfect."

Big Boobs McGee: "Get me a water. Get me a water. Get me a water."

(One hour later): Big Boobs McGee: "Get me a water and I'll give you a blow-job."

LSU (sprints out of room and two doors down): "Done."

Pakistan: "Let's get the topless party started now."

Parrot: "I'm not wearing a bra."

Me: "I'm wearing see-through Scotch tape over my nipples, which is even more awkward."

Big Boobs McGee: "Did you flush the toilet?"

Pakistan: "I'm not a barbarian."

Natty Light: "It's fine, he just peed in the sink. No need to flush."

Stripper: "I've peed in more sinks that I don't remember than I do remember."

Natty Light: "It's 4:30pm, why're you going to dinner?"

Woody: "I eat when I'm hungry, I drink when I'm thirsty, and I gamble when I'm bored."

T-Rex: "Where did they find me I feel?"

Stripper (after shaving Pantsless's head): "How is there hair on the toilet seat?"

Me: "I just drank hair out of my cup."

T-Rex (After Stripper whipped out his switchblade): "Wow. That's cool. I want to play with that when I'm drunk later."

T-Rex: "My noodle's throbbing."

T-Rex (To Baby Bear, who woke up wearing a wife beater, sweatpants, and no shoes): "Why the hell are you so dressed up right now?!"

Stripper (dancing, swaying hips): "What you guys don't know is that my balls are making contact with my legs. Left to right, left to right.

Me: "I wish that I had a penis so while I swayed I could feel it on my legs."

Stripper: "It's like a wrecking ball in here."

December 24th 12pm - Bonkers and Birthday

My twenty-fourth birthday was on December 22nd. It was an epic rager. If the definition of epic rager constitutes playing Trivial Pursuit until five o'clock in the morning with three friends, my brother, and his friend Bonkers.

Bonkers was in my kindergarten class. The following year he was in my brother's kindergarten class. Over the years he has:

* Entered class after lunch break with his shirt off because he was hot.

* Purposefully lit his hair on fire inside the white molester "family" van while my mom drove.

* Snuck through my bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning so I could zombie-awake to him orchestrating my stuffed animals in various pornographic positions. I was eleven.

* Locked the sloshed babysitter (my uncle) in my parent's bedroom. This resulted in Drunk Babysitter (my uncle) stabbing Bonkers with a flagpole. The metal eagle topping the flagpole ruptured into Bonker's ribs.

* Demanded I remove my shirt to stifle the smoke alarm when I set our kitchen on fire. I was twelve. My breasts were the size of a three-year-old male's.

My twenty-fourth birthday party was as eventful as a church sermon delivered by my God-preaching recovering drug addict uncle who currently flaunts his sexual prowess through exhibiting photos of twenty-something skankasaurus breasts. My eighteenth birthday party was an epic rager.

My friend Pakistan hosted the social lubrication.

By seven-thirty my friends began tallying marks on my arms. On my right arm, each tally represented a consumed beer. On my left arm, each mark represented a consumed shot.

By nine I was belching, staggering, groping others, groping myself, and urinating in the yard.

By ten-thirty my memories plummeted into the abyss of oral diarrhea, liquid legs, and draining a cocktail down my throat constituting chew spits and cigarette butts. I thought it was a beer.

By ten thirty-two my hippocampus ceased functioning. I blacked out.

The next morning my brain became cognizant of life when I sat up and smashed my head into the bunk-bed above me.

The host's car had a shattered window from some delinquent guests.

When I saw my brother, I verbally assaulted him for not coming to my birthday party.

His response: "I held you up for an hour. You stood because of me."

December 23rd 11:10am - Glass in my Foot. Again.

At thirteen, I tore down the stairs pretending I was Batwoman. As I rounded the corner my foot collided with a glass cup. I had glass in my foot for five minutes.

At seventeen, my mom hollered that dinner was ready. I exploded from my stationary position in my bedroom staring at the wall. My foot mutilated a sheet glass picture covering. The ER surgeon sutured the slash shut, suppressing the blood parachuting out of my foot. I had an inch of glass in my toe for two months. I like to think that I don't have King Kong hands, but the glass extended the distance between my pointer finger joint and the finger tip.

At twenty-three, after five months in the land of the holy cow, I muddled down my friend's San Francisco apartment hallway to the bathroom. Russian Vodka barraged my bladder.

My friend Fi-Town had returned from Russia with a three liter bottle of Vodka. The bottle was the size of a giant panda. It required a pump to dispense the spirits. My body ricocheted off the hallway walls as I shuffled faster. I didn't want Noah's Arc urine flood gushing from my vagina, a discharge wake illuminating on the wooden floor.

I strode, my footsteps resounding off the ceiling. My right foot thundered into the floor. A piece of glass clashed into the bottom of my foot.

"Not agaiiiinnnnn," I wounded-walrus-bellowed.

I extracted the glass shard with my fingers.

It has been two weeks. I don't have health insurance. The free clinic is as functional as a down syndrome child at a spelling bee. Every time I walk, the glass in my foot taunts me.

December 22nd 2am - Navy: Out. Au Pair: In

I'm as gifted at talking my way out of situations as Angelina Jolie is at acquiring children.

My college English major required three semesters of a foreign language. I have the foreign language capabilities of a fruit fly. In my third week of Spanish I traipsed past the disabilities office. I got an idea. I walked into the office.

"Hello. How may I help you?" the receptionist asked.

"I have a foreign language disability and desperately need to talk to someone about it."

I administered my champion wretched look. I have since been informed that my champion wretched look resembles that of a two-year-old taking a poop shooter.

Leftover Queen looked at me like I had asked her what gym she belonged to.

Two weeks later, after affirming that I lost sleep over the class, didn't comprehend anything, cheated on quizzes and tests, and was suffering emotionally and physically from a condition I invented, the University of San Francisco waived my foreign language requirement. I love private schools.

When I embarked on compiling quotes for an unwritten twenty-page Shakespeare final essay due in two days, a friend called and informed me I was going to Reno with two of our friends. After internally protesting for one point two seconds, I agreed. I went to Reno. I brought my laptop with the intention of writing the essay. The first night, I exploited it's jukebox aptitude. We got plotzed off Jager and rum. My laptop's second occupation for the night was as a shield in a pillow-fight. The screen ruptured. I turned in the final paper, worth twenty percent of my grade, eight days late. My great-grandfather died, I was emotionally and physically encumbered from a situation I invented, and received an A in the class. I love private schools.

In June I signed up for the Navy. In July I "depped" in. As a DEP (Delayed Enlistment Program), they tested my eyesight (right eye: 20/400, left eye: 20/FC - I couldn't read the one large letter at the top of the chart), asked me questions like do I have any scars, withdrew blood after missing the vein three times, had me sign contracts, and get sworn in by an all-mighty uniform man.

In December I established that being caged in a five-year military contract was as appealing to me as eating a baby. My great-aunt was dying from the swine flu, my family needed me, and I was grieved mentally and physically from circumstances I invented. The US Navy dropped me from the program.

Instead, I'm going to be an au pair in New Zealand for five young terrors aged nine weeks to nine years.

December 19th 2:30pm - December 2009 Quote of the Month

BG: "Hey you guys, I will no longer be saying racist jokes. Racism is a crime and crime is for black people."

December 16th 8:45am - December 2009 Photo of the Month

Location: Santa Rosa mall, California

Apparently people on the roof is enough of a problem that they needed to erect a ten-door-wide sign?

December 15th 8:00pm - Ya, I Did It

I returned to California without telling anyone. The resulting hysteria was comparable to the time my friend's mom unearthed a black dildo while helping her unpack for university. It was called the Cock Locker Monster Dildo and flaunted twelve inches of black fake penis glory.

When I surprised them one of my friends almost fell down. Two cried. All screeched, shrieked and shouted. My mom had a conniption in a peacocky hotel in downtown San Francisco. Security discreetly arrived and then ebbed behind oversized sculptures and paintings when they realized nobody's fingernails were being torn off.

One of the first stories my friends told me involved an airport, a jersey, an old woman, and assault.

A male named Whiskey maintained his ardor and devotion for Michael Vick regardless of the eighteen months he spent in prison for an illegal dog fighting ring transpiring on his Virginia property. Whiskey sustained his support for the football quarterback based on his "athletic achievements." Like a douche bag, Whiskey sported a Michael Vick jersey at LAX, LA's airport, soon after Vick had served his felony charges, was released, and resigned with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Whiskey stood in line, the name Vick mounting the top back of his red jersey. Whiskey's mind was as blank as a whore's sexual slate when she's decided she's a born-again virgin. And then he heard a spitting sound behind him.

"What the..." he ejaculated, turning around to look behind him.

Mildred, an eighty-year-old woman, looked up at him with the rebelliousness of a preacher's daughter who drinks, smokes, and has sex.

"Ya, I did it," she replied, her white hair staggering.

Whiskey punched her in the face.

Both Whiskey and Mildred were detained at the airport, but ultimately released. Punching someone in the face is assault, but so is spitting on someone.

December 12th 11:15am - India Insights

India is as predictable as a bipolar schizophrenics disposition. In Rajasthan's Pushkar, I couldn't walk onto a ghat because I was "too sexy." I hadn't showered in four days, hadn't worn make-up in seven, and was attired in shapeless clothes more befitting a bum than a middle-class traveler. But my shoulder's weren't covered.

I have had my breasts grasped by Indian men while walking, sleeping in an overnight bus, and seated by the window inside a moving train. In Hampi, when a male friend and I rode bicycles, a throng of twelve-year-olds abandoned their cricket game to accost us. He rode ahead as they high-fived him and shouted their love for him. One lifted my dress while another seized my breasts. I have had bug bites larger than my boobs. However, I am white, and white women are whores.

In ninety-nine percent of India, women and men do not demonstrate signs of affection. Men commonly hold hands while walking on the streets and beaches, and while seated in trains, buses, or restaurants. During movies, walking, conversing, or smoking, men caress and cuddle each other. On motorbikes and scooters, women sit sidesaddle and clutch the bike. Straddling a man or gripping his waist would denote slut.

In Goa, I purchased a silver anklet. An Indian man informed me two months later that wearing one anklet denotes prostitution. All Indian women wear an anklet on each ankle.

On trains, chai and coffee sellers will awaken you. It is not unusual for the vendors to rape your eardrums at four in the morning with foghorn cries of, "chaaaiiiii, chaaaiiiiiiii, chaaiii," "cooffeeee, cooffeeee, chaaiiii, chaaiiii." Train peddlers sell everything from newspapers, food and drinks, to fake gold watches, CD's, children's stickers, batteries, and gluttonies of items you couldn't invent uses for even if you were Santa Claus.

Price is always negotiable. Accommodation, material purchases, and even food can be bargained. What starts at twelve hundred rupees can often be bought for five hundred.

On buses, trains, or waiting for public transport, Indians do not read books. It is as common to see someone reading a newspaper as it is for a bear to trundle around hugging humans. A white woman reading a book does not indicate said woman being busy or engaged. Indian men will attempt to absorb you in conversation regardless.

Cows are everywhere - with a few minor exceptions. Cows triumph the road hierarchy. Then come trucks, cars, auto rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, man-powered rickshaws and carts, and, last, pedestrians. Oftentimes, as a traveler, when walking or bicycling, you need transportation as much as a fire hydrant requires a dog. Walking on Goan beaches, you will be asked ten thousand times if you need a rickshaw or taxi. If you're in a city and a rickshaw driver has seen you wave on the previous fifteen rickshaws, he will still stop and ask if you need a ride. If you answer no, the Indian head wobble surfaces.

The bobble-head appears in answer to every question. If you ask a restaurant if they sell beer, you'll get a head wobble. When inquiring if the transit halts at your destination: bobble-head. Result of asking a street vendor if they sell talking white tigers: head wobble. The head bob translates as yes, no, maybe, alright, greetings, and every other humanely possible use. The head wobble is as cryptic as my bra size.

However, everything is possible in India. Thus, there is potential for whatever you're attempting to accomplish.

Especially in the south, cows and squalid dogs are as common as bicycles. Arambol boasts a pig dog. Literally, a pig bred with a dog. Watch out for rabies. Additionally, cows adorn Goa's beaches. It is almost inevitable that you, someone you're with, or someone you meet will traipse through the sand and step in cow shit.

December 7th 10:45am - No Officer, I Don't Have Any Weed

In Manali, India, travelers wade through marijuana to access their guesthouses. Manali locals pick leaves for you with specific detailed step-by-step drying instructions: they thrust it at you in handfuls and motion towards the sun. In Goa, India, weed is illegal.

After traveling for five months, I returned to Goa, my final destination before a three-day train ride to Delhi, a five hour hiatus, a six hour flight to Hong Kong, a twelve hour layover, and a fifteen hour flight to San Francisco.

Throughout India I traveled with people who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, drug abusers from the British circus, and those who were more concerned with public displays of affection then they were with public ganja devotionals.

A Swede, German, and I settled in the sand at Arambol beach accompanied by brew nectar as the easy December heat traced our faces. When we sprawled in the sand and sipped our beers I felt like Superwoman. The waves licked the shore. A dog yipped in the separation of tangible and ostensible. The Swede prepared a chillum, an oblong cannabis smoking device. When two men shrouded in shadows approached, I didn't notice them until they were two steps away. They were policemen. I felt like a four-hundred-pound Superwoman with diabetes of the eye.

"Cops!" I whispered as emphatically as possible without sounding like a lunatic.

The Swede garnered his eight grams of hash together with the speed of a twelve-year-old's feet at a Dance Dance Revolution contest and slung the pouch overhand into the nearby bushes as the cops slithered up.

"Arrest him, arrest him," a fossil of a man wheezed.

The other officer elevated the empty chillum and snatched our backpacks from the sand. I prostrated myself, sipped beer, and regarded the new addition as I perceive a soup can's lid when it persists in falling in every time I open it.

"He was smoking. Arrest him!" Fossil hissed before a whooping cough convulsion struck his throat and his body rippled.

Other Officer wrenched Swede's hands behind his back. An antique gun daggered in our direction. At this point I converted to the slightly concerned.

"He threw the hash bag into the bushes. Arrest him!" Fossil ordered, slanting his pointer finger in the Swede's face and his flashlight into the bushes. Stories of tourists imprisoned or blackmailed into paying thousands of dollars raped my brain, and my heartbeat increased to a speed that I imagine can only be achieved by a coke and coffee cocktail.

"I don't have any weed, I was just using the chillum for tobacco," the Swede said soothingly. The German was mute. Hallucinations of the three of us shipwrecked in a jail cell addled my cerebrum.

"You have weed. Arrest him," Fossil repeated.

"I don't have any weed on me, I didn't smoke any, you can't arrest me," Swede asserted, monk-calm.

The policemen searched the bushes with a flashlight for ten minutes. The Swede and I made eye contact. My savage eye vibrated with visions of starvation and deterioration into skeletons. I gave him the run-like-hell-escape-side-glance. Swede blinked tranquility.

Fossil and Other Cop returned without the incriminating weed. They apologized and retreated into the shadows.

Swede said that was his fourth encounter with police officers.

"Just get rid of the weed and they can't do anything," he said.

This seemed as logical as consuming warm beer, but I accepted it. Just like I accept the fact that I will never have a penis and the ability to urinate standing up.

December 5th 5:05pm- Trance Party and Illegal Substances

The Flintstones should live in Hampi. Indian jungle interspersed by lakes and rivers mirroring the jungle's barbarian jade vegetation straddle colossal rock formations and archaic ruins. I continually expected a stream of tyrannosaurus rexes and brontosaurus' to ramble out of the emerald brush and eat me. I subconsciously carried a stick with me for protection. Protection against nonexistent Jurassic beasts.

One night a Dane, German, Swiss and I staged a dance party in the Dane's room at Laughing Buddha Guesthouse. After three minutes our twenty-something unaccustomed dance muscles atrophied in paroxysms of resistance. Sweat spiraled down our faces while wheezes and chokes strangled us. A South African female named Tits McGee entered our room demanding to know what we were doing. We looked like we had just completed a hopscotch marathon. We told her we'd danced for three minutes. We joined her drum circle and joints.

Hampi's nightlife is as sensational as Saturday night in a Mormon priest's house. After experiencing bars closing at midnight for four nights, Tits McGee and I resolved to take action. We decreed to throw a trance party.

Five days later the Dane, German and Swiss had left. I hung out with Tits McGee and a professional hula hooper. Hula Hoop and I were born in the same hospital in Long Beach, California. We went to the same college, lived in the same area in San Francisco, and our parents possessed the same occupation. We were basically the same person. Except that she had an awesome skill like hula hooping. I can't hula hoop, sing, juggle, do card tricks, or the splits. My eyes are as competent as Helen Keller's. I am extraordinarily gifted at getting lost though.

Our trance party venue was Whispering Rocks Guesthouse, a twelve-hut guesthouse as remote as the North Pole. A sprawling open-air restaurant sat thirty people, and a clearing large enough to accommodate a sumo wrestling convention swaggered with speakers procured by Whispering Rocks' manager. Tits McGee discovered two Israeli DJs.

Because the party was a billion football fields from the guesthouses, I tried to motivate people. I told them there would be a drunk tiger. Tits McGee seduced people to come with her chest cushions.

By ten at night, twenty people had arrived, three of whom were Tits McGee, Hula Hoop, and me. The highlight of the ten o'clock hour was when I saw a thirty-something Scottish male wearing a shirt that read, "Dog and wife missing. Reward for dog." By eleven, Whispering Rocks had seventy travelers. Of the seventy, three danced. Four if Hula Hoop hula hooping comprises dancing. By midnight, the numbers had dwindled to twenty. An Israeli who relocated to India to be a drug dealer supplied the masses with elephant tranquilizers.

The last Jeep returning to the guesthouses transported three Aussies, six Brits, and a South African at four in the morning. Two of the Brits and one Aussie prostrated themselves on the Jeep's roof. One of the Aussies fell off and landed in a thorn bush.

At five o'clock, Whispering Rocks' manager performed a marriage ceremony between a giggling Tits McGee and an Indian employee of his. Tits McGee, Hula Hoop and I ordered Husband to get us things, like beer, rum, and a drunk tiger. He never complied. We laughed passionately at everything. Our stomach muscles throbbed when a bird flew by. When someone inquired why we were laughing, grins commanded giggles and giggles bred hysterics. We dissolved into mirth when one of the employees said the moon had turned into the sun. Conversation topics as depressing as an AA meeting kindled frenzied chortles. We resorted to systematically shouting, "Why???" amid a stream of crippling convulsions.

By seven in the morning, Tits McGee, Hula Hoop and I craved our Laughing Buddha Guesthouse hammocks. When Whispering Rocks' manager offered to get us a taxi, and three minutes passed without arrival, we deduced walking was a good idea.

Five minutes later, having staggered one hundred feet down the road, howling "Why???" and hee-hawing in merriment, we resolved to accost the next vehicle for a ride. Tits McGee stated that she'd resort to flashing.

We did flag the next vehicle. Thirty-five minutes later. What we didn't comprehend was that the truck was driving in the opposite direction of our destination. Four minutes after we boarded, we drove by Whispering Rocks. We fractured into laughter as we retraced the bushes we had just trudged by and the dirt we had slogged through. "Why??? Why God why?" I wailed, arms in air, head back and retarded by chuckles.

"Where are we going? And whhhyyyy?" Hula Hoop replied, stumbling on words and peals of hilarity.

An hour and a half later, after looping through jungle, rocks, and ruins, Savior delivered us to Laughing Buddha's doorstep petitioning one hundred rupees for the ride.

"I'll pay you, but only because you're magical," Hula Hoop announced. We dissipated into delirium.