Yetis and Their Ways.

Soooo, here you are at some pivotal crossroads that you never intended to be a stopping point on your journey to begin with. There were supposed to be trials and tribulations, that was never debated. There were going to be ups and downs...but, what from a distance looked like a small hill in reality was a hulking mountain complete with man eating animals and yetis. Not those nice, fuzzy, "Harry and the Henderson's" yetis either. Big, gnarly, tooth-gnashing, save-the-women-and-children -esque yetis.

As a child, it's so easy. "I'm going to grow up and be a _________". Choose your poison. Dreams are there to propel us through the pain, and grotesque disfiguration of adolecsence. It serves as a figuritive touchstone. Something to rely on when proms come and go. Something to cling to when the "cool kids" peer through you without so much as a second look. "Oh yeah! Well, wait until I become a _________!" Dreams of world domination. Landing at the reunion in a sleek Jet Ranger, clad head to toe in Versace...miniature dog in a Coach bag...you know. Retribution.

Suddenly there you are. 30. Life didn't go quite like you thought, now did it? Failed relationships. Utter frustration that the dream that once carried you through life on a cloud has turned on you only top become your biggest heartache. Wishing that you could punch the rewind on the Big Giant Remote of Life. The high-pitch creak of the door of opportunity swiflty slamming shut...

...or is it...

Maybe this time, this age, and these lessons have all served to take us to a different place. A different station. Sure the dreams have changed, but did they really fail us? If they managed to envelope us in a haze of hope at times when we desperatly needed them, have the really let us down in the end? Maybe the real purpose of the dream is to provide us a stepping stone to other places in life. Maybe they don't all pan out the way we hope, but the lead us to other "sub-dreams" that themselves become goals, and direction.

I am thirty one. I never became a rock star. I never became a doctor, or a lawyer....but...I am going back to college. I am playing music in a great, dank, dimly lit blues bar with amazing musicians. I am writing hours a day. I am changing my life, as my dreams change with it.

Life is never the way you think it's going to be at 18. The road is never well lit, and the hike is never 100% without ills. The things that lead us along, our dreams, never leave us. They just morph into other dreams more suited for the path that we have to take in order to make it through life. Life is never without its yetis. Luck for us, even a yeti can have a sense of humor.

The Over Use and Abuse of Smilies act of 1997.

Four score and nine years ago, our forefather, Bill Gates, brought unto this universe a powerful, and benevolent gift. The smilie. Since it's inception, the smilie has become the stringy sinew holding together the gritty mass that is the IM and email universe. When one, or two, or a chat room of 400 view this seemingly benign combinations of letters and numbers, dull conversation is instantly taken to a much more real, and emotional realm. Take for instance the use of the term "blow me". In it's regular form, it can breed many things. Arousal, hope, anger...but follow it with the timeless combination of the colon (:) with the "D", and let the laugh riot ensue. Alas, smilies are not without their own set of rules and regulations. A smilie, or "emoticon" to the more net savvy, can be an effective tool when used sparingly, and in the correct context. Overuse and abuse of the smilies makes for uncertainty, over stimulation, and mis-communication. Thus, we are enacting the "Over Use and Abuse of Smilies Act". Please follow, and adhere to the following smilie guidelines. Remember, they have been established for your safety, and well being.

Section A.
Part I - Emotional Accuracy.
The smilie is to be used only in instances fitting for said emotion. To use the sad smilie " :( " when anything other than sad is a misrepresentation of ones emotions, and will not be tolerated. Emoticons are here for our benefit, and to use them in a false, or incorrect manner serves only in advancing the greater evils of society. One must hear, "I'm horny", and get the standard (o)(o) (titties). To use the angel ( O:) ) would be confusing, and inappropriate.
Part II - Multiple Varying Smilie Coagulation
Layering multiple smilies of varying different sentiments serves no purpose other than burying the true meaning of the initial, or intended smilie. Smilies should be used in moderation, and combinations should be kept to a minimum. How is one supposed to interpret the "smoking cigar blues brother" smilie when he is accompanied by his friend the "devil", and "the afro" smilie. This is an experiment in mass confusion chaos in the making and should be avoided.

Part III - Multiple Single Smilie Coagulation
The use of repeated smilies of the same configuration / emotion is approved only in instances where conveyance of chosen emotion is paramount to the outcome and intended meaning of the conversation. For example, "I got the job and I am sooooo happy!!! :) :) :) :) :) The use of smilie layering and multiple single smilie coagulation should be used only in extreme circumstances, and only under the supervision of a smilie professional.

Section B

Part I - Smilie to Conversation Ratio
An acceptable ratio of smilie to wording is as follows; one allotted smilie for every 20 words of text. This forces the distributer of said smilies to use both use the smilies sparingly, and really examine the emotion which they have chosen for the topic at hand. This eliminates any crossing of conversational signals, and keeps conversation in an adult and progressive manner.

Part II - Use of Other Pictures and Suggestive Material.
Sex and profanity have no place in the smilie world. Granted, the spooging phallus may be worthy of a chuckle ( ====D~ ), and everyone thinks a bung hole is hilarious ( () ), but smilies are a pure, and beautiful flower in the desert of trash that is the Internet. Leave this type of smilie right where it belongs. In your computers trash bin. :)

Remember, smilies are here for the enjoyment and good of everyone. Use them with a good heart, and a clean mind, and the opportunity to touch lives is limitless. Take these rules with you and abide by them with a happy heart, and a clean conscience. Let smilies make your world a better place. :)

My mark on society.

When I was born unto this earth, I knew there was something inside of me that was, well, special. I know it sounds trite. No one is ever born with the inclination to suck, as far as I know. I can't speak for all of the population of the earth, but about myself, I am 100% certain. I wanted to be an actress as a small girl...do what they did in the TV...Somewhere along the way I realized I was an above average singer....no, honestly, an amazingly kick ass singer...then that was the plan. Time came and went, and singing never quite brought me the world domination that I had imagined. I turned to writing. Maybe someone out there would want to hear my views on life, etc...Last night it happened. I altered the world for the rest of time... I created a verb. Creating a noun is nothing. People do it every day. New toy...new noun. New pasta dish...new noun. New president...new vocabulary...But a verb...a verb...now that is a one in a million occurrence. They don't just hand verbs out to anyone, you know? It's not just and Jo Blow off of the street that creates a verb, you know. I am officially awesome....and I have my afore mentioned "together" friend to thank for this life altering event. This particular friend (who shall remain nameless at his own request), is one of those really, really, amazingly intelligent, uber-techie, integrated-into-the-matrix, kind of guys. I am not a computer person by nature. I can do what I need to write, to surf, and to find groovy pimped out vans on eBay. Not much else. Hell, he had to tell the the key combo to cut and paste when my mouse wasn't working the other day. I'm just that dumb. My internet wasn't working and he launches into one of those, "Well, you need to do this...now enter this...now dance around in a circle in a counterclockwise direction and stop when you reach a right angle to the dangle..." and POOF, the shit works...he's that guy. He does alot of things, you know, entrepanuerial type stuff. Smart guy stuff. One of the jobs he has had in the past, and something he currently does as a side gig is to manipulate search engines. The way I understand it (and I will probably get a call correcting this assumption within 10 minutes of publishing this blog) in laymans terms...He takes a phrase, say "amazingly bad-ass singer" off the top of my head. He takes this phrase, and manipulates a search engine so that if you were to enter "amazingly bad-ass singer" into that engine "my" site will come up toward the top in the options (ie, rankings) of sites with that word combination. He also takes variations of that phrase and does the same thing. With the hyphen, without, etc. He has done this for many companies, and on many engines. It's very time consuming, and very expensive to have done. I also think it's kind of a cool way of manipulating information to work for you. It's also a business created by a business, which is the American way. Somehow, though, it seems that if this were a fair society, what came up under "amazingly bad-ass singer" would not only be A) Me, but B) whatever the engine found first. It's kind of a dirty trick, if you ask me. So, he seems to be doing this ALOT. He's always on the computer, trying to take over the world from the mainframe out, it seems. The mad wizard stirring the boiling cauldron that exists only inside his laptop. The other day I was talking to him on line, and he was remarking about how much work of this type he had to get done. Then, it came to me...my moment...my epiphany...my verb!!! "Oh, so, you've spent the whole day Screwoogling, huh?" I said. Screwoogle...screwoogling??? It was as though I had waited all my life for this one moment. My baby. My verb. Subsequently, as a result of the freaking-awesomeness of my existence, and the kindness of strangers...(only strange in a good way), there is now a domain name "www.screwoogle.com" that I have unlimited access to until 2008. (There's an experation sate on a verb???). It's just a matter of what I do with the site, and how I use my verb to take over the universe? Can you trademark a verb? Maybe the Google guys will hate it so much they will buy it from me for multi-millions of dollars, I can publish my album, and retire to an island. So, here is your opportunity to participate, folks. Any ideas for www.screwoogle.com, send them my way. We could use this as a place to dump cheesy porn, a place for a rocking message board, nothing but my music, or find a way to use this site to stick it to the man? I'm pulling for the last option...I'm all for a good man stickin' to. C'mon, help an "amazingly bad ass chick" out... I wonder how much I'd have to pay him for that?