YeeHaw

I'm a cowgirl! I'm a cowgirl with boots I bought at a mall in Ohio and silver earrings from Coldwater Creek! I am therefore qualified to run my very own roundup! Come along, small puppies.

-Last week, two of you were kind enough to hit the Amazon Honor System box at the top of the page in an anonymous fashion, so I can't thank you by name, but rest assured burnt offerings are regularly sacrificed on your behalf here at the Blonde Bachelorette Pad. Thank you. Your much-appreciated donations help with all the lawsuits.

-Quoth Ophelia: "Never mind then."

More doggies to come as the Notre Dame-B**chigan game progresses. The more we suck, the more I'll write, so hopefully this post will remain the same length through January.

THE AFOREMENTIONED "MORE"

ND 17, B**chigan 10

You know what was fun about this game? Watching Notre Dame commit eighteen thousand penalties in a row. That was the best.

-Telemetry data from Discovery's descent shows that shuttle commander Eileen Collins periodically turned over control of the spacecraft to pilot Jim Kelly. I think it was very nice of her to let the boy drive.

-Pretentiousness Update: Last month I topped drinking wine while watching Sideways and drank wine while in a wine bar. It could have been worse, as the widely-advertised "live jazz entertainment" consisted of a white guy kareoking with his sax along with the background tracks of "I Just Called To Say I Love You" and other Tesh-related selections, but still... a wine bar.

As always, however, I managed to undercut myself, because by the time .00000001% of my glass was gone, I was deemed non-sober.

"How can you tell?" I yelled.

"You become more wordy when you drink," said Flipper.

"Although it's not necessarily words that make sense," said G-Force.

I told them they were stupid, and then the waiter came and said, "How are you all doing?"

I said, "I am extremely happy with my life right now. How are you?"

Then they took my keys away. Also my wine.

-Newly-noticed Inappropriate Quote from Tony the Suspiciously Well-Oiled: "You see the way Paul's lifting his butt off the floor here? A little bonus move, nice. Really nice."

-From the Department of Somebody Actually Crafted This Sentence, Then Went To a Bumper Sticker Dealer, Who Clearly Thought A Bumper Sticker Printed With This Sentence Was a Salable Item, Then Printed It, Then Sold It To Stores Who Also Clearly Thought This Was a Salable Item, and Then Somebody Actually Paid American Money For It, and Then Actually Put It On an Actual Car Bumper, Doubtless Over the Objections Of Every Person They Have Ever Known, and Then Went Out And Actually Drove This Car In Public, and I Want Off the Earth Now Because It Just Doesn't Make Sense Anymore: "It's hard to be humble when you own a chihuahua."

-You know those books? Those truly awful, horrible books I got for free and left in stacks around my office because the typefaces scared me and I couldn't sleep with them in my apartment? So when a frayed-looking man showed up at my door with a wheelie bag and a business card telling me that he wanted to talk about textbooks, I eagerly showed him in and offered him his choice of Kits.

"How are you fixed for books this semester?" he said.

"I can't find one for a basic writing class. What do you have?"

He stared at me.

"I mean, does anybody actually print anthologies not involving Phil Collins lyrics?"

"Perhaps I wasn't very clear," he said uncomfortably, declining my second offer of a Kit. (Banana! I should have known! The man was turning down free Kits!) "I'm a... a b--"

I leaned forward. A b--? Barista? Backpack fetishist? Big fat washer-dryer?

"...a buyer."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. He wanted to buy my horrible free textbooks. Why? Did he collect "NOT FOR RESALE" covers?

But then he saw a few of them on my desk, and he said, "Oh, never mind, I can't use those. There's no market."

"There isn't?"

"Oh, no, Professor. Those books suck."

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Irish! at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Spin

What I love about this nation is that can’t even have a hurricane without fighting about it. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that this patently sucks.

Ophelia is looking a lot like one of last year’s hurricanes. (Frances?... Jeanne?... Yakov...? You know. That one hurricane. With all the wind.) She’s spinning on the axis of her own buttcheeks eighty miles off the coast, creating a great deal of small flying droplets here in The Swamp, Northeastern Sector. I saw the same cloud eighty-seven times today.

The really good news is that all the recent hurricane fun stands to delay the next shuttle launch even further, as the external tanks NASA needed to study are located at the Michoud Assembly Facility, which is in... southern Louisiana. There are rumors flying that the flooding is such that they can't even get to the site to see if the tanks are still there. (Which, come to think of it, would solve a lot of problems in a very efficient fashion.) I don't know what kind of anti-mojo is swirling around America's space program right now, but suffice to say that at this rate I would not be surprised to wake up one morning to find that a gigantic Acme anvil had dropped from the sky over the Kennedy Space Center, squashing the Vehicle Assembly Building like a pie crust.

Four of the five most recent computer models send Ms. Ophelia looping directly back at the Blonde Bachelorette Pad. The fifth predicts a path to: New Orleans.

I’ve previously discussed the hurricane phenomenon of “Screw You, As Opposed to Me”, and under circumstances such as these you almost hate to invoke the principle.

Almost. I bought a box of diapers to donate to an Air Force supply drive for Katrina victims, and let us just say that the best way to fit in at a Wal-Mart is to hunch around the baby food aisle in a bad mood and no wedding ring.

On the other hand, the Ophelia situation has afforded me an excellent opportunity to ascertain the effect of dropping air pressure on college students. I’ve pretty much determined that they continue to be bored at exactly the same rate. They’re just damper.

I can’t say that I've been completely unaffacted, as prior to yesterday’s morning class I committed an Act of Professorial Blondeness so egregious—we shan’t discuss the details here; perhaps it’ll come out during the Oprah interview—that it shook me for the rest of the day. And college students, they’re like horses or any other destructive mammal. They smell fear. My afternoon class was a study in wall-bouncing. I mean, I enjoy a rambunctious discussion, but let’s not fling objects in the general direction of the professor’s ovaries, shall we? It got to the point where I had to bust out my Teacher Voice™ and attempt to restore order with a very firm “You guys. Seriously.”

So throughout the past twenty-four hours I have pretty much been the worst teacher you can possibly be without actually molesting somebody. I’m totally writing to the alumni magazine about this.

Best Reader Hurricane Quote so far goes to Susan the Reader, who wrote: “Let's hope Ophelia will commit suicide” at: mb@blondechampagne.com

The Mushroom Who Buys the Drinks

Few things are amusing in this dark time, when we must pull together as a nation and concern ourselves with my fingernail fungus.

It is a curious situation. I've never had any type of fungus anywhere around me, unless you count the ex-boyfriend who was overfond of conveneintly forgetting to cash paychecks. But two weeks ago I noticed a greenish blob under the thumbnail of my right hand, and so as with all life problems, including career issues, teaching philosophy questions, and whether or not Jack Palance is dead, I turned to Friendboy Andy. It was his birthday, so he was allowed to have a nice long look at the nail over dinner. You are welcome, Friendboy Andy.

"That's a fungus," he said, and informed me that his mother had the same problems with her toenails until she got them all removed. Awesome.

Well-- where did it come from? And what should I do with it? All the over-the-counter stuff advertised itself as a cure for athlete's foot, which... ew. Maybe I picked it up from one of my students. I teach mainly boys, so this isn't beyond imagining. College-age males live in fungus. They would sleep under logs if there were a Playstation hookup.

What I need now is a whole bunch of humidity and moisture, so it's excellent that we now have this bearing down upon us. Why does everything have to happen to me?

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers at: mb@blondechampagne.com