You know what the hardest part of rollerblading is?

...

Telling your parents you're gay.

* I heard that on the radio this morning and have been laughing about it under my breath all day. I love you, KQ morning show.

NO-SHOWS HURT EVERYONE.

Minneapolis Craigslist ad: Lamps, $5.

I. I just can't say anything else. Part of me wants to, but a bigger part of me can't.

Out of all of you, I imagine X laughing the hardest.

This is mostly for Chad:

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St. Louis, I almost forgot about you.

This is why I call it the "Arch nemesis."

In other news, no news, really.

David and I went to Wisconsin Dells this weekend. He broke the rules on one of the waterslides and got yelled at, while I put on enough sunscreen not to burn.

He almost drown me in the wave pool, but I obviously made it. I touched strangers in swimsuits while traveling at high speeds. It was wonderful. We took exactly one picture.

The weekend was almost too good. So good that no other weekend this summer, I know, could be as fun. Except for maybe this weekend in Mankato, where I officially close the door to the Highland bedroom for the last time and buy Christina lunch because she's getting me my security deposit back.

Otherwise, I wish I had time to write, write, write. It's hard to get home from work and not sleep. My schedule is work; nap; eat; walk around a Minnesota lake with David. Last week Calhoun, this week, Harriet. We run or walk. We get ice cream. He drops his on the ground and I laugh, and my face and fingers get full of chocolate like a five year old. We say look at the puppy! to every dog that walks by. David asks me if I think every shirtless man who passes me is cute, and I mostly say yes. It's always humid and it's always relaxing. I love this state in the summer and fall, and in the winter, as always, I will change my mind after Christmas.

The Intrepid has been disrespectful and gotten two parking tickets in the last three weeks. I don't know who that car thinks it is. David tells me to throw the tickets in the garbage. That's because one of them is his fault and I am going to make him pay it. ... I mean, it's the Intrepid's fault.

In spite of the stress of looking for an apartment, this summer is getting better by the week.

I don't know where I'll be in about a month, but I know that next week I'll be swimming in free poetry and nonfiction books from Graywolf. I can't wait.

Get back to work, slack-zilla!

I will in a minute. But first, I have to say this:

The lady who sells me these every third morning of the week:

(Caribou Nothern Lite Cooler, Chocolate, 210 calories; a.k.a. vice; a.k.a. I know I've written many blogs discussing how Caribou is run by a bunch of terrorists, and I stand by that, but terrorists apparently know how to make delicious coffee/ice cream/slushie drinks)

is named this:

GLORIA HOLE.

Oh, that's right friends. I'm not kidding. Gloria Hole. Glory hole. Somebody whose last name was Hole had a child, and they thought, you know what a good first name would be? Gloria.

It's like that Simpsons episode when they're naming Bart--Homer won't let Marge name him Larry, because the kids will call him Scary Larry. And then she suggests Bart and he says, let's see: Cart, Dart, E-art. Nothing wrong with Bart!

And, as one would expect, Glory Hole is one of the most annoying people I have ever met in my life. But I want to steal her nametag.

Excuse me, but whatever happened to these:

Because they're gone, right? Do they make Tato Skins anymore? I'm pretty sure they don't, because I went ahead and forgot about them, and I wouldn't have gone ahead and done that if I randomly saw the yellow bags beckoning me from the Cub or Kwik Trip aisles.

I love Tato Skins. Or do I have to say I loved them? Especially the cheddar and bacon. Especially the sour cream and chive. Where are you, Tato Skins? Am I going to have to write a letter to bring you back? Because you better believe I will. You better fucking believe it.

If someone were to have a chip (and single candle) party:

[FILE PHOTO]

You would always be the first chip that was gone. Those Old Home tortilla chips that someone brought without salsa, those Doritos from last Halloween--they don't compare. You, Tato Skins, would be devoured in seconds. Someone, I won't say who, might even steal a bag of you off a table and go eat you in the bathroom so I didn't have to share. So, um, she wouldn't have to share.

You are a good, good chip.

Inappropriate Elvis.

Um. So, I should admit something before I write this post, and it's this: I don't know what the phrase "Kissing Cousins" means. I used to see it on Wheel of Fortune, and I was like what the hell is that. Gross.

***
At work I have the luxury of listening to music while I work, so I've taken advantage of Pandora and created myself a radio station. The artists I've selected are The Supremes, Ricky Nelson, Elvis, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Willie Nelson. Pandora's job is to find songs by these artists or by other artists that are similar to these artists. Pretty simple, right? Right.

And I thought that I knew all of Elvis' songs, which is generally wrong, because I don't know a lot of the Gospel stuff. But I do know a lot. Just a few minutes ago, a song came "Kissin' Cousins" came on. Now, I'm actually doing work today--well, I mean, not right now, but in general--so I was half listening to the song. What stopped me was one of the opening phrases, sung in the hunka hunka tone of the king himself:

She's my distant cousin, but she's not too distant to me.

Um, what?

I know that things in the late 50s were different than they are now. I know that, as X once explained to me, that love songs are ridiculous. For example, in "Marie's the Name (Of His Latest Flame)", said Marie is in love with the narrator, i.e. Elvis, but then the next night is actually in love with another man. She is in his arms one night, another's arms another night. She was "in his arms eternally and her love she swore to me" ... or something. So she's either a ho fo sho, or entire relationships in songs are scaled down to fit into three minutes. When in actuality, Elvis, sir, a true relationship involves hours and hours and hours of investment, time, love and commitment.

My point is that I know songs from the era are different (well, maybe not that different, but I realize this is a song for Chrissakes not a novel or "real life"), but I still find a sexually suggestive song about one's cousin entirely and grossly inappropriate. And I mean, I love Elvis. If Elvis was my cousin I'd probably... Well. Let's not go there. He's dead anyway, and that just opens too many -ophiliac doors.

Anyway, this is still gross:

We're kissin' cousins that's what I believe, we're all children of Adam and Eve.

You can't make this shit up.

Drugs aren't going to just take themselves!

I’m writing a criminal defense page. What do you even say about that? Well, you obviously did it. Or, I understand. I mean, your car isn’t going to drive itself home after you’ve been drinking all night.

I know I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, and it’s not out of hatred for the blog or disrespect for the blog, and it’s not even because I don’t feel like writing, because I like to write about useless things for everyone to look at, and it’s not because nothing happened, because things have happened. It’s just because.

Chad and Liz visited from Mankato for the fourth, and we went to the beach, and we went to see Transformers, and we went to see fireworks by the smelly river. At the beach, Chad burned awkwardly and a little boy named Lee got lost and all of the adults had to form a human chain and walk toward the center of the manmade lake to possibly run into his drowned yellow-trunk-suited carcass. Liz, Chad, and I sat on the shore and built sandcastles. Well, Liz built a sand stone hedge, Chad built a “wizard castle,” and I built a sand conservatory complete with telescope to see if any meteors were about to come and destroy the stones/wizard castle. Oh, and we had a guest house, too.

Then I decided to cover myself in mud and run around for awhile and again question why, exactly, it is that I don’t have a boyfriend. And some young child’s frog toy washed ashore by our castle and we all screamed and said The frog is attacking! Get your defense forces ready! Ahhhh! And the boy’s father heard us and started laughing at us. And then he started yelling at the boy to go get his damn frog—1, 2, 3… and the boy was too scared to come by us. So I threw the frog toward the boy in the water. I was a little upset that my conservatory hadn’t seen the frog coming in, but then I remembered that it was a regular attack frog and not a space attack frog.

After beach time was Gap time, then movie time. Chad creamed himself during Transformers, I was mostly scared because those robot aliens are huge and their voices are low and they kill anything they want to. All hail Megatron. I’ve decided that I want my car to be a transformer, but instead of turning into a robot that fights for my personal safety, all my car turns into is a shittier version of itself that has no concern whatsoever about my well-being. I bet insurance rates for Transformer cars are ridiculous anyway. I suppose you could just get liability.

Fireworks were, uh, American. Actually, what I love about the fourth of July is just the sense of Americana that surrounds it. Just like all of those summertime movies—kids running around, swimming, then sitting by a fire, then watching the fireworks and wondering where they’ll be at the next fourth of July, when they’re not stupid kids anymore. We were at St. Anthony. One man hollered, ah—there’s the willow! When the weeping willow firework was (finally) launched. I, then, announced every other weeping willow and asked the band to crank up the fucking Sousa. That’s what you do on the fourth.