If you don't have an iPhone this probably won't be funny. Actually, no one will think it's funny. don't read this.

The top button stopped working. 

The spring inside busted so to make it work I had to mash down on it like trying to pop a really strong stink bug as a child. This is the only experience I can relate it to. If you've never done this I apologize. Try pushing a clicky ball point pen back into itself from the writing side with your finger. It's like that. 

And just Saturday night the main button started jamming electronically without assistance. 

That's fun. 
If you don't have an iphone, this won't make sense,
 but if you do...

It's pretty fun because it goes straight to voice control and then assumes from whatever noise it hears that I want to FaceTime people I haven't talked to in years. During these flurries of "voice control" people turn to see why I'm too stupid to remember to silence my phone in quiet public spaces like church.
 I mash down uselessly on the busted top button to try and shut it off. But the main button thinks I'm pushing them both so my frantic mashing only results in numerous screen shots of what time it is. 
When it finally registers that I would like to power off, not avoid the arduous work of dialing by fingertip, I let go of the top button to slide the onscreen slider to "off", but the main button is engaged again cuz it's on full auto. 

So the red slider disappears. We go back to "voice control".
...

I frantically mash the stupid broken top button some more while trying to block the speaker port with my remaining fingers cuz it's going to keep beeping to let me know it's listening.

I finally succeed in getting the red "slide this to kill your phone" bar. 
With surprising dexterity, my free pinky ducks in from behind my pointer and ring fingers to slide the red bar of death and the phone goes silent. 

All around me are sincerely perturbed at my egotistical noise making.  But I sink back in my seat as pure relief washes over me. I've slain the dragon. 

stupid.

Turns out extended warranties aren't as useless as I supposed. 

Online dating: the true battlefield where hearts bleed and love and make matches in our tossup dog eat dog world these days

If you need to impress the woman you've met online, here's another wonderful example of how to address to impress:

 I seem to feel through the force that you are a woman of class and distinction who certainly can enjoy a good burrito. I happen to know how to make you a burrito because I used to work at Taco Bell before I got fired, and my neighbor is a mexican. If you like them hot, I don't know how to do that because I don't have that kind of mayonnaise. I hope you don't mind a man with cats because I have- well, its summer so they're breeding again. Not sure how many but there's a lot. Women who love animals love me. Especially if they love some good anime because my collections are bursting. Shoot, if I had a TV it would be amazing. We could watch them on it. I hope you like being treated right because that's the only way I know how to do things and I like to do back massages so don't worry your pretty head about that. I found a magazine article about it and practiced all the moves in it so you won't have anything to worry about. I'm pretty much at an expert to professional level right now. But don't worry, back rubs for my girlfriend are free. Yes that job title is available right now, in case you were wondering... 

Hope to hear from you soon cupcake.
Really soon actually because this isn't my computer. Its not even my house right now. I'm staying at my cousin's because the landlord said we had to evacuate due to a "roach exterminator" needing to come bomb the trailer under a fog tent. 
Yeah right. It's just his brother-in-law. They said we had an "infestation" because there were a few roaches in the cats' room. 
Anyway, be cool chick. Be cool. Stay real. And don't be teal. 
See ya on the flip. Babe. 
P.S. Make sure you include your favorite type of snack or chip dip because I want to surprise you with it on our first date. 

Online Dating: How to craft that first hello!

I have really horrendously bad BO and so the online dating scene is the only way I can lock somebody into an hour or two long date sitting in my car at the Sonic eating jalapeño cheese fries. If that goes well I usually flip on the late night AM talk show about secret government conspiracies, ghosts, and aliens. I haven't gotten any girls to want to yet, but if you play your cards right I'll even take you back to my place to watch a few hours of VHS tape I've got recorded of tv static with messages from another dimension. I spend a lot of time watching static for messages and I record them on VHS tape. That's why I have hours of VHS tape. Its like a journey through a snowy tunnel into another world. the voices are amazing. 

Also I hope you aren't allergic to cats because right now I'm not sure how many there are because its spring and they're breeding again. I just leave a window open for them to go in and out through. My mom thinks I should get new carpet because of all the urine stains but hey! Everything pees. except trees. But they're outside anyway so who would be able to tell?!

I hope you don't think I'm a hoarder because I'm not. My mom tries to convince me I am by sending me tv shows on dvd of people who "supposedly" hoard. Its such a hoax. They go in and try to say that because somebody stacked something up next to a door, its hoarding. But the people in those shows are totally normal! They don't even have a lot of stuff! Its pretty dumb to claim someone has a hoarding problem just because they don't use their front door anymore. That's where they store things! . Duh!

If I had more room, I'd use my back room for an exercise room. I've been thinking about getting a situp unit off the TV to get into shape. I called yesterday but they wanted a credit card number to charge it to and mine is already overdrawn. I thought they would just sign me up for payments later on but they wanted the $39.99 right now. So stupid. Who keeps that kind of money around?! Do you have any idea how much you could get at 7Eleven on that?! 

 I better go. one of my cats is making a lot of noise. I hope they aren't eating it. I came home from Kmart the other day and two of my cats had been eaten alive by the other ones. Its just how cats are sometimes. I guess they need more food. I usually borrow it from my neighbors but they're in town this week. 

K. Look forward to meeting you! Bye!

My mom's boyfriend Creddick, me, and my mom. mom usually smiles less but she was drunk when the police took these pictures. 

The trouble with peripheral vision or How to pick yer... nevermind. just read it.

A disclaimer for people who haven't been to one of these kinds of church meetings:
The LDS church is organized into your regular congregation of like 150 people called a ward. You meet with them on sunday. Its just what they call the group within that geographic boundary. About 7 to 10 wards all put together on a map form a bigger entity called a stake. And so there's a church meeting every year called stake conference where everybody you normally go to church with meets with everybody else from all the other wards in your stake for a big fat meeting. This is a 2 hour meeting. Because all the churches are the same size pretty much, they have to open the back of the chapel and put up folding metal chairs back in the basketball court area of the church cuz most of our meeting houses are designed this way. As a kid these meetings were the worst time of your life because we always got there late so we were in the back. The speaker at the stand seemed about a mile away and the time seemed to drag on forever causing your lower extremities to go numb on the hard metal chairs. There. I think that summarizes the experience to get everybody up to speed. 

Today was stake conference. I got there as the meeting began and counted myself lucky as I snatched up a last open seat on the back row of the chapel. It was actually the very first row of the far left corner of the overflow that stretched far back into that darkened no-man's-land of buttocks-numbing agony.  

I had one empty seat beside me and upon glancing at the girl next to that one figured there was no one outside waiting to claim these as "saved for them"

I asked and she confirmed it. She's kind of a strange soul. Not sure how I've met her before but I have. I found out after things really got rolling that the row behind us was occupied by a young family guarded mostly by doting grandparents. There would be no discipline in this meeting. The young children already knew. 

I didn't mind so much except that the little boy, perhaps 6, kept charging back and forth behind my chair. It had to be some form of relay between his mother at one end and Grandma behind me- a fine way to pass the time. The problem wasn't the rustling papers, the hurried footsteps, or maniacal laughter, but that the kid couldn't make it past my chair without running into it somehow. Each hard kick rocked me slightly. heavy kid. I was surprised none of these were followed by the sound of a gleeful smile smearing across the floor behind me. I can't say I didn't wait hopefully. I soon learned to phase out these tiny interruptions like the ticks of a second hand on an expensive timepiece. There was an almost calming rhythm to it all. 

But then the interruptions really started as my darned peripheral vision began to alert me of the tiny commotion two seats away. The girl had pulled up a bag and was digging through frantically. She pulled a women's wallet out and poured through its contents. I directed my eyes back at the meeting not wanting to intrude. Maybe she'd lost a sugar glider. Soon she'd finished every compartment and cranny of that bag. Sighing she set one of the bags on the empty seat between us. 

There was a hymnal there next to her so lest I mistakenly think she'd moved it towards me as a gift, she set the black purse next to me. My personal space shrank slightly. The other bag hit the deck as she jerked up a small backpack… the tiny kind. Zip zip zip! Went the zippers on the bags as the 6 year old special olympian kicked my seat in time to the beating of my heart. 

Soon, somehow, the family behind us were called to action. She'd turned to them and they were handing her something. Ah. A fat wad of kleenex. It was running mucus which had caused the frantic search through every bag she owned. How had she left that out? Well I settled back in hoping I could now focus my undying attention on the stand.

But once again, my peripheral vision was revealing sights I could not make sense of.

 The girl was not blowing her nose.

 Instead the wad of kleenex was in her hand and she seemed to be tying knots or petting it. I flicked my pupils over for a look. She was twisting the kleenex carefully over and over itself to create a small finger sized cone. My face did one of those truly original acrobatic moves. It amazed my own eyebrows. I riveted my attention to the front but the motion out of the side was just continuing as she twisted and rolled and rolled this small work of ingenuity that was surely destined to rival the tool-building culture of Jane Goodall's chimpanzees that do that thing with a blade of grass to get termites out of the mound. 

I wished for a second that my nose was bigger as I closed my right eye to see if I could block my vision without my hands, but no, I could still see the wad of tissues. And I felt stupid sitting with one eye closed wondering if the people on the stand would think I was going to sleep. 

I opened it in time to see the next action unfortunately. 

I'll describe what I saw through the blurry undefined fabric of my cursed peripheral vision. The white wad of tissues were raised to the pinkish area where her face was. With some effort it appeared the "device" lined up with the shaft. It took marvelous amounts of twisting evidenced by the raised elbows and ducking head to get it inserted far enough up there. And all without actually getting any of her fingers close to the holes. I suppose this was what she was trying to avoid. Someone must have commented on her last adventure up there in public. Hence the stealth. I tried to ignore now and calm my feeble stomach as the twisting and ducking continued. Once finished the same soulful effort was employed to remove it. I hoped only one nostril required attention. My prayers were denied. So I think if anyone from the stand had looked down, they'd have noticed a slight twitch and squinting on my part as if I'd found some distraction in the ceiling tiles to my left over the door of the chapel. I stayed that way as long as I thought might be necessary to thoroughly clean the other orifice. But I misjudged and brought my eyes back too early. The other "homemade finger" had just gotten free and now the beast was holding both in her left hand wondering how best to release them into the wild. At this point I tried to look as humble and undisturbed as everyone else in the meeting as she was glancing my way now, but not because she'd noticed any temptation to flee in my countenance but because her closest bag…

 was sitting there between us…

 closer to me…

with the top open...

And a tall bearded fellow shouted, "I come to you at the turn of the tide!"

A sweaty man in a badly fitting short sleeved white shirt rushed up the long aisle-way to the front of the cathedral. As he ran, huffing and puffing, The alter at the front became visible. The orange box gleamed in a dust-speckled single shaft of sunlight. Reaching the alter, the congregation gasped in suspense. He mopped his brow and re-pocketed the sopping wet handkerchief. Carefully, cautiously, and with all care and gentle dexterity he hovered his fingertips over the edges of the bright orange detergent box. An old man cleared his throat distracting everyone terribly. A moment's pause to refocus himself and with a whip of his wrists the box was turned exactly 179 degrees to reveal the bright letters spelling out "TIDE." 

The man turned slowly around as the magnitude of this magnificent feat donned on him and his bodily functions like pulse rate and breathing returned. A gentle applause crescendoed throughout the cathedral. Whistles and shouts soon joined in. 

The sweat-stained man began to raise his arms and a triumphant grin appeared on the pasty white face of his shiny white head gleaming in that dust speckled single shaft of daylight. 

Just at this greatest of all great moments of relief, triumph, and success, the terrible joke fate had waited to spring, suddenly sprung. 

The detergent box shuddered ever so slightly, and then dropped exactly two inches into the alter on the trigger plate positioned with precision planning on the part of ancient detergent nuns thousands of centuries ago. 

The audience gasped as an aged old lady let go of her walker, covering her mouth with one hand and pointing a rickety finger from the other at the suddenly wide eyed sweat-stained man standing now in a shadow at the alter of the cathedral. 

A single feminine, "Oourp." escaped his thin lips before the 13 ton boulder quarried from the mountains of Carrara for the well known sculpter Michelangelo which was stolen by the nuns and replaced with a cheap secondhand boulder that happened to have a David in it- completed its freefall from ceiling to floor.

The bottom half of the boulder, the sweat stained man, the orange box, and the entire alter disappeared as they were driven instantly into the center of the earth by the top half of the boulder wich remained silent in a single shaft of daylight. 

An old man's stomach grizzled out one of those winding growls that swizzles its way around the entire stomach wall several times before bouncing around in the intestinal tract for a few lingering gurgles. Everyone pondered a moment longer the meaning of what they'd just seen. Then all at once everyone of them stood up, put on their coats and went home to eat. 

And that was the turn of the tide.