CHIPOTLE

(** if you have found this post because you are having chipotle diarrhea, please go here)I went to Chipotle for dinner tonight. If you are not familiar with it, it is a now-corporate-owned chain of basic Mexican food, mainly famous for its burritos, which are the size of a Chihuahua. A silver-paper-wrapped, cylindrical Chihuahua. It is not as gringo as Taco Bell, but is still derided by Mexisnobs as inauthentic. Should I care about this? I could go into the local hot dog joint and complain that their brats are weak and boiled and served without...

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LAKE

I am a fan of lakes. Proper lakes, of course. Let me be clear: reservoirs are NOT LAKES. They are man-made dirt holes filled with filthy stagnant water that are closed most of the summer from fecal contamination. They might be slightly more interesting to look at than the dirt hole with no water in it, but not by much. Reservoirs are a depressing water experience. No shade, no beach, just a nasty boring toilet bowl with Joe Jet Ski getting a mouthful of e.coli every time he wipes out on his buzz bomb. Proper lakes are also not ponds. Ponds are...

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DOCTOR

So I called to make my annual checkup appointment with my doctor, a pretty, sensible, and reasonably compassionate young woman from Chicago. The appointment slurdge on the other end of the phone informed me that she had no openings until October. ORLY? IS THAT SO? October. So I said well, NO. Slurdge tapped around on her computer and replied that I could see one of the physician assistants if I wanted to get in earlier. I was so very wanting to get my mams smashed before October, so I said fine, OK, whatever, yas yas. Doesn’t matter. Poke, prod,...

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NEIGHBORS 2

Sir. I know you are retired and all, and enjoy keeping up your property, and like keeping busy and such, but you really really really really really really really do not need to use your leaf blower every single day at 8AM. There aren't that many leaves that need blowing in the entire State of Washington. Please go back to watching the Today Show and complaining about how Matt Lauer is a tool of the pussy Democrats. Inside your house. Thank you.PS. Your flowers are lovely, but bring bees into my mailbox. Why do you hate me so? Thank y...

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RADIO

~KHJ Los Angeles!~ Portions of the day's programming are reproduced by means of electrical transcriptions or tape recordings.You can hear the music on the AM radioThe VCR and the DVDThere wasn't none of that crap back in 1970We didn't know about a World Wide WebIt was a whole different game being played back when I was a kidWanna get down in a cool wayPicture yourself on a beautiful dayBig bell bottoms and groovy long hairJust walkin' in style with a portable CD playerNo, you would listen to the music on the AM radioYeah, you could hear the music...

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MEMORIAL

A really nice way for you to honor all the men and women who have died in the service would be to actually vote in the upcoming Presidential electi...

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GYM 2

Sunday at the gym on a holiday weekend, you get some strange folks.A tiny Chinese grandmother who, like me, alternated fast walking and running. I was worried her little leg bones would snap, but she kicked ass for about 20 minutes.A person whose gender I am unsure of. If I had to guess, I would say it was a man who looked like an aging effeminate British rock n roller, with stringy thinning longish hair, stooped and skinny. He walked by me once and I am pretty sure s/he farted. Nasty man/woman.A dwarf-like man who did wild scissor kicks on the...

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TORNADO

FUN FUN FUNNEL CLOUDS! What horrible, fascinating things they are. They have been featured as a life-long recurrent nightmare for me -- always essentially the same vision, a massive looming spinning pitch-black unavoidable terror closing in. I always wake up before the thing hits, but that feeling is still there, of helplessness and hopelessness. THANKS, BRAIN! What an ass the brain is, torturing you with tornadoes in what is supposed to be a nice peaceful rest. Stupid synapses.Growing up in Wisconsin, I had my share of tornado fun. Wisconsin has...

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PLAY

I spent a very pleasant evening at the theatre this evening. My teenage son’s small school put on a production of the musical “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown,” staged at the local Performance Center. The kids ranged in age from 12 to 16, and were for the most part unflappable, brave, in tune, and quite charming. I smiled at them from my darkened seat. I am just – just – old enough to remember when the play first came out, when “Peanuts” mania was in full force. I think the musical made the cover of Life, and I since I read that religiously I...

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IDOL

All I have wanted from this season's American Idol is one thing, just one: for David Archuleta to throw up violently onstage. I know he wants to, oh, he's holding back with all his teen might. Look at that poor kid: watery eyes, trembling lips, clammy pale skin, shuffling and bowing in humbled fear. It would be the single greatest moment ever on television, made even more fabulous if his projectile vomit would spew all over Ryan Seacrest, live. Ryan would handle it like the entertainment pro he is, all serious concern for the mortified boy and...

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80s

These are some of the clothes I can remember wearing in the 80s:A Japanese wildly-painted turquoise, white, and orange jacket that turned into a skirt. I think Fee Waybill of the Tubes had one. Maybe his jacket turned into pants. Yes.A neon-yellow sleeveless t-shirt with black bats and neon orange paint splatters on it that I wore with black leggings and neon orange gloves. I wore this to a Pee-Wee Herman show and he walked up to me and said, “Not looking for attention, huh?”A “Go Greyhound!” bus t-shirt and a red miniskirt. The t-shirt sentiment...

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OTHER 2

At the Other Good Coffee Place this morning, they are playing very loud techno music. It’s 9AM. This would not be my first choice, especially prior to ingesting coffee. But, whatever. It’s different.Right now, everyone in here is a woman. Two are in their late 20s, four in their 40s. The light streaming in from the big front window tells the story. Skin never lies. One of the 40-somethings is playing with her Blackberry and tapping her New Balance-clad foot to the techno music. One of the 20-somethings seems deep in thought, hunched over a book...

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HORSE

Today at the gym, I had a revelation, two actually. The first was that 5PM on a Saturday is a great time to go there because it is dead. The second occurred as I was watching a playback of the Preakness on the big tv as I slogged along on the tread. I thought: I want to be that horse. I want to run, and then from somewhere way deep inside, pull something out and lengthen my stride and pull away from the pack and keep going. The win wouldn't even be in question.It would be mine.My revelation had nothing to do with runni...

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SUN

I’m a fan. I know this is a medically-unpopular thing to admit, liking the sun, but I DO I DO I DO I DO!It is a stunningly beautiful warm sunny day here, the damp and the rain vanquished for at least today. Never have I been so appreciative of a bright, cloudless blue sky, a light breeze, and the feel of the sun on my skin at 10:30AM – a perfect 75 degrees. There were many of these nice days in the spring, fall, and some of the summer in Colorado. Here, they are relegated to the short summers and an occasional anomaly day like this one. I could...

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DUDE

I know it was hot out today, and it looks like you were coming from the gym, but I gotta tell ya: you looked like a big strutting ass walking slowly through the shopping center and the parking lot with your shirt o...

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COMMERCIAL

Best ever. If it was ever on tv, I could die happy. Not Safe For Work, Or Anywhere. Enjoy...

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SALON

Today I went to get my hair done, which means cut and colored. I have been seriously messing with my hair color since I was 18, which I find fun and relaxing. I figure it is one of the things you can change about yourself on a freakish whim, and if you don’t like it, you can change it to another freakish whim. I have been through most of the available colors and variations in hair color and cut, but I always strive to improve my freak. Today’s selection was the razored mid-length bob, dark chocolate brown with violet highlights. I wish many more...

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EARTHQUAKE

Irony alert today at the gym. I am in the Cardio Cave, chugging along BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM as my feet whap on the treadmill. Right next to me is Ginormo Man, a great hulking beast of a guy, maybe 6’5” or so with huge muscles. He looks like a tank. He is hitting his treadmill so heavily that my bottle of water is sloshing around even more than usual, and my MP3 player is making little leaps of freedom in the air. As I take a slug from my water to lower its sloshability, I look up at the big tv screen and see video from CNN taken during the recent...

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NEIGHBORS

Of course, the weekend came and New Neighbor Woman called up and asked to do something with us. I could see her on her cell phone, smoking in her driveway. It begins. Every weekend it’ll be something, oh and then just WAIT until school lets out. The child boundaries will blur and I will find myself one night unexpectedly tucking in their 5-year-old-boy here instead of my 5-year-old-girl, as my daughter will be at the neighbors’ lighting small fires.If it’s pissy of me, forgive me. I have had neighbors I have treasured, who have stayed good friends...

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OTHER

This afternoon I am at the First Other Coffee Place With The Good Coffee. I am drinking the largest, most jacked latte they serve. It is good, as I noted, damn good. Maybe tomorrow I will go to the Other Other Coffee Place With The Good Coffee, and do a proper comparison. It is important information to know, where to get my drug of choice. I never have to panic.I am sitting and facing the main street in town, busy on a Saturday. Well, busy for here anyway. This never compares to the misery of the Dan Ryan Expressway at any hour. Shoppers and lunchers...

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FAME

Fame fame fame fame fame fame fame. What’s your name?Ah, Mr.Bowie and Mr. Lennon. They so knew about fame. Yet even Mr.Lennon, who paid the ultimate price for being famous, would be even more disturbed and depressed by the nature of fame these days. I would wish it on no one I cared for. I would not wish it on someone I felt neutral towards. I would only wish it on the most heinous of people, the most crass, soulless, handicapped-space parking stealers on earth, or Paris Hilton. I wish she would be running through some water and a dog would knock...

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ORGAN

For some reason I was just thinking about those salesmen at the mall who used to play the organ at the entrance of the Lowrey Organ Store. What a job. Show up in your Sansabelt brown plaid slacks, shiny brown wingtips, white short sleeved button-down shirt, grease back your hair with VO-5, and play Carpenters songs on the E-Z-Play Organ all day long for people passing by. All. Day. Long. Offering a free set of 10 organ lessons THAT’S FREE FOLKS with purchase THIS WEEK ONLY! ONLY $10 a month and this amazing instrument even a toddler can play can...

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GYM

So I went back to the gym today. It’s the same as it always been over the years, really: the fat and the fit, the show-offs and the red-faced miserables, all sweating to a tv screen on the wall showing “Days of Our Lives.” I smiled widely at the soap opera as I ran my miles. I hadn’t seen it in ages, and there’s friggin' John Black on there still after like a million years. I think his real name is Drake or Dirk or Drunk or something like that. He looked the same – handsome, fake-tanned, with a deepening of his brow furrow lines. I thought for...

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CONFESS 2

Dear Brand-New Next-Door Neighbor,Thank you for inviting me over this evening. It was very social of you. It was also very overwhelmingly social and impressively intimate of you to tell me:You had cancer.All about how your dogs – that’s multiple dogs, yes – were shot dead by an old neighbor.That your childrens’ names are, essentially Georgette II, Georgette III, and George IV, and the Georgette V and George VI visit on alternate weekends per court order.Everything I could ever ever ever want to know about nesting dolls, tiny ceramic tea sets, Jesus...

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HA 2

There might be something funnier than a dog knocking down a kid running through some water -- not just once, but twice -- but I have no idea what that would ...

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LOFT

When I first moved to Denver, I lived in a loft in a converted warehouse. It was the first building to start the loft trend there, in the industrial district downtown, a 6-story red-brick monster built in 1905 that took up the better part of the block. Oh, when the agent showed it to me, how impressed I was! A big shiny new elevator took me up to #3G, where I took in the sight of an 1800 sq. ft. room with 25 ft. ceilings, 10 ft. high windows all over, and an elevated sleeping area. The hardwood floors were refinished and shining, the appliances...

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FLAG

I keep away from flags. They are trouble. I don’t fly a flag at my home, unless someone walks by and sticks a tiny one in the ground in front of my house on Independence Day. I hate that, because then I have to be responsible for it. Oh, god, there’s an American flag, now I have to make sure nothing bad happens to it. What if someone comes by and is walking their dog and the dog decides it wants to pee on it? I will have to watch constantly to make sure this does not occur. It is a burden, the tiny lawn flag. People should never put anything at...

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BEES

Where I sit in my home, when not out and about drinking life-sustaining coffee, is in front of a large bright window facing the street. When the weather becomes a bit warmer, every few minutes I will hear FWAP! PUNC! BAB! PAMM! These are the sounds of giant wobbly bees flying into the window. Over and over and over again, all summer long, they go top-speed into the glass. I have come to the realization that I have developmentally-disabled bees. They cannot learn. They bounce off the window, dazed, then repeat their futility until they are too...

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