Um...What??

The Post Where I Answer Fan Mail On Account Of I Have Tons Of Fans!! (OH, OF COURSE I DON'T)

Today's post is dedicated to the lovely Mary of Twitter's seamusandmaggie fame! And guess what? She has her very own blog now and it's introspective and insightful and delightful and each time you visit there she offers you something pleasant like coffee or raspberry Sangria tea or a Gin and Tonic or Lorna Doone cookies or...huh. Now that I think about it, I never offer you people anything. Well, of course not. Do you think I'm going to waste my time saving cookies for you when I could be stuffing them down my yap by the fistfuls instead? EXACTLY. Anyway, speaking of blogs, Mary recently went through this one and read like each and every post I've ever published, and then afterward she told me she had a stomach ache from laughing so hard. Which, I'm assuming, is code speak for your blog makes me sick. Well, of course it does! Welcome to the club, Mary –– population Everyone Who's Ever Been Here; club president, Ryan. (He's been getting sick here since almost the beginning.) Please note, however, that as a public service to my readers, I do try my best to keep posting to a minimum so as to ensure that none of you actually dies from this crap. So really? It's like I'm blogging and SAVING LIVES. My pleasure.

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Welcome back, everyone! For today's post we'll be getting interactive as I answer some of your fan mail. Because, as you can imagine, I get a lot of fan mail. And not just from my mother either. As far as you know. HAHA! Of course my fan mail isn't from my mother. That's absurd. It's from, you know, other people. Who aren't my mother. Because this blog has completely taken over the interwebs. And by taken over the interwebs I mean nobody reads this crap, not even my mother.

Okay. Let's get started:

"Hi, Lesley! I totally love your blog more than any other blog in the world! I mean Camilla has a blog but it's all, "Blah blah I bought a new hat today" and "Boo hoo, I didn't get to have tea until 4:30 this afternoon" and honest to God does anyone even care about these things? I KNOW I DON'T. Anyway. I was wondering if you had any updates on Buster? Because I LOVE that dog!! By the way: Did I mention how much I love your blog, too? If you were in my country, I'd totally make you Queen." - Charles, Prince of Wales*

* SEE????!?!?!?!? I TOLD YOU.

Hi Charles! To begin with, I think we can all agree that I was pretty much born to be a queen. Because –– speaking of pretty –– I totally am, and I also happen to look AMAZING in a crown and what other talents could I possibly need to be a successful queen? That's what I thought. So, you just say the word and I'm there. I mean can you imagine how this blog would totally take off if I moved "Um...What??" headquarters to a castle?! Because do you even know how great the acoustics are in a castle??? Which of course has nothing to do with anything, except for the fact that few things guarantee a blog's meteoric rise to success the way having good acoustics does. I'm assuming. Well, except maybe for Photoshopping. OH! And having a cat to write about. Anyway. I'll change my blog's name to, "Um...What Did the Queen Say Again?" and then I'll write all kinds of brilliant and royal things in it, after which I'll run around every day offing various people's heads and eating crumpets (WTF? I have no idea) and then ordering more people's heads to be offed because if you had any idea at all what my life is currently like, you'd totally understand how much I would really appreciate being able to OFF SOME DAMN PEOPLE'S HEADS.

 

Okay, seriously: What was I talking about again? OH! Buster!! Well, Charles, I'm so glad you asked. Of all the topics I've ever covered on this blog, where covered equals writing while having absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, Buster is the subject people most often ask about.

So, Charles, I offer all of you this little glimpse into what Buster's been up to as of late:

Some pictures are worth a thousand words, but this one is worth about TENTEEN GAGILLION. (I mean, seriously: LOOK AT THIS.)

On the subject of royalty, Buster has gone from a homeless, kazoo-playing dog on the side of the road to, well, a king –– with a castle and a kingdom and a family all his own. And in that family is a boy. Buster's boy. The one Buster loves above all others. The one Buster enthusiastically and loyally defers to because in Buster's world, his boy is his king. Once misunderstood and mislabeled as vicious and dangerous because of his particular breed, Buster has gone from a prisoner on doggy death row to the steadfast and loving and gentle protector of his boy and his boy's world. (Chris totally loves this part, by the way. SOMEBODY PLEASE GET HIM A TISSUE.) Because while Buster loves everyone, he totally lives for his boy. And if you don't think this curls my toes and waters my eyes and swells my heart, well, you're either new here or you're clinically dead. And in the case of the latter, you'd probably be better off somewhere else, anyway.

Buster's boy and his wonderful parents had to go away for a few days recently (and by recently I mean like a couple months ago BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I DO IT AROUND HERE), so Team Buster had a reunion of sorts: Buster went back to stay with Kim (who had previously taken him in while we were searching for his home), and then I came over for THE BEST PLAY DATE EVER:

Plus, I totally forgot who I was for about 17 minutes. And no, I am not flipping you off. Unless you're Jared, and then really? You will never know.

Oh dear god. These are like the worst pictures of me EVER. How am I going to be Queen looking like that? Wait. Do I really look like that?? For those of you who are suddenly concerned that I actually might, don't worry...I am too. So on that note, I just went and took these pictures of myself to assure us all that sometimes I am actually very, very pretty:

CRAP.
Why hasn't anyone ever told me how pointy everything is on my face? Also, I am so yellow because I DO NOT KNOW WHY I AM SO YELLOW. Damn camera settings. Aperture? WTF? And you can thank Jose for the picture on the right. If I can't take pictures like him, I'll take pictures that look like him.
In addition? PARKAY.

OH WHATEVER. Enough of this nonsense. There is one more thing that should be noted about Buster before we move on to our next letter: In the event of an emergency (or a non-emergency, or any time at all, really), Buster will become a flotation device:

Swimming laps around his castle's moat. Or his grandma's pool. Whichever.

As it turns out, Buster loves the water so much that if given the opportunity, he will swim a lap and get out and jump back in and swim a lap and get out and jump back in and swim a lap and get out and jump back in over and over and over and over until his muscles are so fatigued he'll hobble around the entire next day like an old man who's lost his cane. "Wouldn't you just love to know what he was thinking?" his mom asked me the other day.

Indeed.

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"Dear Lesley: So what's that Chris guy been doing lately? His life seems totally fun and exciting!! I think he's who people really want to know about, not some dog. Although they probably want to know about the dog more than they want to know about you." –– Chris Christine  P.S. Your blog kind of sucks.

Hi, um, Christine. First of all, yeah yeah, this blog sucks. BLAH BLAH SEE OPENING PARAGRAPH. Secondly, if you've been around here for any length of time, you can probably already guess what Chris has been doing. The same thing he's always doing. This:

This was just a little while ago. Look familiar? Also, I'm very concerned about these poor girls having to play football without protective gear. Or their clothes.

For those of you who have asked me what "this" is that Chris is always doing, it's called accounting. HAHA! Good one! Like anyone can do math with so many boobs everywhere. The nearest I can figure after all these years is that Chris has taken it upon himself to be some kind of savior-slash-superhero to scantily-clad women everywhere. Ladies? Have you've misplaced your clothes? Or worse, has someone stolen them? Never fear, Chris is here!! He will faithfully stand by you in your hour of need and then take a picture of both of you while he does so he can e-mail it to all his friends and put it up on his Facebook page. It should be clarified, however, that I've recently confirmed via the scientific method my suspicion that Chris is a savior-slash-superhero to scantily clad women everywhere except the ones who are me:

 
And then I caught pneumonia and died. Which is why it took me so long to get this post up. BLAME CHRIS.

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"So. You haven't blogged in like fourteen years or something. I'm thinking of using the Mayan calendar (Editor's Note: I HAD NO IDEA EITHER) to track your posts even though I think doing that will just assure you never get anything else up before the world ends. What gives??" –– Maureen (OH! But totally not your BFF Maureen though!) (Because a BFF would NEVER give her friend so much crap!) (Um...yeah.)

Hi Maureen! First of all, I had to look up that Mayan calendar thing on Google and I see what you did there. An unknown number of elapsed days from a mythological starting-point? Clever, really. Second of all, PLEASE SEE PREVIOUS ITEM ABOUT HOW I DIED OF PNEUMONIA. Third of all, I am a very, very busy person and cannot just sit around blogging all the time. For example, just a week or so ago I traveled all the way to Edinburgh, Scotland (THAT IS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, BY THE WAY) to visit cherished Um...What?? family member, Mr. Farty!:

 
You: WTF?? That's not you. That's JOSE.

Okay, FINE. Jose was the one who met Mr. Farty. Not me. But it should've been me, too! On account of, you know, THIS:

Do you all know my interwebs boyfriend #1 and interwebs boyfriend #2?

HOWEVER, even though I didn't actually go to Scotland, that doesn't negate the fact that I am very, very busy doing other things like that one time when I....hold on, it'll come to me...OH! Okay, the other day I...alright honestly, WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME? Sometimes when you are very, very busy (AS I AM) it's hard to keep track of everything you're doing and so you write things down but if you don't have your calendar in front of you then you can't always remem...OKAY FINE I NEVER DO ANYTHING WHATSOEVER AT ALL. Why don't you try doing nothing whatsoever at all and then tell me what it is YOU would write about in your blog? Exactly.

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And now for our final letter:

"Dear Lesley: You're so pretty and so funny and so good at Photoshop, all of which are very important qualities in a wife. Will you marry me???" –– Name Withheld So As To Save Author Any Embarrassment

No, I will not. JARED.

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P.S. I totally love this picture but couldn't find a place to work it in, so I decided to stick it on the end of the post here because that's the kind of thing you do when you have a black belt in blogging. WHICH I DO:

Yeah, right. Brad Pitt wishes he was this good looking.

P.S.S. That letter from Maureen is TOTALLY TRUE except for the part how it wasn't actually a letter but instead was a series of tweets back and forth between Jose and her that were all "Mayan Calendar this" and "OMG growing old that" and blah blah blah IT IS VERY, VERY HARD TO BE ME. Obviously.

Updated To Add Useless P.S.: This Post Is About My New Cat So You Might Want To Just Skip It (Unless You're Totally Into Cats) (Or Crack Houses)

Today's post is dedicated to my online friend Jose Kilbride who –– besides being riotously funny and entertaining and charming on Twitter –– is also a gifted photographer who takes the kinds of pictures you don't look at so much as you're transported into. And if THAT wasn't enough, I recently discovered he also has a blog with writing so good you can actually get lost in it. Which then got me wondering what else he can do that I don't know about. Paint? Sculpt? Write limericks? Do long division? Okay, that last one's absurd. I'm pretty sure no one can do long division. Carry the one?? Nobody even knows what that means. THEN I got to thinking about how rude it is for him to hog up all the talent for himself and not leave any of it for me so that all of you people are now left stuck here reading this idiotic crap which, even though I wrote it, is so very obviously not my fault. THANKS A LOT. JOSE.

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Welcome back, everyone! As many of you already know, my last post turned out to be quite controversial, which means it was filled with things like controversy and, of course, cows. Because where cows go, controversy follows. Trust me. Cows –– I've been told –– are polarizing, which, if I'm understanding correctly, means that they reduce glare, although to be perfectly honest I hardly see why that's anything to get all worked up about. Oh, what do I know? ANYWAY. The good news is that today's post isn't about cows, it's about, well, good news! Because in an unexpected turn of events we've actually had some around here. And this good news comes in the form of Team Um What's newest family member, Gus The Cat!:

Team Um...What??: We're growing!

Yeah, sure. They just had a baby over there at that Dooce place and that is so super exciting WHOOPEE DOO blah blah WHO CARES?! We've got GUS! And believe me when I say the whole family could not be more excited about the new arrival. Especially Chris!

 Ungrateful.

I certainly didn't plan on getting another cat so quickly after Moses, especially with a heart still so raw from losing him. But if you've been around here for any amount of time at all, you know how things normally go for me: Whenever I go to a lot of trouble to make some very specific plan...TA DA! The total exact opposite thing happens.

So, of course, that night I went onto the Kitten Rescue website was no different, and despite having specifically planned to just find a cat to sponsor because I didn't yet feel ready to adopt again, one minute I was looking at the sponsor cats and then a few minutes after that I was on the adoption page (I have no idea SEE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH) and then –– two hours later –– I was still on the adoption page. Staring at Gus.

There was just something him that kept returning me to his page. I can't explain it, just like I couldn't explain the same feeling I had with Moses. Maybe it was his pictures, maybe it was his story, maybe it was the line about Gus being a cat "looking to rewrite the tragedy of his life." Dear. God. But something compelled me to e-mail his foster mom who, in a really inspired twist of fate, turned out to be the very exact person who saved my sweet, old Moses from the shelter on the day he was scheduled to be put down. NICE ONE, UNIVERSE! I'd always wondered who she was and now I could thank her and it just kind of seemed like a sign and sometimes when the universe gives you a sign you read it and so, WELCOME HOME, GUS THE CAT!

Besides: Could YOU resist him??

    

Do you people even understand what it's like to be me??

Okay, seriously: This post is killing me. I wrote and rewrote the above paragraphs about finding Gus because first they were too long and then they were too boring and oh look! They're still boring. Because I'm fairly sure this is the kind of useless minutia of my life that nobody cares about and what if this post is like the written equivalent of my forcing a bunch of my vacations photos down your throats?? YOU KNOW, LIKE THIS:

      

 

Nice camera skills. CHRIS.

     

Maureen isn't in this picture because she was all, "Wah wah, I HATE SCIENCE FICTION" and "Yoda Yoda Yadda yadda aliens are stupid" and so she wouldn't even come INSIDE with us because she was just way too good, apparently, which is totally rude if you ask me because on the way over was I way too good to sit on the hump in the back of the landspeeder? NO I WASN'T.

ANYWAY. My point is that my vacation photos are awesome!! Actually, I don't really know what my point is, but that's the kind of blogger I am: One without a point. SO? Also, why are we even talking about this? I'm trying to tell you all about my new cat and you people aren't even paying any attention. PLEASE FOCUS.

Continuing on:

Gus has come a long way on his 13-year journey to get to where he is now. Yeah, yeah, I know. He's 13. What do you want from me?? I love the feline old fogies! Are you a cat? Who's retired? And looking for a nice home to live out your twilight years?? Come on over! We've got shuffleboard. And Ben Gay. And those power chairs from the Scooter Store. HAHA! We don't have any power chairs from the Scooter Store. Do I really look like someone who can afford that kind of fancy equipment?? Of course not. WE HAVE JET PACKS.

But long before his retirement years when Gus was still just an unweaned kitten, he was thrown out into a dumpster like he was trash. The medical term for this condition is dear god in heaven people suck. But then this really nice woman found him and bottle-fed him and after a while she discovered that she was so very good at taking care of him that she should take care of people too and so she opened a special kind of group home for the needy that in some circles is referred to as a crack house.

So she did this –– I'm guessing –– by first gathering up a lot of crack and then gathering up a whole lot of people who needed to buy the crack but didn't want to commute to buy the crack because we all know how difficult it is in today's economy to afford both gas and crack and besides, driving around all over town is just a completely inefficient use of time that could be spent in one's house already getting a head start on smoking the crack. Again, I'm guessing. And although our little Gus found himself living in a house like this, it should be noted that Gus is neither a crack dealer nor a crack addict. But when the police raided the place and arrested people and shut it down and boarded it up and blah blah CRIME DOESN'T PAY they did find close to 20 swords in there (TOTALLY TRUE STORY) which I can only assume means Gus is a ninja. Bonus!

And now? Well Gus is settling into his new home as if he's always lived here. And this place, which had become a bit emptied out and gutted as of late, is filled up to overflowing with Gus's unique brand of emotive, expressive, effusive, sloppy love. Now? I spend a lot of time stuck under the cat. Because Gus is always sitting on me or lying on me or jumping on me or rolling around on me. At night he's always sleeping curled up in my armpit or wrapped around my head. He licks and grooms me so much I'm pretty sure my showers have become completely redundant. He gives endless speeches and monologues and soliloquies which I listen to raptly and attentively, because Gus is a cat with a lot of important things to say. And he stares and stares at me. Constantly. Gus spends so much time craning his neck to gaze at me like I'm the singular greatest thing he's ever seen that's he's been known on occasion to accidentally tip himself over. (Which is totally the kind of beautiful expression of love a lot of people could take a lesson from. JARED.) Now? These days? We spend a lot less time moping around here and a lot more of it totally covered in cat spit being happy. Because time might heal all our wounds eventually, but love heals them a whole lot faster.

 

Welcome home, Gus The Cat! You could not be more different than Moses, but you also couldn't be more loved. Here's hoping you're always really happy here!!

    

 

Just another day at Um What Headquarters. Honestly, I have no idea why we ever bother to go on vacation.

THE HAPPY END BEGINNING!

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P.S. I owe special thanks to Maureen for her technical input regarding crack. I wasn't sure if one primarily smoked crack or shot up crack and so I asked her a lot of questions about crack except, of course, for the totally obvious one which would be oh dear god, why does she know so much about crack???

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Updated 6/29 to add:

P.S.S. I realized in all my fascination with Photoshopping sh*t, that I only included a few actual pics of Gus. So, here are a couple more. Because why even HAVE the intertubes if not to upload 50 gagillion pictures of your cat??:

 

This second shot is my attempt to be artistic. You know, like Jose. I call this "Open Space With Cat Face." My mom calls it, "What Happened, Did You Drop The Camera."

Updated To Increase Overall Fanciness: This Blog Is A Stinking Bugger! (Or Maybe I Am?) Plus: We Should Totally Bring Back Microfiche!

Hey, Um Whaters! Remember around this time last year when this blog won the Blogger's Choice Award for Best Blog of All Time? (You: WTF? THAT NEVER HAPPENED.) Alright, maybe it didn't. But all that matters is that it totally could have! (You: OMG DELUSIONAL. DO YOU EVEN READ YOUR OWN BLOG?) Oh, come on! I mean what if...OKAY FINE. It'll never win for the best blog of all time. Ever. HAPPY NOW? But I don't even care because what it could win is WORST Blog of All Time which would be so many more kinds of awesome except that at this point I'd need at least 248 votes to win and that doesn't really make any sense because if my blog sucked that badly, why would 248 people know about it? Oh whatever. I am very bad at math. And logic. Apparently. Anyway, why I am even talking about this? Who cares?! I don't need a Blogger's Choice award because I have something way better. I have THIS:

That's right! Mr. Farty's Stinking Bugger Award!
Huh.

An award! From Mr. Farty! I mean it just makes me feel like...okay. Seriously, dude? I'm over here blogging my a$$ off when I actually remember to (SO??), and you can't award my Herculean efforts with something slightly more fancy?

   

Bugger Bling!
See? Now would this really have been so hard?

And for those of you thinking I'm just inventing pointless excuses to use Photoshop, all I can say is well, obviously. But that doesn't change the fact that we ARE very fancy here around the Um...What?? headquarters. As a matter of fact we insist on it because even if times are tough and the world is kicking our a$$es, we know we've gotta fake it 'til we make it and not let the chips get us down and never forget for one moment that success is an attitude so we'd better make sure that no matter what, we never fail to dress for it:

This is totally for real. As if I could make up something this ridiculous.

(Image updated 4/7/09 to add even more realism in the form of further Bedazzling Maureen. Because she requested it –– "Why is your bling bigger than my bling? I have NO JEWELS!" –– and because NOT EVERYTHING HERE IS ALWAYS MY FAULT.)

  

For those of you who don't know exactly what the Stinking Bugger Award is, let me explain it to you this way: I don't either. But I've been doing a lot of research –– which, if you must know –– is the reason why it's taken me so long to get this post up. I'm not just going to slap together some useless menagerie of crap I totally made up (OH, OF COURSE I AM) because you people deserve better than that. (TOO BAD, I'M BUSY.)

ANYWAY, after finding nothing for "stinking bugger" on Wikipedia –– which made me really disoriented at the time because I thought you could find EVERYTHING on Wikipedia?? –– I decided to go to my local library to do some microfiche research because that's what I saw MacGyver do once which I am totally not making up except for the part about it being MacGyver because I think it actually might have been Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote but that is just like six of one/half dozen of another so what difference does it make? But then I was told my library doesn't even HAVE microfiche anymore (WTF?? GOOGLE IS TOTALLY KILLING THE MODERN LIBRARY), so I was forced to try to find information in their Encyclopedia Britannica collection and you can imagine how that went. (Dear Encyclopedia Britannica: Please make your books smell slightly less delicious because then maybe a girl could get some actual research done instead of just sitting around all day sniffing the bindings and getting slightly more than mildly high.) And then while deciding what to do next I got all sidetracked by accidentally having a personal identity crisis (oopsie!) which may or may not have been directly related to the previously-blogged-about Porcupine crisis. Suddenly, I found myself questioning pretty much everyone and everything in my life, and by pretty much I mean there wasn't much about it that was pretty at all. Just ask Chris, who had the misfortune of being the one in the closest physical proximity to me during most of it. It went kind of like the following. Only for a much longer, drawn out period of time. And involving much more of my own snot than is indicated here:

  

  

  

This series of pictures is totally like a bad high school drama club production where the actors are all looking at the audience and not each other while awkwardly delivering their lines. WHICH IS SO AWESOME.

Oh, but enough of all that. Besides, you can see how I got back on point there in the end, right?? Even a slight mental breakdown cannot waylay my never-ending quest for knowledge! And you'll be happy to know that when all was said and done, my extensive research yielded just the kind of results you'd expect from such a tireless and dedicated effort: None.

So, just like all of you, I'm still left here to wonder what exactly is a Stinking Bugger?? Is it a fart? Is it a person who's full of sh*t like a fart? Is it a person who's full of sh*t like a fart and then pollutes the interwebs with their gas-infested blogging efforts? OKAY. SERIOUSLY?? Why do I even care so much about the specifics? ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE SO EQUALLY MAJESTIC* that it doesn't even matter which one it is I've been awarded for because regardless, THIS BLOG CAN NOW OFFICIALLY BE DEEMED 100% SUCCESSFUL! Quick. Someone bend over and then set Um...What?? on fire!!

*Someone has been studying her thesaurus on the off-chance she might be using the word AWESOME too much.

Although on a final note, the picture on the Stinking Bugger Award that looks like some kind of an alien does sort of throw me off, because I really don't know what THAT has to do with anything. To be perfectly honest.

Oh.
  
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P.S. Click here to visit Mr. Farty's blog, "Better Oot Than In" –– home of the Stinking Bugger!

Updated (Sort Of): The Most Boring Post You Will Ever Read – Despite The Gigantic Puppet Spiders And The Fact That Someone Took Out My Eyeball

So, this weekend I decided to look up the word "meme" on Wikipedia. Mostly because I didn't even know how to pronounce it, but also because Mr. Farty gave me one to do (WHATEVER –– MR. FARTY IS LIKE TEACHER FARTY GIVING ME HOMEWORK) and so my entire life has been falling down around my ears because I've had to keep saying things like, "No I cannot have dinner with you because I have to write my meme" and "Sorry, I don't have time to talk on the phone because I have to sit and think about my meme" and "No, I totally cannot marry you as I'm busy with my meme." Only sometimes I'd say "meemee" and other times I say "Mee-may" and occasionally I'd try "meh-mee" because I didn't really know which one was right but figured no one else did either so I'd probably be in the clear regardless. But then eventually I decided I needed to know for sure because I can't very well keep bragging about my PhD in blogging (I TOTALLY HAVE ONE) if I don't even know what the hell a "meme" is since "memes" are central to blogging. Apparently. Just like having a blogroll and also totally inflating your blog stats when reciting them to your fellow bloggers. (In some circles this is referred to as lying. In blog circles, lying is referred to as blogging.) Here's what I learned:

"A meme (pronounced /mi:m/- like theme) (OHHHH. "MEEM.") is a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; such units or elements transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word minema for mimic. Memes act as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures."

Not that I need to point out the obvious, but by here's what I learned I mean that beyond the pronunciation I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I LEARNED BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT EVEN MEME MEAN??? There were several more paragraphs by way of explanation, but I'm not even going to copy them here because they do not help the matter at all. Trust me. So, basically this tells me that pretty much nobody knows what a meme is and if they say they do it's just like an Emperor's New Clothes thing and they are totally lying. Also known as blogging. SEE ABOVE PARAGRAPH.

Anyway. Unimportant details aside, I will now do the meme given to me by Mr. Farty, entitled "10 Honest Things About Myself."  And speaking of unimportant details, that's exactly what this meme will be filled with. Because honestly? Nobody cares. I don't even care and it's all about me.

Honest Thing #1: I have a blog. I KNOW! Most of you are probably unaware of this fact, but it's true. You can find it at www.umwhat....er, www.lesley.umwhat...OH WHATEVER. But trust me I get TONS of hits every day LIKE IN THE GAGILLIONS. (SEE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH ABOUT LYING.) I originally started my blog thinking I was going to write deep, profound, meaningful things about myself and my life. Until I realized I had little interest in writing deep, profound, meaningful things about myself and my life I'M BORING and instead what I really wanted to do was just Photoshop sh*t. And I don't even know how to Photoshop. And I'm seriously on the verge of an aneurysm right now because look at how far down I've gone into this post without one Photoshopped image in sight! Dear God.

Honest Thing #2: I really cannot stand having very many people around in my life. This should not be confused with "I am a loner" because I don't want to be alone –– I do love being around those I'm closest to. Just ask Chris, who cannot get away from me despite the fact he continuously tries. But it's my natural inclination to keep my group of friends small, because human connections are pretty profound to me, and all the emotions and feelings and experiences that make up those connections can completely overwhelm me if I'm not careful. The Porcupine says it is because I am an empath like Deanna Troi ("You just feel everyone's feelings like they're your own") and regardless of whether or not that's true, what is completely true is that when The Porcupine makes geeky sci fi references it totally gets me hot. AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HIS CHEWBACCA IMPERSONATION. Basically, Sylar said it best last week on Heroes: "Look. You're really gonna have to stop trying to be my friend or I'm gonna have to kill you." Exactly! OMG Lesley and Sylar are like soulmates!! And by the way, for any of you who are not familiar, Sylar is a homicidal maniac serial killer who takes out people's brains but never mind that particular part.

Honest Thing #3:  I am a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. He was the uncle of my great grandmother on my mother's father's side. Which of course totally goes without saying because have you even READ my blog lately? I clearly got the fine literature genes. And by fine literature I mean this is a crap sandwich served up with a side of crap chips on a plate made out of crap. (You: What's for dessert? Me: CRAP.)

Honest Thing #4:  My head hurts. I was born with my left eyeball turned out so that all you could see was mostly the white part. And yes: It's just as attractive as it sounds. So when I was so small that the thought of putting me through any major surgery was enough to terrify my parents practically to death, they braved the terror anyway, so they could get my eyeball repositioned. So I could do things like, you know, see. The surgery involved disconnecting muscles and nerves and taking my eyeball all the way out which you have to admit is so many kinds of awesome and maybe it was rolling around on a table at some point or sitting in a beaker? ALSO AWESOME. Then there was some reconnecting somehow and putting the eyeball back in and blah blah WHATEVER, I AM NOT A DOCTOR. Currently. But it was the first surgery of its kind (I am in the medical anals, people) and while it was for the most part quite successful, I was left with a little side effect I like to call Surplus Vision. I actually see separately out of each eye, which results in my always seeing two of everything. Since it's the only type of vision I know, it seems normal enough to me. For the most part my brain disregards one image and then said brain and eyeballs and I go about our business just fine. But I do get some big-a$$ headaches fairly regularly since all of this action is a huge strain on the muscles around my eyes. Most of the time this doesn't at all affect my ability to function and most people around me have no idea anything's going on. But occasionally? I have to stop the world and get off. BE BACK LATER.

Honest Thing #5: I am an only child. This fact –– which is totally not my fault, by the way –– caused this blog's favorite MC to put me on Friend Probation, which he announced to me (JERK) way back at the beginning of our relationship because he usually does not like only children because he thinks they tend to be spoiled and self-centered and did I mention he thinks that they are spoiled? Just because he comes from a family of six eight fourteen one bazillion siblings is no reason for that kind of attitude. But luckily it became a non-issue as I was none of those things because I am lovely and wonderful and caring and unselfish and never mind all that I HAVE A NICE RACK, so, you know, friends forever!

Honest Thing #6: I watch way more Sci Fi Channel programming than should be allowed by law. And I'm not even talking about just the good stuff either –– like Ghost Hunters or Battlestar Galactica. I'm talking about the kind of movies that are on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Because if there are giant puppet spiders with visible strings or enormous, fake-looking plastic bugs or exploding heads that are clearly made of lettuce and stuck on the top of a stick or horribly written lines delivered via colossally bad acting, I am so there. And probably watching whatever it is for like the third or fourth time.

Honest Thing #7: I am always slightly amiss. You know those women who are always perfectly put together and coiffed and poofed and polished and manicured and coordinated and, you know, whatever else perfectly-put-together women are? I am not one of those women. Those women look good. I look good enough. As in OH WHATEVER, I GIVE UP. Today? My hair is full of enough static electricity to probably power my laptop. And underneath my cute little short-sleeve, violet-colored sweater I am wearing a black camisole. With a hole in it. Some days it's cat hair all over my clothes. Oh look! Like today. Or coffee dribbled on my top. Or leftover lunch dangling in my hair. Or chipped nails or scuffed shoes or lipstick on my teeth or gray roots or YOU GET THE IDEA. Last week I walked around all day with only one earring in. While wearing a ponytail. And not because I lost the earring either. But because I only put on one to begin with. And it wasn't a subtle earring, either. It was a gigantic hoop practically suitable for a bird to perch on. How does a person just, you know, not notice that the other one is missing?

Honest Thing #8:  I am the whitest person you know. And by white I don't mean I can't dance, I mean literally. White. As in the color. As in if Nicole Kidman and Marcia Cross had a baby (I have no idea) and then rubbed White-Out all over it, that baby would still look slightly more tan than I do.

Honest Thing #9: I am the singular most direct person you will ever meet. It's the only way I know how to be, and 99% of the time it serves me well. I don't understand passive aggressive, I don't understand beating around the bush, I don't understand hemming and hawing, I don't understand people who are vague and/or hesitant and uncomfortable saying what they think. Of course you can imagine what this must sometimes be like for the people around me. Take a recent exchange I had with Mo, for example, which maybe didn't go word for word like this but was still the general gist:

Me:  But why wouldn't you tell me something like that directly?

Mo (patiently and not unkindly): You know, everyone is not as comfortable as you are just speaking their minds. YOU ARE A FREAK.

Okay, so that freak part might have been implied. Or maybe I just inferred it. But either way? It's totally true and all I can say to everyone who has to put up with this trait in me is I apologize. And, oh yeah, IT'S NEVER GOING TO CHANGE. This is called I Apologize, Part Two.

Honest Thing #10: This meme is a perfect example of why I've never done one before and will never do one again!! OH MY GOD no one cares that my eyeball was moved and I'm blindingly white and blah blah sometimes I wear only one earring OOPSIE and I like puppet spiders and I have been on Friend Probation yadda yadda everyone who isn't now in a coma, please raise your hand.

That's right. NO HANDS.

Oh. And in conclusion? This:

OH LIKE YOU REALLY THOUGHT I'D GO A WHOLE POST WITH NO PHOTOSHOPPING.

* * * * * * * * * *

2/25 edited to add:  Now that you're all done with this nonsense, go visit Mr. Farty if you haven't already. You will NOT be sorry!

This Post Has Moses The Cat, Brain-Eating Zombies, My Friend MC And A Ridiculous Amount Of Hats (It Also Has NEXT TO NO POINT AT ALL) (Seriously...There's No Reason To Even Read This)

When I originally started this post, I was all, "Yesterday, my friend MC said to me..." but then I had to change that to a couple days ago and then to a few days ago and finally last week. Because that's the kind of blogger I am: THE KIND WHO NEVER ACTUALLY BLOGS.

* * * * * * * * * *

Last week my friend MC said to me, "I expected you to blog more about your cat."

First of all, what is that? Some kind of insult? Like I have no life and nothing else to write about? Well, I've got plenty to write about for your information. My life is FILLED TO THE BRIM with things like commercials I've seen on TV and crap that Chris does. Second of all, as someone who still hasn't admitted publicly that he reads this blog (he thinks this keeps his total love for me a total secret, which it just might except for the way it totally doesn't), MC certainly spends a lot of time obsessing over the content. "You need more Star Wars references!" "Move me up higher on the cast list!" "The porcupine looks like he's peeing!" "More cat-themed blogging!"

 

Seriously: Who isn't??

Photo courtesy of Glamour Shots. HAHA! Obviously, I'm just kidding. This is actually a picture from MC's personal collection that I talked him into giving to me. And by personal collection I mean pictures he had taken at the local Glamour Shots.

Also, when I inadvertently mentioned something to him about having his picture open in Photoshop, he gave me some lip about not wanting to log on here and find himself with a propeller hat on his head. Dude. Seriously? What kind of an immature a$$hole do you take me for, anyway?

      

EXACTLY.

Plus? I'm also this kind:

 

And this:

OH! And also this:

 

Oui, Oui! Servin' it up hot at the "Um...What??" Bistro!

Look. I know. I am very pretty and it is very distracting (JUST ASK CHRIS) but now get over it and stop lurking around and leave a comment on a post. Because everyone knows that comments are a blogger's life force! Oh, of course they're not. Ads are. And you can see how many of those I have. Which honestly doesn't matter to me since this particular blogger's life force is BELVEDERE VODKA. Which I have plenty of. Although, I'd have a whole lot more of it if the CEO of Belvedere Vodka (Mr. Belvedere?) (Benson?) would read this and then send me, you know, a whole lot more of it.

Anyway, if MC thinks he can blow me off in public but still get behind-the-scenes creative influence here just because he walks around with that hot Irish smolder thing going on, all I can say is well, obviously. So just for you, MC, because I listen –– where listen equals I had nothing better to write about anyway and where write equals to Photoshop a bunch of hats onto someone's head –– I bring you: Some Blogging About My Cat! (Or: Six Feline Fun Facts!) And for my friend Chris who is slightly afraid of cats because they make his air and nasal passages instantly swell shut, which causes him to brutally suffocate and die (OH BIG DEAL), as well as for any of the rest of you who might not be entirely interested in reading various things about my cat –– like, you know, he poops, I will balance out the cat facts by also bringing you an alternate set of thoroughly researched facts about zombies! (Who, incidentally, don't poop, and trust me you do not want to know the details.) Here we go:

Feline Fun Fact #1:  Moses The Cat is so good looking that he sometimes gets unfairly labeled as a "pretty boy" and isn't taken as seriously as he deserves. Interestingly enough, this is the exact same problem Chris often has.

 

Photo courtesy of Glamour Shots.

Alternate Zombie Fact: A zombie is a reanimated human corpse that feeds on living brains and flesh, which –– if you ask me –– doesn't really seem all that appetizing.

Feline Fun Fact #2:  Moses The Cat has diabetes but he doesn't let this define him. Instead, he prefers to define himself as awesome.

      
Seventeen pounds of awesome. Plus a dirty sock.
           

Alternate Zombie Fact: The Zombie Apocalypse is the collapse of civilization caused by a vast plague of the undead. Zombies will attack people, which creates new zombies (I have no idea; I got kind of distracted at this point and wandered away from what I was reading to eat a popsicle), leading to mass panic and the unraveling of society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world suddenly reduced to a hostile wilderness. Oh. So the Zombie Apocalypse has already happened. Apparently.

Feline Fun Fact #3:  Moses The Cat has a wide variety of interests including butting his head against things, barfing up hairballs, watching the toilet flush, playing with shoelaces and following Wil Wheaton on Twitter.

 

Moses also likes to read! Okay, that is just ridiculous. Moses is a cat –– he doesn't read books. DUH. He writes them.

Alternate Zombie Fact: Chris has read 14 zombie books this past year, "20 if you count graphic novels." Which, as I understand it, are the zombie books that are really, really, really graphic. Which doesn't make all that much sense to me since zombies eat brains so wouldn't they ALL be really graphic? Oh, I don't know. I'm not an expert.

And by the way? This:

 

Oh, like anyone here actually thought I was done with this.

Feline Fun Fact #4:  Moses The Cat has only five teeth because he's had 25 teeth pulled. He's had this many teeth pulled because before I adopted him a year ago, he was very, very sick with multiple infections and illnesses, a condition also known as mostly dead. Even though none of his remaining teeth line up in pairs, this in no way affects his ability to energetically inhale his disgusting diabetes management dry food, where energetically inhale equals does this bench make my butt look big?

 

Yes. It. Does.

Alternate Zombie Fact: Zombies became a mainstay in modern horror fiction due in large part to the success of the 1968 film, Night of The Living Dead, which includes this famous scene:

"What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains!" (I'm not going to lie to you. I stole this saying off of a zombie t-shirt. But when you run into a zombie wearing a message t-shirt, you're going to remember what it says. TRUST ME.)

Feline Fun Fact #5:  Moses The Cat loves to laugh! Personal essays about exploding toilets and riddles about farts are among his favorite things.

 

Oddly enough? MORE HATS. Coincidence? Or blogging at its brilliant best? (No, NOT THE SECOND ONE. Obviously.)

Alternate Zombie Fact: A recent development in modern day zombie films and literature is that zombies can now run. Uh-oh.

Feline Fun Fact #6: Moses The Cat purrs every single time you touch him and sometimes when you just look at him. Because Moses The Cat feels the love.

Besides purring, Moses The Cat also expresses his love by drooling, rubbing his face against yours and making poops that are only slightly stinky.

Alternate Zombie Fact: The only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain. Zombie experts (I have no idea) recommend using either an M1 carbine or a machete and aiming for the cerebellum. Hey. I've got a suggestion for a way less messy way of destroying a zombie's brain: Make him read this blog post.

And there you have it, everyone –– the conclusion of today's requested installment of Some Blogging About My Cat! And in case I wasn't clear enough, I could not possibly love Moses The World's Most Awesome and Spectacular Cat any more than I do now, because I swear if I did I would totally burst. Which, if you think about it, would just make it that much easier for the zombies to eat me.

And in additional conclusion? THIS:

 

Oh, good grief. This is just totally absurd at this point.

* * * * * * * * * *

P.S. to MC:  You are welcome.

This Quasi-Post Defines Both "Highly Successful" And "Borderline Obsessive" (It Also Has Drunk People In It!)

Hi, loyal "Um...What??" readers! Today's post isn't so much a post as it is a memo that serves the purpose of taking care of a little housekeeping business. HAHA! This serves no purpose! Why would I start that kind of thing now?? I wouldn't!

Before I get to my point (heh), I'd like to throw out a special hello to our newest reader dsbs42 who, if she's visiting here today, is in all likelihood doing so in order to procrastinate some project she should be working on for school instead. This is exactly the same type of studying technique I employed when I was in college and now look: Today I have this highly successful blog! And by highly successful I mean I can't even get my own mother to leave a comment on it.

And speaking of comments, this brings us to the business at hand: I've updated the formatting for the comments you all leave on this blog. This change is the result of two things –– Typepad rolling out their new "Typepad Connect" profile feature AND (more importantly) the endlessly fascinating fact that you guys actually stop by here to visit AND THEN EVEN LEAVE COMMENTS WHEN YOU DO. (I used to think there was something wrong with you for doing this, but now I just think there is something wrong with you for doing this.) Time is precious and this blog is not and yet here you all are. If I could hug each of you and lick your faces, I would!

The new comment platform looks a lot like what most of you use on your Wordpress blogs. I'm hoping if you're so inclined, you might go ahead and sign up for a Tyepad profile to use when leaving your comments here. It would make this blog so much more personal and intimate and inter-connective and social and oh, I don't know. This is what Typepad is telling me, anyway. Mo's the first to create her profile because I made her asked her to and see?:

Isn't this nice? With her little picture and everything? (Mo: Queen of The Daily Snark.)

I'm hoping XUP might create a profile and then upload one of her sexy-slash-mysterious profile pictures where we can sorta see her while at the same time we absolutely can't see her at all. And maybe Debra will create a profile that'll include the first ever known online picture of herself so we can finally see what she looks like! (SHE WON'T.) Maybe Chris will create a profile with a picture of him and a figure model or him and a supermodel or him and some other naked-ish-type model. Like this one, maybe:

Sadly, I'm neither naked-ish OR a model. The crap poor Chris has to endure.

And seriously? This is also perhaps the worst picture ever taken of either one of us. So naturally I'm posting it online! DUH. All I know is my face is NOT that pointy and Chris's head is NOT that round and if I remember correctly, Maureen took this picture with Chris's camera which is, apparently, a funhouse camera. Why would he even HAVE a funhouse camera? (Plus? Chris accidentally cut off all his hair and I accidentally put on not one stitch of makeup and maybe we were already drunk before we left our houses??)

And since we're talking about comments? If you've been lurking around here for a while, I'm hoping maybe the new comment field will inspire you to finally come out of the shadows and introduce yourself because...okay, honestly, there's really no reason at all that it would. What if I told you there was going to be a giveaway and that the more you commented, the greater your chance would be of winning?  Well obviously that would be a big fat lie. There will never be any giveaways here! What do I look like? A blogger who does giveaways? I really have no idea. Although maybe I could just give away this whole stupid blog?? Anyway, according to my stats, there seem to be quite a few of you lurkers around and I'd love to know who you are. On the other hand I could be wrong and all my extra hits could really just be my friend MC clicking on this site like 200 times a day, which is probably the case now that I think about it because he TOTALLY loves me. In a borderline obsessive way, really. And by borderline obsessive I mean once he completely forgot I existed for almost a year. By the way, here's this blog's first posted picture of MC. I didn't ask his permission either, because that's the kind of blogger I am –– the kind the rules do not apply to:

 

Seriously? More girls?? Why the hell aren't there bunches of dudes everywhere I go??

Honestly though: MC does read this blog. And then offline he says cool things to me like, "That was funny!" or "I love the part where you said (insert brilliant thing that I said here)." (Brilliant/Stupid. Same thing. Semantics.) But you know if he ever actually leaves a real comment here, it'll be something along the lines of, "This is SH*T! No one would ever want to read this, right?"

That's. Right.

So go ahead –– sign up! It's totally easy (after all, I managed to do and it and so did Maureen) (HAHA! I'm just kidding...just because Mo is blonde doesn't mean anything!) and then you can commence commenting and making yourselves known! There won't be any cash or prizes, but I CAN promise you countless more useless "posts" like this one.

I'm The Tiger Woods of Bloggers! Unless It's Like Copyright Infringement Or Libel Or Something, In Which Case I'm Totally Not

If I have learned one thing from my blog stats, it's this: I seriously do not understand my blog stats.

Take this week, for example. This week my stats seem to indicate that, if given a choice between live animals and dead animals, you people would much rather read all about dead ones. Either I'm confused by the numbers and this is totally wrong, or you people are sick. Because after the whole dead lizard/dead bird post? MY STATS HAVE BASICALLY TRIPLED. Tripled.

Me: This is so exciting! I have rescued a super-cute doggy schmush face off the side of the road! Cute! Licky! Plays the kazoo!

You: Sound of snoring.

Me:  Hey! There are dead animals everywhere I look!

You: OH MY GOD!!! Click click click click page view page view page view page view click click click e-mail link to friends retweet click click page view TIMES A GAGILLION bookmark click click page view page view click click click click SMOKE COMING OUT OF BACK OF COMPUTER click page view click page view DEAD ANIMALS DEAD ANIMALS DEAD ANIMALS click click click click clickclickclickclickclick WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Okay. While I'm pretty sure this behavior isn't normal and I probably should be worried for your souls and whatnot -- I am nothing if not deeply invested in each and every one of you -- HELLO? TRIPLED BLOG STATS? It turns out I'm busy so you'll have to tend to your own eternal selves.

HA HA!! Who am I kidding? Caring about stats is for people who actually, you know, care about stats and anyway, what do I look like -- a statistician? Truthfully, I have no idea. Maybe! Are they hot looking? Oh, never mind. This doesn't have anything to do with my actual point here which, if I keep typing long enough, I'm sure I'm bound to remember sooner or later.

You:  Like maybe now?

Me:   Blank staring.

        Excessive blinking.

        Eventual light napping coupled with slight drooling.

        COMA.

Me:  (17 hours later):  OH! I remember! BUSTER! (Keep reading. CHRIS.) I have an update on Buster who is very much alive. Which makes me happy because I am a normal person who prefers my animals with a pulse. Learn from me. But don't worry. I've got you all covered, so just stick with me through the end of this post and you won't be sorry.

First, my Buster update. Remember this illustration?:

         

Well here's the real thing:

This is seriously the most awesome thing I've seen in as long as I can remember, where the most awesome thing equals THE MOST AWESOME THING.

Unless, of course, it's this:

              
 Or maybe this:
        

 

That's right: This blog post is all about A-LIVE Buster and his happy ending! My blog stats can just suck it -- big deal! Plus, to be perfectly honest, I'm not completely convinced that lower stats aren't better. What if blogging is like golf? Lowest score wins! Maybe I am the Tiger Woods of bloggers? Should blog wearing green blazer?

Regardless of how amazing I look in a blazer (think "professional" meets "sexy" where professional means sexy and sexy means even sexier), the moment M's mom told me how much it meant to her that I'd given her son the amazing gift of a best friend to grow up with (because that is what Buster and M have quickly become), I realized that if I do nothing else in my life that makes any kind of a difference, I've managed to do one thing in my life that's made a big kind of difference.

And second (because yes, there was a "first" -- it was just a while ago because SOMETIMES I GET SIDETRACKED...SO WHAT??? This isn't English class and anyways, if it was? A++++ for me!) I have this for you -- in case near-negative stats ARE bad (not that I care, but sometimes when I think about it, I get afraid Typepad or maybe the government will make me shut down my blog on account of it creates a GIANT BLACK-HOLE VORTEX OF USELESS SPACE ON THE INTERWEBS, except of course, for the days it's filled with DEAD ANIMALS) and also because I am here to make you happy, death-infatuated faithful readers:

 

There. Happy?? Good! I will most likely burn in hell, but don't worry about that.

Seriously though. Who would draw something like this? And who are the other nine people who downloaded it before I did? Oh, like I don't already know it's YOU GUYS.

Next time? Stay tuned for BARBEQUED BUNNIES.

Oh dear god OF COURSE THERE WON'T BE ANY BARBEQUED BUNNIES. Not next time or ever. Get. Some. Help.