Well. Canada. Vancouver, to be precise. I always think that I’m going to a very benign place that could have been America had the proper butterfly been smushed by the proper dinosaur during the Jurassic Period.

But it is never that benign place. I am always surprised to find that it is indeed a foreign country (and my next place of residence should W. get re-elected).

Mr. Husband and I did it up ultra deluxe cheap-ass style. “But it’s a remodeled HoJo,” I said to myself, flipping through the “Inexpensive” hotel section in Frommer’s. “But hydrogen is sooo floaty,” said the makers of the Hindenburg.

It turns out that HoJo’s definition of “suite” is something smaller than my bathroom. The downtown area we stayed in is…gentrifying, to put it nicely. Parking was, of course, non-existent, and required frequent trips to the meter. Which involved stepping over people who decided even to forgo the 8-dollar-a-night YMCA that was down the street. Or stepping around very friendly hos who wanted to pat my daughter and tell me how cute she was, every time. And the way our room smelled, man. I thought that someone had sprayed some of that very aggressive ol’ lady perfume, you know, like Giorgio or Red or Liz Claiborne or something right before we checked in.

“Well,” I told Mr. Husband, ever optimistic, “we will leave the window open and have some dinner and come back and it will be gone.” After eating and hitting Chinatown, which is one-stop shopping for pressed duck, bamboo ear cleaners, and psychotic amounts of Hellooooo Kitty tchochkes (confession: I barely restrained myself from buying a overpriced Sweet Hamu pen with a little jewel dangly, oh God, how I love Sweet Hamu) we returned to our room. It still reeked.

As it turned out, there was a secret “air freshener” somewhere in the room, and housekeeping wouldn’t divulge its location.

“Oh my Jeazus,” said Mr. Husband.

“Me too,” I said. We looked at each other and nodded. After six years, you do not need to discuss a hotel walkout.

“I’ll get our money back,” he said.

“I’ll pack up.”

The Ramada (motto: “36% Better Than Howard Johnson’s”) across the street did us a little better. You could, if you chose, swing a dead cat around in it, and the smell was closer to Old Potpourri than Scary Grandma.

On a POSITIVE note (this is the only place I will say ANYTHING positive in this whole story) the Aquarium kicked the llama’s ass. And, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, there is a store in Vancouver called The Gay Mart. The name alone beats the fucking gaylordy pants offa Seattle’s The Pink Zone. I’m sorry but it’s true.

When we came back we got caught up in a Brazillian vortex of epic proportions, involving various hotel-induced credit card freezes. I went to the bank, clutching my birthday checks that were about to be converted into food.

Me, at the grocery store bank branch: “Gimmie some damn money.”

Antoine, “Personal Banker,” quietly: “Uhhh…did you realize you’re overdrawn?”

Me, expecting to hear some trifling amount: “How much?”

Antoine: “Uhhh…A hundred and fifty.”

Me: *whimper*

I left, without groceries, to meet with my accountant. After many phone calls, we figured out that both hotels had frozen money in our account, leaving us shit out of luck. My accountant drove us back to the store, to demand my birthday money back from Antoine.

My Personal Banker told us to “bounce” a check to the grocery store. “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Antoine, “but they just came to pick up the checks. I can’t do anything for you. I suggest you write a check, if you’re certain those freezes are going to fall off.”

So the hotels have a vice grip on imaginary money for FIVE DAYS, even though we didn’t even STAY in one of the hotels, and the other one was paid in full, in cash when we checked out.

The moral is to buy a yurt and never go anywhere, and burn your own feces for fuel. This is one of those nights where I wish I could resurrect fucking Franz Kafka and fuck his fucking brains out, because he was such a genius, you know what I mean?

In Other News

I am twenty-five today.

I start my blog again…and then I leave. I am off to B.C. for the weekend, for rest and relaxation that will involve schlepping along textbooks and a gabillion toddler accessories.

Some people think that you don’t become an adult until you’ve crossed that final barrier, passed the torch, etc., etc., ad nauseam, and have SPAWNED.

But I think that children are perhaps Barbie replacements? I had about twenty Barbies and they all had various costume and accessory needs that were only SOLD SEPARATELY. I had the Barbie Horse, which needed a Barbie Horse Trailer, which was towed about the kitchen by the Barbie RV. I even had a Barbie that winked one of her big blue eyelids when you mashed a giant button in the middle of her back.

I had a hand-me-down set of Donny and Marie dolls and a Ken doll who my friend humiliated by taping a pen cap to his No-No place and leaving him for my bewildered mother to find later.

I have taped things to my daughter, but that is besides the point. The point is that all of Frannie’s little accessories are fucking sold separately (booster seats, pom-pom hats, vaccinations, and so on) and it doesn’t matter how much stuff you buy her, she keeps needing more.

I think there’s probably a market for parents who would like to save up, or take out a loan, and buy One Giant Pack of Shit For Baby (“Baby” not included). You rent a storage locker and choose between “boy” or “girl,” lay out the 100 grand (or whatever it is nowadays to raise a kid) and you get a giant shrink-wrapped pack of everything from diapers to sippy cups to Baby’s First Birth Control, so I don’t have to stay awake and fucking worry about her fourteen years from now. You could visit the storage locker once a year, and get that year’s set of clothes, books, potty chair, etc.

I think this could catch on…we prepackage everything else, right?

Alright, I’m out.

So you say it’s Monday night, and you’ve got nothing better to do? Don’t want to call your pallys up and invite them to get all shitty because the beginning of the week is “drinking-in-secret night?” Well, my chocolate-coated nougat dolphins, have I got a surprise for YOU.
We at the offices of I, Asshole proudly present:

The 7th Heaven Drinking Game!

What? You’ve never heard of 7th Heaven? Well, it’s only the highest-rated show on the WB. Wha…? You’ve NEVER HEARD OF THE WB? Well, fuck you and your self-righteous, non-TV watching friends, you Commie.
For the rest of us, there’s 7th Heaven (which happens to be on Mondays), and secret drinking. Woo!

The Rules

Have a drink whenever any or all of these things occurs:

-They play the theme song. Really, have a drink, you deserve it. It’s ear-bleedingly bad, I know.

-Whenever the twins do/say something dreadfully cutsie, a la the Olson Twins on Full House.

-Whenever the oldest son, Matt (played by Barry Watson, who must be pushing 40 by now), shows up with annoying new Oasis-esque hair, or shakes the old hair around like he’s got the damn D.T.s.

-Whenever a commercial break occurs, and they show one of the WB station/show IDs. They always sex up the older teens, put them in glammy clothes, and turn industrial fans on them full-blast so their hair blows around. I wonder if this is in their contract? “We will sex up you, the undersigned, for station IDs, though on the show you will appear in innocent clothes more suitable to your fifteen-year-old character.” Oh, well. I said, DRINK!

-When the youngest daughter, Ruthie, says something so precocious you want to strangle the piss out of her.

Take two drinks when any of following occurs:

-The father, Reverend Camden (who was awesome in Star Trek, the Motion Picture, don’t deny it), looks up at the ceiling and says “thank you.” Get belligerent and throw the bottle at the screen; why do people on TV always act like God lives on the ceiling?

-The mother, Annie, flips out because of her psycho-menopause hormones and bitches the Rev out. Highly entertaining.

-The cross-eyed boy flubs one of his lines and his eyes cross. Beautiful! What must it be like to be the only non-freakishly attractive youth on the WB? Ponder this as you have your second shot.

-Whenever the whole family appears in church sitting in the front row, trussed up like prize pigs and smiling like they wouldn’t rather be wanking or bumping rails off a hooker’s ass. Take an additional drink if the Rev’s sermon is inspired by a problem the family’s been struggling with for the whole hour.

The following category is for advanced drinkers ONLY:

-Anytime a character meddles with another character’s life by eavesdropping, passing on gossip, or giving a character unsolicited advice.

-Whenever the blonde, “troubled” son says something surly.

-Whenever you catch yourself staring, enraptured, at Jessica Biel’s rack, instead of following the dialogue.

C’mon, people. What’ve you got to do that’s so interesting on a Monday night, anyway? Read? HAW! Join me in front of the tube as I swear, twiddle the bunny ears, and finish off a half-empty bottle of Monarch Vodka.

Confidential to the 1 million sorority girls who attend the University of Washington:

1. When ALL of you dump on all of that stinky ho juice you insist on wearing, and you all gather together in a big gaggle to titter at passers-by, you collectively smell like a WHOREHOUSE.

2. You know those cutey lil sweaters that are so in fashion right now, that usually come to mid-thigh and tie at the waist like something out of Klute? Well, when you wear them over toob tops and mini skirts that barely cover your labia, you look STOOPID. And when you close the sweaters, because it’s too fucking cold to be wearing ho clothes in the autumn, you look NAKED.

3. What is with the hair, anyway? You all have the same hairdo right now- it’s all sort of flipped up around your head, like you got permanently caught in some kind of wind tunnel. I would say it also looks stoopid, but it would be redundant because if you’re styling your hair to look like you got caught in bad weather, I think your hairdo speaks for itself.

I could go on, about asymmetrically-sleeved shirts, and artificially faded jeans, and the fact that you CAN’T! BUY! PUNK! CLOTHES! AT! THE! FUCKING! MALL! but I think I’ve said enough.

Back to our regularly scheduled program…

I got my first piece of fan mail yesterday, which is pretty good considering I just started this page yesterday. I reprint it in its unedited entirity, for your viewing pleasure:

(Ahem)

“Hey you asshole faggot!

Noone wants to hear about your pervy sex life! People like you should go fuck them selves or put up pictures so we can see what kind of faggoty shit your talking about. Dickbrain.”

Well! Someone’s Mother was certainly asleep on manners duty, wasn’t she? I can’t tell if the writer was insulting me further, or if “Dickbrain” is some kind of signature. I choose to believe the latter. At any rate, I think Dickbrain likes me! Hope to be hearing from you soon, Dickbrain! *Mwah*

Since my sex story was so unpopular, I am moving on…

Once, when I was eight, I was a hoodlum. I fell in with a group of kids who were somewhat older than me; the ringleader was the oldest girl, who was twelve. My parents moved us into this apartment in a slightly dicey part of town while they were building their dreamhouse out in the burbs, and our neighborhood was full of wild children who ran loose in the streets while their working-class parents earned them money for the newest cheap plaything that would break within a week. You get the picture.

My Mom decided I was too little to run unsupervised, so she retained the services of a lady with a little girl of her own in the adjoining apartment building to keep an eye on me during the day, which didn’t last very long. But while it did, I was kept safely inside the apartment courtyards.

This, however, did not keep the neighborhood’s child-marauders from getting to me. Everyday they came to play with me; perhaps they sensed I had a weak mind and could be easily won over to do their bidding; perhaps they genuinely liked me- I’ll never know. As each slow summer day passed, my allegiances transferred from the quiet domesticity of Mrs. M.— and her daughter Melissa, who was a fat, bossy, redheaded mini-tyrrant who held court over all of the children in the apartment building to the raggedy wild children who were free to come and go during the day.

Nights were a different story. Once my Mom came home from work, I was sprung from daycare and could pursue my spitting, swearing, and strutting lessons without being under the watchful eye of Mrs. M.— or any other adult. There was a construction site across the street from my apartment building; we stole their spray paints and decorated the underside of a nearby bridge. There was a convenience store across a busy street I was forbidden to cross; we crossed it and stole candy while one of us distracted the dozy clerk who always perched on a stool behind the counter. We got into fistfights, we threw rocks at cars, and we ran away when the cars stopped, all under the tutelage of our twelve-year-old fearless leader, Jenny.

She was always goading one of us smaller kids into doing something bad. She convinced me it was a good idea to get in a fight with a kid who was twice my size, just because he had called my stepfather a “Polack”. “It’s a matter of honor,” she said, shoving me forward to my doom. She also convinced me that putting cat poop in a bag and leaving it on the neighbor’s doorstep with a note that read “Have some Hershey’s Kisses” was the height of hilarity. She taught me how to “ding-dong ditch” and told me what a blowjob was. So I guess I wasn’t suprised when she decided I had to exact revenge on little redheaded Melissa, for the crime of being bossy. Jenny’s plan was that we should go antagonize her until she flipped out and said something that would justify what Jenny wanted me to do, which I wasn’t even sure of at that point.

We surrounded her; she didn’t have a chance. She was innocently playing jacks or some such innocuous game in front of her steps when we rounded up and started picking at her. I remember she was actually one of those sweet looking little girls whose mother keeps their hair in pigtails and is usually wearing an honest-to-God gingham dress. Melissa had her personality problems, but she didn’t deserve what happened next.

We taunted her and she faught back. Eventually, it was just one-on-one between her and I. She crossed that line and called me something like “fartface.” Well, that did it. Jenny got that evil, glittery look in her eyes that she usually had when she was scheming and said, calmly and quietly to me, “Go ahead Asshole, spit in her face.”

In that moment, the expression on Melissa’s face went from hate to terror. What did I do to deserve this? her eyes pleaded. But I was part of the festering organism that was the group, and was no longer capable of pity or reason. I reared back and hocked one square in the middle of her face but good.

At that moment, everyone froze. No one laughed or moved. Melissa unfroze a moment later; her lip quivered, which was followed by the collapse of her whole face as she ran into the relative safety of the apartment building. My last image of Melissa was of her crimson face turning away in shame with a big gob of my little kid spit running down it.

At the time I had no idea that that is the worst thing you can do to someone.

Two years later, after we moved away into our new glorious dreamhouse, my Mom ran into Jenny’s sister who was checking at the local Eagle. It seems she had gotten plowed by a car the summer after I left, while she was crossing the street that I wasn’t allowed to. I imagined that she was heading over to gank some candy, or otherwise ruin someone’s day.

Is this really better than hearing about sex? I guess I’ll let Dickbrain decide.