Fecking kids

The hills approximately point five miles from my apartment building have been ablaze most of the day. I work about 20 miles from there (YAH, my commute is laaaaaame), and I can see the huge plume of smoke from my window here on the 10th floor. Twenty miles away, people! See, look:

Apparently a couple of wayward teenagers turned themselves in to authorities in connection with the fire. I hope Officer McGruff, Smokey the Bear and... Hootie the Owl, or someone, seriously rough those kids up in the interrogation room back at the station. Wait, is Hootie the one with "give a hoot, don't pollute"? Or is he the one with the Tootsie Pop addiction? Whatever, send 'em all in there for some hard-core vigilante woodland creature-style justice. Fecking teenage feckfaces.

Defamer's coverage here.

LA Times coverage here if you're into, like, legit news sources.

Fox News coverage, if you want to hear how Al-Qaeda is a likely suspect. (Totally, totally kidding.) (Actually, they're claiming Barack Obama is responsible. HA! Got you again.)

It's so easy... writing for someone else

SO! In addition to my own poorly maintained blog, I've also started writing for my friend Sara's much better, much more life-affirming environmental blog, It's So Easy Being Green. I was so flattered and excited when she asked me, because in addition to being a great friend, I also have a lot of respect for her green campaign and for her awesome writing skillz. (With a z, obv.)

Plus, I'm finding that it's much easier to write something when I have a purpose, and someone expecting me to actually write. I have so many painfully boring drafts sitting unpublished in my own personal blog because a lot of times I feel terribly uninspired by my ho-humish life. But! Now I have an excuse to write about, like, THINGS. Things that I'm passionate about and enjoy researching.

Hopefully along the way I'll come up with things to write about here, too, since I've generally been really bad about it. 'Cause you know what I just remembered? Writing is fun! Wheeeee!

"You see, you have this MAT, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you can JUMP TO."

Over the weekend, a co-worker of mine was in a pretty bad snowboarding accident wherein he fecked up some vertebrae. He'll make it through, but I guess he's currently in a full body cast and will probably be out of work for several weeks.

Upon hearing this, my first thought was, "Luckyyyyy."

Return of the Lizard Lady

My face is falling off.

In chunks.

All over my desk, and the floor, and the front of my sweater. If I were eating right now, there would probably be face in my food.

My face is falling off due to my latest ploy to outsmart my acne. No... not acne, because I've graduated from acne. According to my dermatologist, because I'm an adult now (what! when??! no one asked me! it's a conspiracy! first I am too old for Urban Outfitters, now I am too old for acne!?), I don't have acne -- I have rosacea. OOOoooh, rozaaaayshaaahhhh. Doesn't it sound fancy and pretty? Don't you want to name your firstborn daughter Rosacea? DON'T DO IT. Because she will just be a big, dumb pimple with a pretty name.

Anyway, in an effort to trick my rozaaaaayshaaahhhhh into going away, I got a chemical peel on my face. I thought, "Hey! If I have someone peel my face off, maybe that will trick my pimples into thinking my face is gone for good. And then they will pack up their sebum and skedaddle off to a more appropriate, more pubescent home!" So I got this peel, which involved rubbing battery acid on my face. Which felt... burny. A lot burny. Except I didn't want to seem like a total sally to the lady inflicting the torture, so when she asked "how burny on a scale of 1 - 10" (8 point 5), I said, "Oh, a 4 or a 5" and also "THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!" Because, see how tough I am?

And now my face is falling off, and I look very much like a leper. But I'm trying not to let it bother me, because hopefully looking mildly diseased for a few days will be a small price to pay for (eventual) clear skin. Not that I am holding my breath. Because I've had crap skin for nigh on 15 years, and nothing has worked so far. Not taking vitamins, or drinking 40 gallons of water a day, or smearing toothpaste on my face, or antibiotics, or prayer, or Proactiv, or Noxema, or Clearasil, or changing birth control pills, or hating people with clear skin.

And, in fact, I lost my face once before. In junior high, my doctor put me on Retin-A. This caused my entire face to flake and peel pretty much constantly. And because I was in junior high and totally stupid, I took my flakey, peely face on my church youth group's water skiing trip. Which was crazytown, because Retin-A makes your skin really sensitive to things like sun and wind. So after a weekend of sunburn and windburn, I looked like a couple of alligators were getting busy on my face. And when the older, cooler high school boys (well, "cool" by church youth group standards) started calling me "Lizard Lady," I, in a highly uncharacteristic move for jr. high Becky, embraced it. I didn't cry or call my mom to pick me up. Whenever they called me Lizard Lady, I would pull my eyelids up, roll my eyes back into my head, and flick my tongue in and out of my mouth. Like... a lizard? I guess? I don't know, but apparently it made me just gross enough to be awesome.

So if you see me in the next couple days, just be all, "What's up Lizard Lady?" and I'll make my lizard face for you. And then we can hold hands around the campfire and sing songs about Jesus and cry for all of our friends who aren't Saved, and it'll be just like old times.