The Sleeping Beauty Question

All too many of us women secretly want to be woken out of our fog by an arriving prince there to rescue. It’s not that we don’t have plenty of greatness on our own; it’s that we’re built to relate and connect, which just can’t be fulfilled fully solo. Lest ye princes rush out to purchase white stallions and satin riding pants, here are some tips and tricks to enticing we awaiting damsels:

+ If we are actually asleep, you will need to wake us up. Things that are aromatic include freshly cut roses, your armpits after gallivanting all that way, and pickles. Pickles are edible, which is a plus.

+ Don’t make fun of our sleeping gown. You haven’t been around; why should we have laundered it? Yes, those are tomato sauce stains. Fuck off. Wait, no—not really.

+ We know you think it’s ridiculous to come bearing gifts, or at least requires at least fifteen minutes of your time when you could be playing video games or trading on the stock market, but it’s kind of important. We’re letting you into our house. We’re wearing our tomato stained sleeping gown, which you have to admit is a little revealing. You’re the prince.

+ If you expect us to have really long hair, you have been reading too many comic books. We got split ends. We had no choice but to trim. Sometimes we use a curling iron, but mostly we shower at the gym and hope it dries okay on the car ride back. We might be trapped in a tower, but we still have a car. We effectively talked the salesman down from the sticker price.

+ Just because you show up and kiss us awake and we like you and everything doesn’t mean we’re going to suffocate you and expect you to call every five minutes. We have things to do too, you know. Like keep away witches. And try not to get trapped in glass boxes again. Or spend too much time with dwarves.

+ Feel glad. There were other princes, and they didn’t even know how to scale a small brush to get to us, if you know what we mean. Or they bungled in and we pretended to be the asleep princess that’s actually dead. It worked—we fooled them. We made your job super easy knowing we’d get no credit, and you’d possibly get freaked out that we responded to you at all, even though you were the one who brought the horse and the big sword.

+ We’re royalty. We like velvet. Stuff ends happily.

Toast Puppet Multiplies

One minute, you're making a puppet of a toast ancestor; the next minute, you're at your friend Aaron's house making a silkscreen template of that same toast. In this lean economy, perhaps it makes all the sense in the world to cover your dresses with prints of food. You will soon recognize me by your desire to slather me with butter.

Winner of My Pony Drawing Contest

Who else could have drawn me such a fantastic horse in one penstroke with his left hand? Once a star, always a star...I love you.

Gabriel Bram Byer
1/19/70-5/20/08

Cures Recommended by the Internet

Thanks to holistic practitioners with DSL, we now no longer need to go to medical doctors, read books, or call our mothers when bodily woes creep up on us. Instead, there is a wealth of knowledge at the ready, simply by knowing what fad keywords to enter into Google. You too can fix yourself in a few short steps! Here are some examples of cures recommended by the Internet:

+ The Watermelon Cleanse. This fixes your kidneys. If you don’t know what kidneys are, they are beans inside of your body. I don’t know how they got there (maybe burritos). All you have to do for the cleanse is sit all day in a bathtub filled with water. You continuously eat two big melons and pee. Stones of all sizes come out, so hopefully you know a good jeweler.

+ The Water of Life Cure. Also known as the “Golden Fountain,” this cure is also about urine, but substituted for watermelon in your mouth. But instead of urine in your mouth and watermelon in your bathtub, there’s no watermelon in your bathtub. Basically you are drinking your own pee. Apparently this makes you feel connected to your true self, resolves mineral imbalances, and gives you something to talk about when you someday meet Madonna or some of the people on the Internet.

+ The Lemonade Diet. This sounds like another name for the “Water of Life Cure,” but it is actually lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup, and water mixed and set on repeat for ten solid days. Supposedly you will fix your metabolism, flush out old toxins, and be recognizable to grocery checkout employees in southern California. If you wonder whether you’ll end up more like the dancing lemon on the cover of the books or like Beyonce, who once employed the diet, the answer is that there is no dancing lemon. You are just hungry.

Hygenowang

And now for my FOX Reality Channel debut on Hulu: Hygenowang. I sniff crotch dressed like a Kennedy. Thanks, Team Tiger Awesome!

Behold, As a Grown Woman Takes Career Encouragement from an Online Word Game

Floaty Pen Oracle Self-Doubts

And yet you are employed daily. Let this be a lesson to all. (Good session FP...that'll be $200 for the 50 minute hour.)

Toast Puppet Says

Exactly. This oracle is bullshit. Its answer to everything is "I am very crispy!" On the other hand, this is what you get for placing your future actions in the hands of a puppet claiming to be the ancestor of some toast you ate.

My Day As Told to Facebook

I am in a shuttlebus full of twins.
x Are you on your way to Target? No, it's 6 A.M.
x Are you in Doublemint Gum hell? If it were set at an elementary school.
x Were you also given a twin? Silence. I am unsure.

I am watching a six year old make nine times more money than me.
x And the award for the most cryptic and vaguely frightening status updates of the day goes to. We are in a park converted to look like another park. She's wearing purple glasses. Her line is "Daddy, Daddy, Daaaddy!"

I am hanging out with a poodle with very large nipples.
x It's true, but it also had to be said.
x Maybe you've seen that dog of late, just east of Hollywood.
x Not to spread rumors, but that dog gets around.

A rabbi, a midget; and everyone thinks they've met me before.
x Are you trying to induce nightmares? No, but are the rabbi and midget?
x Baby shark fetus? That was another joke, unrelated.
x I didn't mention this, but the midget could do a Pantene commercial, her hair was so shiny.

Deaf men can be paparazzi too.
x They have cameras.

The German Translation

I feel you, Zeug. And what great heights you will someday rise to, when Zahnstocher is busy resting on its laurels, or cleaning someone's teeth, as the case may be.

w/r/t

I received an email from my friend Josh today that included the abbreviation "w/r/t." This usually stands for "with regard to," but let's not overlook the fact that Josh is a genius web designer, has a cool haircut, and hangs out with a cat named Trouble. He could have things up his sleeves. He could be making other meanings. The following is a compilation of the possible phrases and questions to live by that Josh may have meant:

+ Western revelation: toothpicks.
+ Whose reactive turkey?
+ Wilderness retreats tank.
+ Wither, rakeless tree!
+ Why return togas?
+ When regurgitating: teepees.

iSpam: Advice Column

Yet another helpful email from "me" to me arrived in my spam folder today. The subject read "Give Squish Mittens Due Attention." Fabulous! I was running out of euphemisms. And thanks to Gmail, I don't need to open it to know how the email begins: "It will make girl evaluate your rod..." Now that's an advice column if I've ever heard of one.