Alternate Title: One Nap at a Time

So I've been working on a novel I actually want to write for the last few weeks, and it's basically sucked my brain dry of any creative juices. But I don't want to neglect this here blog, as I have it on good authority that people do periodically stick their heads in to see if it's still alive.

It is. I promise.

So rather than try to write something original today, I've opted to bring back the ol' "as interpreted by..." fairy tale, which was last seen back in September. But this time, I'm tackling my favorite fairy tale of all time:

Sleeping Beauty

as interpreted by Kimberly "Snoozin' Kinda Pretty If You Squint Hard Enough" Welsh

Once upon a time, there was benevolent king who was beloved by all his subjects with the notable exception of an evil witch because hey! You can't please all the people all the time. Also the witch hated anybody being happy for any reason. She was like the religious right of the Middle Ages, except she did believe in science. But what they called "science" back then was actually alchemy, which turned out to be a total load of horsecrap when it came right down to it. ANYHOO! One day the queen announced she was pregant, and since Wendy's drive-thrus hadn't been invented yet, the king knew he was up a creek without a paddle when she started getting cravings! He decided to appease her by promising to hold the First Known Baby Shower once the kid was born, and the entire kingdom was invited *PROVIDED EVERYBODY BROUGHT PRESENTS*.

So the catering staff was summoned and some nice finger foods were laid out and all the king's subjects poured into the main hall bearing gifts under threat of death. FACT: if you don't have a volcano for your subjects to appease, a pregnant woman is the next best thing. It was a joyous occasion and the queen was thrilled with all her gifts, even the duplicates, because everyone had brought the receipt so she could exchange those for store credit at Heir Apparents to the Throne 'Beith' Us. Mostly it was just cute bibs and flannel footsie pajamas (because castles are very drafty), but the king had wisely asked some magical fairies to act as godparents and they gave her some bitchin' stuff! The only real hiccup was when one of the fairies wanted to grant her "the gift of beauty", and the queen was all "What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?" and the fairy was like "Nothing! I'm just sayin'. She'll just be even more beautiful!" But the queen was like "Whatever. I know what you meant." Luckily the king was wise in many things, so he said, "Give the kid a break, dear. She has my hideously bulbous nose!", which was a good point, so the queen backed off. It looked to be a glorious day indeed, but some people just CANNOT leave it alone so of course the evil witch showed up.

She burst into the main hall and shoved past the last fairy to give the newborn princess her "gift", which was a actually A CURSE (oh snap! see what she did there?) that would cause the child to die by pricking her finger on a spindle, thereby creating the first known case of hemophilia. But the last fairy had yet to take her turn, so she distracted the evil witch by tearing off her weave, then rushed forward to half-reverse the curse so the child would only fall into a deep sleep rather than dying, because we can't be killing off the title character, now can we? Even J.K. Rowling knows that. The fairy declared that the princess would only awaken to a prince's kiss, which says a lot about women's rights in this era, since everyone is basically agreeing that unless she has a boyfriend, there's no point in her ever waking up again.

After the party, the king made another wise decision to outlaw spindles throughout the kingdom and everyone wisely complied. Well, everyone except this one old lady because she was hard of hearing and the Sonic Ear also hadn't been invented yet. Occasionally someone would tell her she was supposed to get rid of her spindle, but she would just yell, "'EY? WHAT'S THAT, SONNY? I'M SUPPOSED TO GET FREUD'S THE EGO AND THE ID FOR MY KINDLE? IT'S THE 16TH CENTURY, NUMBNUTS!" Frankly, by this point the people had grown tired of "hasn't been invented yet" jokes, so they just left her to get arrested and executed. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the old lady lived and worked in a tower within the castle for reasons that the Brothers Grimm didn't bother to explain so why should I? The point is: after her sixteenth birthday the princess was wandering through the halls looking for her bauble or whatever rich kids do, and she saw the old lady spindling(?) So she stuck her head in the door...

"Pardon me, old hag, what is that?," she asked.

"I DON'T HAVE YOUR STUPID HAT!," barked the old woman. "LEAVE ME ALONE! I'M TRYNNA USE MY SPINDLE!"

"Oh!," said the princess. "A 'spindle', you say? May I try?" She stepped forward and motioned toward the machine in an effort to make herself understood.

"YOU WANNA DO IT?" The old woman shrugged. "YEAH SURE WHY NOT." So the young lady took her place at the spinning wheel, but just as she reached out for it, she pricked her finger and passed out. The old woman panicked and hobbled to the window calling, "HELP! HELP! OH, HELP! ALSO: I DIDN'T DO IT!" So every quack in the country was summoned to treat the unfortunate girl, but the king was wise enough to recognize that trepanning and leeches weren't the way to go here. Instead, it was decided that the entire castle should be put to sleep in order to spare them the pain of going on without their princess. The king's loyal subjects, who never really saw the princess on a daily basis, politely agreed to this plan because they were too nice to point out that they would be perfectly fine going about their lives without her spoiled little butt using up all their tax dollars to buy more baubles. So the people were gathered once more in the castle, and the kind fairy godmother magically installed flat screen televisions in every room so she could play a Grey's Anatomy DVD. Soon everyone was fast asleep.

Many years went by, and before long literally every major character on Grey's Anatomy had slept with every other major character, such that it was now only a "medical" drama in the sense that everybody had a venereal disease. In the meantime, a handsome prince came through the nearby forest with his hunting party, but he drew to a halt as he got close to the castle.

"Hark!," he said to his entourage. "Do you hear that? It sounds like... Yes, it sounds like a series of unrealistically attractive people whining about their love lives in a hospital! But I can't...quite...make it out..." He craned his neck further toward the castle. "It's being partially drowned out...by snoring! By Heaven, I would swear someone up on that hill is suffering from sleep apnea!," he shouted. He grabbed his medieval CPAP machine and raced up the hill at a canter to rescue the snoring victim and also to find out what had happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Arriving inside the castle, he was shocked to find room upon room of sleeping peasants and servants. The stillness was eery, and he had to hold mirrors to their faces to check that they were breathing. After some time, he came upon a room where only one person slept - a beautiful princess who appeared to be roughly his age (she'd been asleep a hundred years but it's really true that sleep keeps you young!). Thinking back on a letter he'd read in an issue of Ye Olde Cathaus, he decided to try to make out with her. He leaned over her gilded bed and pressed his lips softly to hers.

Suddenly her eyes opened and she sat bolt upright, banging her forehead into his.

"OW!," he yelled. "That hurt!"

"Well well well," she said, wiping his spit from her face, "If it's not the Handsome Pervert! I was ASLEEP! Do I even know you? GUARDS!"

At that very moment, the last episode of Grey's Anatomy played on the DVD and it went back to the menu screen. The sound of the same two bars of theme music repeating over and over annoyed the sleeping masses into wakefulness, and they heard the princess's cries of distress. Within minutes, the whole of the kingdom had come to her aid, and the prince was being dragged down to the dungeon, where he would be made to inscribe his name on the First Known Sex Offender Registry. Meanwhile, the fairy godmother rushed back to the castle to make sure everything was OK. When she arrived, she magically created Listerine because HELLO KINGDOM-WIDE MORNING BREATH, and they all lived happily every after.

THE END

Kimberly Welsh Must Be Stopped.

If any of you sees Kimberly Welsh, could you please pound her stupid face in for me? Thanks.

I know what you're thinking. You're all like, "WHHAAAAAAT? But you're Kimberly Welsh!" And to that I say, "I KNOW RIGHT?!?!" But sadly there are a lot of people who don't know, and therein lies the problem. Because it is often said that the only thing you have in this life is your good name. And mine has been stolen.

I don't mean it's been "identity-theft" stolen (not recently, anyway), but I mean I have a name-doppelgängerin, and she is a law-breakin', bill-not-payin' MACHINE! I know this because I started getting friendly phone calls for her in the first month I lived in my condo. This period in my life is also referred to as "That Time I Spent 4 Straight Weeks Walking Around Wild-Eyed Screaming 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?'" Homeownership was not an easy transition for me. Just to paint you a picture: my cat tore the blinds down in my bedroom within an hour of moving in. On the first night, the smoke alarm malfunctioned, which is why I ended up standing on a chest of drawers trying to knock if off the wall with a broom (I succeeded). The next morning, the cat perched himself atop a box, which was sitting beside an open box full of measuring cups and other cookware...and then he puked directly into the box with the measuring cups and cookware. On my way to the kitchen to wash cat puke from my cookery, I noticed that the ratio of ants to food in my dog's bowl was approximately "so many ants that you can no longer see the food". That afternoon, I heard a strange noise and realized that the microwave had turned itself on and was gleefully heating itself up, completely empty, as it continued to do every few hours until I finally just unplugged it.

In other words: things weren't going well at 7pm, when I received my very first phone call on my shiny new phone and a VERY angry VERY pushy person wanted to know how and when I intended to pay off the balance on my Sears card, which I had incurred by purchasing a $2,000 sofa over a year ago. This confused me, because:

1. Do I look like a person who buys furnitureat Sears? I have no need for a Craftsman sofa.

2. Do I look like would rack up $2,000 of debt for anything other than pizza, Midori, or eyeliner? Girl, please.

I was even more confused when the person on the phone insisted that I was definitely the person he wanted to talk to. The issue was only finally resolved when I gave him the last 4 digits of my social security number, thereby confirming that there are, in fact, multiple (2) Kimberly Welshes living in this town. 

In the intervening years, as that Sears card debt has been passed from shady collection agency to shady collection agency, and they have taken turns calling me every 3-5 days, threatening to take a baseball bat to my kneecaps. Over a sofa. From Sears. I've learned that when they say, "Are you Kimberly Welsh?", the correct answer is, "I am a Kimberly Welsh, but I doubt I'm the one you're looking for." And then I take the earliest opportunity to do my SSN trick and escape, Houdini-like, from their bullying nonsense. (Sidenote: Seriously - those bad debt collection agencies are SHA. DY. The government should do something about them, as soon as they're done beating the living crap out of the credit reporting agencies, but that's another issue.)

I never understand why they call me. The debt is now at least 5 years old, and she has evaded them this long.  Do these people genuinely think they're the first ones to search her name in a phone listing? Why has no one thought of this before? Do you really think that after all this time, it's as simple as calling that number? Really? Do some work, lazyface. 

But this isn't nearly as perplexing as the one (and only) (knock on wood) time I got pulled over. I had allegedly rolled through a stop sign, but it's very a much a he said/she said, to be honest. Anyway, I dutifully gave the officer my license and waited patiently for him to run my information. When he returned to the car, he said, AND I QUOTE, "I thought I was going to have to arrest you." And I thought, "Wow. They're really cracking down on rolling stops on barely-trafficked surface streets." He continued, "I ran your name, and there's a warrant out for your arrest." And I thought, "Damn overdue library books!" And then he said, "Yep, you're wanted for...

[WAIT FOR IT]

driving without a license."

Pause.

"But, um, sir...you're holding my license. That's my license. Right there. In your hand."

"I know. That's how I figured there's a different Kimberly Welsh..."

"Oh you have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!"

So please. If you are on Team Law-Abiding Bill-Paying Licensed-Driver Kimberly Welsh, and you know someone who can put their hands on Law-Breaking Deadbeat Pain in My Ass Kimberly Welsh, yank her deadbeat butt of that Craftsman sofa and turn her in to the authorities. 

The Case of the Jolly Green Giant Marital Aid

Tonight we start a new recurring feature. While the other recurring features such as John of the Week, Not Very Nice Quizzes, and Kwerky Poetry Corner are all pleasant, fun, and/or life-affirming, this particular feature will be in a separate category altogether. And this category will be known as "Recurring Features I Wish Didn't Exist At All, But I Am Powerless to Prevent Their Existence Because Other People Have No Consideration Whatsoever". Allow me to paint you a picture:

You buy a home. One of the things you like most about your new home is the lovely view. In fact, this gorgeously landscaped pool view is so pretty that your home was ever so slightly pricier than its neighbors, owing to its lovely view. But shortly after you move in, you come home from work, go to enjoy your lovely view, and find that your window looks out over...a landfill. 

Welcome to my life.

You see, the average American household generates over 13 tons of trash every week, according to a wildly exaggerated© statistic I just made up. Those of us that are civilized human beings generally pack our trash into specially designed "trash bags", which we then convey to the nearest dumpster, or to the curb to be picked up by specially trained trash-disposing professionals. But my upstairs neighbors are no ordinary civilized human beings! They don't have TIME for "trash bags" and "dumpsters" and "doing anything with their trash other than hurling it over their balcony so it lands on mine". I mean, I estimate that it takes me *maybe* 5 minutes to bag my trash and walk it to the dumpster, so the fact that they don't have that kind of time leads me to the inevitable conclusion that these people are mere seconds away from curing HIV, or making contact with extraterrestrials, or inventing a calorie-free sweetener that doesn't dry your mouth out. They are IMPORTANT, dammit! Let someone ELSE worry about their trash! Someone like ME! 

I've let this go on for quite some time. I really don't want to confront these people, as the sounds I hear coming from their home lead me to believe that in addition to whatever life-saving research they do, they are also either Olympic shot-putters, expert meth chefs, or some combination of those. I want no part of that exchange. Over the months, some of their refuse, such as the beef blood-stained paper towel, have been cleared away by Mother Nature. But the rest hasn't. And today I walked through my door, looked out the window, saw the most ridiculously egregious thing yet, and said, "Right. It's all going in the trash." I waited til nightfall, dashed out under cover of darkness, and recovered it. Is this insanity? Yes. Is this my job/responsibility? Absolutely not. But if I have to do it (and I clearly do, because I'm not going to keep looking out my window at someone else's trash, and no one else is going to come get it), then I'm going to have some fun at their expense.

Random Trash My Upstairs Neighbors Saw Fit to Throw Over Their Balcony So I Have to Look at It

Exhibit A: The Big Green Dildo

This thing appeared just outside my balcony about a year ago. A long, green, hollow plastic cylinder. The first time I saw it, I was horrified. It was the biggest, greenest, most oddly shaped marital aid I'd ever seen in my life. I shuddered to think what weird Kermit fantasies were being indulged just above my head.

Now that I've brought it inside, I can see that it says "DOGSAVERS", and is therefore probably (hopefully) just a dog toy. Still, there are a few standard-issue questions we need to ask.
#1: How did it get tossed over the balcony?
This dog barks incessantly. I don't think it's a particularly bad dog, but I don't get the impression that they like it very much. Thus do we logically conclude that they threw the dildo dog toy over the balcony in the hope that the dog would chase it and fall to its death. Inconsiderate AND evil.

#2: Why did it get tossed over the balcony?
This has basically already been answered in #1, but we could also consider some other possibilities. For example, maybe it was just old and they didn't want it anymore. Maybe they did use it as a sex toy and were so disgusted with themselves that they couldn't look at it anymore. Maybe it was shot-putting practice and someone didn't know their own strength. Or maybe they just didn't know the strength of gravity. Or maybe - just maybe - they were too damn lazy to dispose of it appropriately.

#3: Why haven't they tried to get it back?
I always wonder about this one. Do they wander through like periodically saying, "Hey - has anybody seen the DOGSAVERS dildo? I swear I haven't been able to find it in months!"? Or did they stand there, watch it go tumbling over the railing, shrug their shoulders, and go back to bubbling hydrogen chloride gas through their liquid meth mixture?


They have to know it's gone; they just don't want it back. It's clearly been used in a homicide, and they had to ditch the evidence. Somewhere out there is a John Doe in a county morgue, riddled with 1-inch diameter circular welts, stinking of dog spit, covered in bludgeon marks embossed with the word DOGSAVERS. These people are not messing around. That's the kind of person who throws their trash over their balcony and walks away. DON'T BE LIKE THAT.