All right, Internet. I have a question.

This is probably going to make me hideously unpopular with the Internet, but I have to know. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH BEARS? And while I'm at it, I might as well ask what the deal is with SHARKS and DOLPHINS, too.

As you can see from my Goodreads widget at right, I read eeeee eee eeee! by Tao Lin. I haven't read too many other books this year, mostly because I'm afraid they'll ALSO be about bears, dolphins, and sharks. As you can guess from my intermittent posting, I am the sort of person who is only vaguely aware of things that happen on late-night television. If something particularly awesome is on late-night, I try to find it on the intertubes the next day. Although I know that Stephen Colbert has it out for bears, I can't for the life of me figure out why. And don't say that it's because they're vicious mauling machines/culturally relevant/begging for it. That's just ridiculous.

Who started all this hubbub about bears, and WHY?

Okay. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I wanted to tell you that my band Machines on Vacation is playing a show tonight at the Velvet Lounge in DC. As always, we're DC's premier string quartet rock band. Give us a listen, then come out to the show! We have some new music since the last time you saw us. Here's the poster I made for our show:

The de facto writing exercise I happened to amuse myself with this morning

So, I'm sure you've all heard of FML. It's an anonymous gripe board for when your life just seems like one ridiculous (possibly ironic) mishap after another. Well. This morning, my husband sent me a link to MLIA--My Life Is Average. But as I read, I found that the stories were not average at all. Many of them, in fact, were tales of unusually humorous or strange situations. For example:

"Today, the woman's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls order their food, a man approaches our male coach. The guy looks at all us girls then at our coach then asks, 'Are all of these your daughters?' My coach, without missing a beat, says, 'No. They're my wives.' The look on that man's face was priceless. MLIA"

The complete non-averageness of this exchange disturbed me. So I took it upon myself to rewrite it to make it actually average (except for the spelling and grammar, upon which I improved). To wit:

Today, the women's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls are ordering their food, a man approaches our coach. The guy looks at all of us girls, then at our coach, and asks, "Is this a field hockey team?" My coach, without missing a beat, says, "No. It's a rugby team." Then we ate our food. MLIA

Now that's average!

Here's another one from the site:

"Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two HUGE leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I see my History teacher hiding behind one of the piles with a water gun about to attack my English teacher in the other pile. They were having a war. I feel like I chose the right school. MLIA."

What? How is a water fight between teachers average in any way? That seems downright unusual, to me. Here's how I would write it:

Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two huge leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I saw two groundsworkers raking the leaves. MLIA.

Much better.

Ok, one more...you twisted my arm. From the site:

"Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and a young boy fell to the ground and crawled away on his hands and knees. His mother asked what he was doing and he pointed to the man and yelled 'Smoke is bad! Get down low and go go go!' I hope he still acts this way when he's in his late teens. MLIA"

And my take:

Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and he got a few dirty looks from the other people at the stop. He had to put the cigarette out when it was about halfway done because the bus came. Then we got on. MLIA.

I thought I would share that with you, in case you were bored at work or something on this lovely pre-Halloween Friday. The link is above...you can make your own fun!