Celebrities speak in a separate, and mostly unexplainable, language.

P. Diddy: Keep it all the way funky.

Laurie Ann: I am keeping it funky.

P. Diddy: Let’s keep it all the way funky.

Laurie Ann: I am keeping it funky.

You’d never know they were having a tiff over him calling her a bitch on last season’s Making the Band. Here’s the way most of us homo sapiens handle that sort of situation.

Tom: Stop nagging me bitch.

Mary: Shut up asswipe. And call me a bitch again and I’ll chop off your manroot!

Tom: I’m gonna beat your ass if you don’t shut your trap.

Mary: I like it when you beat me big daddy.

Okay, maybe not so much. But at least we can understand what’s causing the discord between Tom and Mary. At least we can relate, to some degree, to their situation. But, keeping it funky? I can’t say that I relate to that phraseology. It’s a bizarre set of words that can’t be translated when arranged together in a sentence. If anything, it means don’t take a bath so your body stays funky, so you’re keeping it funky, so it is kept funky, kept all the way funky.

I think we’re witnessing some serious intellectual deterioration when the urban dictionary is necessary to understand language. Pretty soon you’ll see the urban dictionary as a requirement on your 5th grader’s school supply list.

Thanks to those four sentences I’m beginning to question my ability to find intelligent and informative reality TV. Why is this unfortunate mutation taking over the reality shows that offer something to the world?

Paradise Hotel taught us the value of relationships and the ease of hopping into the sack with a complete stranger when placed on an island with seductive members of the opposite sex and a camera at every corner to document the lack of control.

America’s Next Top Model teaches us how to pose with our eyes, that size 10 plus-sized models really are too fat to win a modeling show, and that winning doesn’t mean you’ll actually work in the fashion industry except for when you’ll shoot commercials that will play only when ANTM is on.

Wipeout shows us the power of laughter as people throw their bodies across impossible obstacles and show their buttcracks in the process.

The Real World gives us examples of what not to become and how to do everything within our power to keep our children from such a fate, and if they do we’ll have to strangle them with extension cords because we don’t want their idiotic behavior to reflect poorly upon us.

Making the Band has the potential to teach us some things. We could learn how to do those dance moves that really have nothing to do with being in a band. We could learn how to dress like sluts and how to use three pounds of hair extensions. But, unfortunately the show features P. Diddy, and he actually talks, which is the biggest problem.

The lesson we should all take away is that reality TV has many wonderful characteristics, but we should not attempt to recreate it in our own lives because then we’d all be lunatics who have sex with every person we see while posing with our eyes, singing slutty songs, and thrashing our heads so that our hair extensions are fully appreciated.

It’s a fact that some piece of the universe dictates that life should never be too stable, too happy, too peaceful for too long, but instead, that turbulence will inevitably interrupt and persist until it crowds out optimism and you think it’s too much to bear. It’s one of the most reliable facts of life.

J has been off work for the past month. And while he deserves a break and I’ve loved having him home, I’m furious over the turn of events that has led us to this situation. Irate, even. Homicidal, positively. Somehow Wyoming and the people in it always manage to fuck us around. All I can say for these people is that karma is indeed a bitch. Unfortunately, karma seems hellbent on reeking havoc on our lives regardless of the fact that we try to always live by the Golden Rule, treating those who touch our lives with respect. J deserves better in life. He’s overflowing with integrity and honor and is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. I want more for him, and we both thought we were there.

Ideally, we’d just pack up and go home. But there are so many reasons we can’t, the most important being that Sunkist is still out there. Several events have led us to believe that after three months he may actually still be here and theoretically recoverable.

If only we’d just left when we had the chance, before we put ourselves on the line, and before we’d lost a vital member of our family.

This place, these people, have ruined all trust I’ve ever held for the anonymous public.

Stability, mentally, is always an uphill battle for me, but it seems that with each recent passing day it’s a battle I’m obviously losing. Extreme stress is not something I’m well-equipped to handle and my bottle of Ativan is quickly diminishing without any noticeable results.

Adding more fuel to the fire, a kitten appeared on our property a few days ago. He’s the last thing we need. But if his owner doesn’t come forward I won’t have the heart to send him away, thus explaining the dog or cat perched on every square inch of our diminutive house. He’s orange–a fact that haunts me for so many reasons. He thinks the litter box is a toy. He pissed on the couch. He’s so full of life and humor. We’re calling him Nelson, though it’s a fact that he’s oblivious to.

I’m just ready for this period of uncertainty and upheaval to go away. Something needs to give.

Orange Meets Orange

I’m not an avid watcher of the Olympics. I just have so many other television-guided pastimes I prefer to indulge in. Jewelry television for one. Bridezillas for another. I like the kind of television that results in minimal thought and maximum eye candy. Television full of acrylic nails decreases my need for daily anxiety medication.

But, recently I watched the Olympic gymnastics and found the Olympics to bring a fair bit of eye candy to the table. Unfortunately it’s more like a disturbing sort of candy. Like those lollipops bigger than your entire head that are so aggravatingly difficult to eat that it’s really not worth the energy so you throw it off your balcony and it impales a tourist.

The most unfortunate part about my watching the Olympics is that I found myself staring into the screen, mesmerized by the strange body shapes, men who looked like men and women who looked like men, the muscles I never knew existed, the scary penis bulges, and the strange phenomenon that kept wedgies from occurring. I rewound, paused, and fast-forwarded over and over and over until I’d memorized bits of the routines and found humor in all the glory of a paused, upside down gymnast. I found myself making a myriad of facial expressions desperately hoping the gymnast would see me in the crowd, fall in love with me, and we’d tumble and flip into the sunset. Actually, that didn’t happen. What did happen is that I looked like a damned simpleton grinning and scowling at the television while people tossed their bodies all over the screen.

Now that I think about it, Olympic-watching probably looks ridiculous to a fly on the wall. A completely sedentary, minus the movement to and from the fridge, individual watches incredible athletes do athletic stuff for hours and hours and hours, then stumbles off to bed, exhausted. Oh wait! In a last minute burst of energy the person races out of the bedroom holding a flimsy thing on a stick. The fly curious watches as the person trips over the carpet, mimics a hurdler, and springs towards him. Then splat. No more fly on the wall. And that’s about as Olympic as it gets in real life.

Anyway, back to me. Because none of that actually happened to me. I don’t use flyswatters. I capture them in Tupperware and release them outside.

So, then. Then it had to happen. The inspirational music came on and some sort of ceremony began. Pausing wasn’t necessary because it wasn’t very interesting so I quickly moved to fast forward to more of the bulges, but I was too slow. The music. That damn music. I was overcome with the glory of the moment and for a second I thought I was witnessing the greatest event on Earth. I could feel the intensity of the moment, the pride of standing on a pedestal wearing a bodystocking in front of millions. But then I noticed a little Chinese girl who was so absurdly minuscule she could be eaten by a Chihuahua if she sat on my floor for too long. And whoa, that man in the background had a package bigger than her entire body. Or maybe his spandex pants just made it look that way.

Amazing stuff, this Olympics.

Thus, my experience with the Olympics was over and I promptly changed back to Jewelry television where the only body parts one sees in microscopic detail are womens’ fingers.

But I wonder things.

Are those leotards lined with waterproof material? That kind of activity almost surely results in genital sweat, so why don’t we see it? I’m not sure I want to see it, but it could really bring people together–the Olympic fanatics and the non-fanatics.

Hey Bob, do you like the Olympics?

Nah.

Well, do you like genital sweat?

Well…. Sure!

Then come on over and we’ll pause the TV when that chick does a somersault. Bring your wife! My Bonnie sure does love to make fun of these Olympians and their sweat.

Don’t start without us!

Wouldn’t it be awesome to see a big-breasted gymnast tumbling around that mat, boobs a-swingin’? That would so be recorded on my DVR to be played a million times in slow motion. And partners gymnastics would make it even better! One person with the boobs, one person to be hit with the boobs. Or maybe two with the boobs, slapping each other with their mammaries as they attempt to do handstands and other crap.

And really, shouldn’t the men wear more discreet tights? You can count pores through those things and it’s not really fair for young girls and boys to learn anatomy based on those interesting proportions, regardless of whether it’s real junk in the trunk or a big ol’ tube sock. The tube sock bit could explain the lack of sweat though. Absorbent tube socks block all: sweat and realistic proportions.