Why Part of Alaska Should Cede from the Union for the Betterment of the State as a Whole, and What that Has to Do With My Dead Fish

There wasn’t exactly a huge outpouring of ideas from readers when it came to naming my hideous dead piranha, but that’s not exactly surprising because no one reads this crap. Luckily, some creative types came up with Hannibal and Chainsaw – which are pretty awesome names – but my fickle heart was already set on something.

FrankenFish!

Ah, FrankenFish. The perfect name for my dead and scaly associate. I have given my eBay-bought taxidermy a whole new life after death – so I think the name is only fitting.

Except that it’s already taken.

Yes – someone else came up with FrankenFish first! And I thought I was being so witty! But the original FrankenFish has already starred in a motion picture. And is therefore, automatically, more popular than my preserved little friend. Barely.

You see, I Wikipedia-d that shit (yes, Wikipedia can be a verb. But, as I tried to explain to a little old lady yesterday, Amazon can not. You cannot Amazon something. It simply is not of Google or Wikipedia status) and found a film from 2004 called Frankenfish. Apparently, Frankenfish is like the worst movie ever, because Wikipedia had this to say about the plot summary:

Yes, Wikipedia is telling you that this plot summary is simply too fucking long and detailed. They don’t want this information, because nobody freaking cares. In fact, the jack asses that spent an hour composing this Wikipedia entry have completely wasted their time and effort, according to Wikipedia. Because Frankenfish is so lame, it only merits a sentence! A SENTENCE!

Wikipedia thinks you can IMPROVE this article by REMOVING details. Have you ever seen anything like this before?! I legitimately feel sympathy for Mark Dippe, because I bet no studio ever financed a film directed by him ever again. In fact, his Wikipedia bio is one line long. It says he is from Alaska. And now I legitimately feel sympathy for Alaska. Because it is the birthplace of a director who makes films that even THE FUCKING INTERNET doesn’t care about.

The horror.

Even more horrific is the film’s theme song, which was apparently retarded enough to merit a mention:

“Wata”? Really?

Anyway, because Frankenfish the movie has made such horrible use of a perfectly good fish name, I hereby claim it as my own, with the hope I can do it justice.

World, meet Sir Fitzwilliam FrankenFish! (The Sir and Fitzwilliam add some sexiness and class, don’t you agree?)

P.S. According to IMDb, Mark Dippe’s career is in a bit of a tail spin. He’s directed some straight to DVD cartoons about Garfield the lasagna-eating cat, a film called Gigi that doesn’t even have a plot summary, and – get this – his next project is The Legend of Spyro (yes, about that purple dragon from the Sony game series).

Alaska, if I were you, I’d cede the territory that bitch was born in, stat. Give it a flag, a king, and call it Lame Land. Problem solved. Our buddy Mark isn’t from Alaska anymore.

All hail Lame Land, home of mutant fish film directors and the arbitrary lost caribou.

Christopher Walken, a Boat, and the Whale Bone Stone

The craziest part of death is trying to figure out who the hell gets all the stuff the deceased left behind.

This sort of thing has always creeped me out something fierce. When my grandmother’s sister passed away a few years old, I refused to take any of her jewelry because rifling through a dead person’s stuff (especially a person I didn’t know all that well) seemed pretty jacked up. And disrespectful. But in this case, I’d known my grandmother my whole life, and hypothetically her stuff would have more meaning to me.

Well, it did - in ways I never could have fathomed. (Cue dramatic music.)

Firstly, my grandmother had pretty awesome taste in jewelry. Secondly, she kept everything. And I mean everything. Someone please tell me what you’re supposed to do with the single earring of a famous deceased movie actress. Can I auction that shit off?

If you’re curious, the actress was Natalie Wood – yes, the chick that pranced around singing “I Feel Pretty” in West Side Story and drowned after falling off a boat in 1981. A boat on which Christopher Walken was a passenger. (Remind me never to get on a boat with Christopher Walken. He obviously sucks balls at saving drowning people.)

Anyway, my grandfather bought Natalie Wood’s 1967 Mercedes convertible way back in the day (before she drunkenly drowned while Christopher Walken was busy snorting coke off the yacht hatch) as a gift to my grandmother, who found the earring in the glove box. The car sat in her garage for many years after she stopped driving, and was re-gifted to several female family members until it became my first car, much to my dismay. If you’re thinking who the fuck would give a 16 year old such a valuable car, don’t worry, I was too. (Think about the pressure you felt to not destroy a vehicle when you first started driving. Now times that by a million, ‘cause the car you’re driving was owned by a movie star and should certainly be in a collection somewhere – in fact, The Peterson Automotive Museum had offered to put it in an exhibit. Oh yeah, it was basically impossible to start, and the radio only picked up the boats in the harbor. And there was no power steering.)

Really, it’s a miracle I’m typing this right now. I could have crashed that fucker and been immediately chopped into a thousand tiny pieces by my relatives. I really think my father was trying to punish me by deeming me keeper of my insanely old grandmother’s dearest, and most expensive possession. Eventually it was just too much and I refused to drive it (this was after I backed it into a friend’s flower bed and got stuck for a panic-ridden moment), so my dad got pissed off at me, sold it to a collector, pocketed the cash, and told me that if I didn’t want that car, I couldn’t have any car.

But I digress.

Anyway, besides the earring of the most unfortunate starlet Natalie Wood, my grandmother also kept a bag of rocks.

And the other day, there was a magical moment in which my aunt pulls a leather satchel out of my grandmother’s box of belongings, opens it, and nearly drops it in confusion when I exclaim, “OH MA GAWD, I REMEMBER THAT ROCK!”

“Wait, you REMEMBER that rock?”

Okay, so this whole situation is living proof that very weird things influence us as children, and we carry them with us our whole lives. While other things go completely over our heads (i.e. portraits of mysterious “friends of the family” who turn out to be your half siblings; the purchase of multiple fax machines and toasters, for the purpose of furnishing two households after a divorce, but you think your dad must just really like toast and paper with perforated edges.)

So, yes, I remember that specific rock, ‘cause bitch, it totally looks like the center of a whale vertebra! (Or, at least, I was convinced of that when I was, like, five. YES, I KNOW, I’M NOT GOING TO PRETEND THAT I WASN’T A DERANGED CHILD WHO INEXPLICABLY KNEW WHAT WHALE VERTEBRAE LOOKED LIKE.)

So, anyway, in addition to the many lockets and metal Norwegian pendants I acquired, I also got myself a muther fucking bag of pebbles. To add to the other leather satchel full of geodes my grandmother gave to me many years ago.

Grandma, if you’re out there somewhere, I hope you know that every time I look at my bad ass whale veterbra-shaped piece of lime stone, I’m thinking of you. It’s only right.

My Dead Photo Bombing Piranha Needs a Name*

*You know you’re now curious enough to read this whole post. I am the wizard of attention-grabbing titles.

When you’re poorer than a church mouse (I don’t understand that expression – wouldn’t a church mouse have access to an alms jar, while a typical house mouse would not? I think that being a bank vault mouse would be a damn good time – if mice were actually able to spend money. Sorry, just rambling here) you have to be pretty creative with your fun.

My latest attempt to brighten up my life involves carrying around a dead fish in my purse, and staging “photo bombing” sessions. And now you’re like, wha the fuck?! Yeah, you know what I said. A dead fish. In my handbag.

You can blame it on eBay. And the fact that I live in a town full of weirdos. But this seemed to be the best idea I’d ever had when I thought of it (and still is).

Just think, my dead piranha friend can have his own Twitter and Flickr page. A huge cult following. An online persona. I can take him all over the world, and then have a giant portfolio of travel photography ruined by an ugly dead fish (what, exactly, are the stipulations about bringing taxidermy into other nations?).

And all this fun only cost me $9 on eBay!

Pure, cheap, brilliance.

But to really put this fun new plan into motion, I need to give my new zombie fish a hot spanking title. Yeah, that’s right – he needs a name people!

Once my ugly fish gets a name, this shit will be official. And I can start my project. (Dude, are the security guys at LAX gonna flip out if I have a piranha in my carry on? Because that shit is gonna show up in the baggage x-ray machine. Yes, I am already thinking about this. It’s good to plan ahead.)

So help a poor girl out. Comment, or tweet, or Facebook me or some shit. It’s so little to ask when you know my dead fish antics will provide hours of online amusement!

But don’t think my scaly new friend will be replacing Bob the Pink Deer and his quest to save children who have witnessed murders as my mascot. Because that shit’s still on.

Many Thank Yous and Fish Love Bites,

I Dislike You More than Funerals and Celery*

*And I really, REALLY fucking hate celery.

So, the power of Bob the Pink Deer came in handy yesterday when I had to battle the dark forces raging around my beloved grandmother’s memorial service. I had already sent off several incriminating text messages to close friends and family – and when I say incriminating, I mean I confessed to premeditated homicide – but, at the last minute, I decided to let everybody live. It was for the sake of the children who might have witnessed me stabbing Cancer Dad and Wife Number Four (or Five) to death in the middle of an overpriced restaurant. Yes, only for the children. Because that shit would totally have been justified.

While my poor grandmother was resting peacefully in a crematorium, Cancer Dad and the wifey were plotting ways to make me extremely uncomfortable. Yes, on the day we were celebrating my grandmother’s life, they were scheming evilly. I’m pretty sure such activities deserve some kind of corporeal (and spiritual? Are you listening, God?!) punishment. ‘Cause, bitch, thas a mistake!

I got through the actual memorial service portion of the program okay, mostly because no sane person would dare be an asshole during a ceremony for a dead loved one. I would hope. Although, I was starting to think the whole thing was some kind of veiled message intended for me – Cancer Dad gave a very heartfelt speech about parenting, and some crazy preacher lady read a poem about forgiveness written by my grandmother. Okay, God, are you telling me to forgive Cancer Dad and his concubine? And embrace my crazed parents for what they are?

Well, if that’s what God wanted, I’d be totally in. But apparently, I missed the that’s-never-gonna-happen portion of God’s divine message during Grandma’s ten minute memorial. It was a godly taunt or something. And apparently, Depeche Mode’s been right all along – God does have a sick sense of humor. He particularly enjoys fucking with me.*

*Yes, thank you, I’m aware that God probably isn’t sending me veiled messages via eulogy. I’m just being a sacrilegious asswipe. It’s what I do.

Well, anyway, I was all like thanks grandma, for that lovely poem about forgiveness because I can totally put all these fears of persecution aside and have a nice meal with my family. And grandma was all haha, that wasn’t intended for you (but I couldn’t hear that ‘cause she’s dead.)

So Cancer Dad and Wife Number Four (or Five) pulled a nice little trick on the way to the after-funeral meal. As in, Wife Number Four (or Five) walks a million yards in front of me and sprints into the nearest bookstore to avoid having to make eye contact or speak to me. I start to feel my confidence waning. Why is she going book shopping when we’re supposed to be eating?

Well, I promptly discovered that it doesn’t matter how polite I am – because the Dynamic Duo of Lameness had been plotting to unsettle me the whole time.

Cancer Dad sat down at the head of our reserved Mafia-sized table, my brother to his right, and me next to my brother. In an obvious fashion. Then, the following ludicrous conversation ensued:

CANCER DAD: Brittany, are you sure you want to sit there?

ME: Ummm…hhhhuh?? Wha? (Where is this going, you crazy dirtbag?!)

CANCER DAD: You know, [Wife Number Four (or Five)] is going to sit next to me.

ME: Yes….I know…I don’t care….

CANCER DAD: Well, we have unresolved issues with you.

ME: Oh. Well, Dad, I don’t hate her. I’m not planning on murdering her with my steak knife or anything.

CANCER DAD: You shouldn’t sit there.

ME: But – Dad – Grandma’s service was today. I’m sure we can be mature about it and polite to each other…we’re all adults…

CANCER DAD: No.

ME: Dad, what are you saying? Do you really want me to move to the end of the table?

CANCER DAD: Yes. YES I DO. MOVE.

[In my completely shocked, shamed, and disoriented state, I get up and move to the other end of the Mafia sized table. My brother, Topher, follows me.]

CANCER DAD: Topher, where are you going?

[Topher looks confused. Is he really supposed to leave me alone at the other side of this Texas-sized table? Looking completely ostracized?]

TOPHER: Uh, over there…?

CANCER DAD: Fine. (He seems legitimately confused and upset that his son doesn’t want to leave his sister alone at the other side of the table. What the fuck.)

Well, I’m not going to fucking lie. I was completely caught off guard and very near angry tears. And very pissed that Cancer Dad didn’t have the balls to make such a nasty, childish request in front of the entire family. It is at this point I start plotting evil murderous plots. And texting anyone that will listen – to warn them that I might be in prison soon.

Luckily, Tasha Dee saved my ass with this tweet: “@brittwrit resist.urge.to.murder. think of BOB the pink deer!”

Okay, so I start cracking up. And get that watery tears shit under control. Because I’m (always) the bigger person in these stupid situations and there is no way I’m going to let Cancer Dad see that he really, really gets to me. Like more than anyone.

Whew. I get through the rest of meal, and listen to my clueless, nice family members gush about how nice it is to all be together again. If only they knew that they never see me because I’m basically not wanted or invited by my own father.

I’m hoping nobody else dies anytime soon, because this shit is exhausting!

I definitely learned from this experience though. You want to know what I learned? This really, really, REALLY isn’t about me – AT ALL.

Cancer Dad and Wife Number Four (or Five) probably get some kind of high out of being miserable. They probably keep their connection alive by banding together against me – yep, that’s correct, I am solely responsible for their kick-ass love. Me.

You want to know what the unresolved issue that they have with me is? I told Cancer Dad I wanted a polite and distant relationship with Wife Number Four (or Five) and I wasn’t going to put myself through a stressful situation to have a close relationship with her. Because it wasn’t going to happen. Because I live on my own, make my own money, and love my father dearly, but don’t need to be BFFs with his spouse to have a decent relationship with him. AND THEN HE TOLD ME I WASN’T PART OF HIS FAMILY ANYMORE.

So, yeah bitch, this is all on you. I don’t care. I can be in the same room with anyone. But if I’m just too damn intimidating, and your wife can’t stomach being near me – well, shit, I’m going to show up to all the fucking family parties. And then maybe she’ll stay home.

Because, let’s be serious. You made me upset at my own grandmother’s funeral. And the truth of the matter is, your wife HATED my grandmother (I know, she told me) – and my grandmother couldn’t even be bothered to remember your wife’s fucking name.

And this, sir, is why I like funerals and celery more than you.

P.S. That was my grandma. So I’ve got dibs on being at her memorial service. Next time, tell the wifey to stay at the office and council some step families or some shit. Because we all know that she’s so good at that.

P.S.S. Bitch couldn’t say she didn’t want to sit next to me to my face?!! Really??! She had to hide in the bookstore while you told me she didn’t want to be near me? You know, I’m really not that scary. She weighs, like, a hundred more pounds than me. She could crush my skull with that giant ostrich ass of hers.

P.S.S.S. Okay, I’m done now. Bigger person here. YUP.

Power of Bob the Pink Deer

"After reading my roomie’s post I think we should start a ‘Power of Bob the Pink Deer’ foundation to help save children who have witnessed murders."

-Tasha Dee, my infinitely wise roommate, who read the post below and had the Best. Idea. Ever.

How I Cured a Potential Serial Killer*

*Or, “How I was Scared to Death of a 7 Year Old.”

I have no idea what inspires people to reproduce, other than to satisfy their God complexes. Children are basically tiny humans with completely malleable personalities, and no verbal filters, so they can learn any behavior and express any emotion without remorse. This is truly terrifying. Your child is a like a tiny, snot-covered window into the recesses of your tarnished soul. They pick up your personality disorders like a dog picks up fleas, and suddenly you’re standing in line at Starbucks with a 3 year old who is calling the cashier “mentally slow” and shrieking how they “want room for cream, dammit,” with the lisp of an adorable cherub. Holy shit. I bet you forgot that your toddler was present for your adult tantrum. Now the whole world is staring at your sweet angel, not-so-secretly thinking about what a ass hat you are, and that they ought to contact child services.

Don’t worry. For the most part, you have to do some pretty heinous shit for your child to be so messed up that they can’t find some faucet of society that accepts them. Surely they will be able to bond with other emo snots who are searching for meaning in skin-tight jeans and man bangs.

But, keep this in mind when you stab your husband with a letter opener in the living room during your 2 year old’s Seasame Street-theme birthday party: serial killers pretty much have to fly solo.

Exhibit A

(Those psycho kiddie drawings in movies always look fake. But is this not the most legit thing you’ve ever fucking seen?!! Wanna know why? THAT SHIT IS REAL.)

I was watching a few kids the other day while their parents were otherwise engaged (in a life skills workshop, how ironic) when my heart fucking stopped from looking into the eyes of evil. She was 7 years old, and she was furiously drawing something that looked like a knife. Or the Statue of Liberty’s torch. I wasn’t sure, so I threw a meaningful glance in the direction of my friend/co-worker, who I could tell – from the shocked look on her face – saw what I was seeing too.

[This is the point of the Japanese horror film where the stupid protagonist bitch stops trying to help the creepy little girl because she’s realized that normal children don’t grip their crayons like hammers and scribble black holes. Or wear all their nasty, unwashed hair in their face. It’s just not normal. That kid doesn’t need your help; she wants to eat your face off with her little bat teeth! Duh!]

This may be my imagination, but I’m pretty sure this kid was humming a creepy little tune to herself while she scribbled blood all up over those daggers. I felt this with the utmost sincerity: fuck my life. I am not a psychologist in any sense of the term; even worse, I had just finished reading Deeper than Dead by Tami Hoag, in which a little boy goes all batshit crazy and stabs another kid on the playground.

I don’t want to die by the hand of some 7 year old who can’t draw for shit.

Well, being a totally responsible adult and all, I knew I had to reach out and help this kid (just like every other retard in Hollywood horror flicks). What are you drawing? I said, in my sweetest, most nauseating, I-can-be-your-best-friend voice. “A picture,” was the super curt response.

Fuck. She’s fucking crazy and she’s secretive. She’s totally going to find out where I live and hide under my bed. And then stab me to death while giggling creepily!

So I pretended to not be interested. And kept coloring my picture – which was so nice and happy, I was certain it was imbued with the power to eradicate serial-killer-like tendencies.

Exhibit B

(I’m usually not a fan of happy shit. But I will go to great rainbow colored lengths to prevent the proliferation of serial murders. Go me.)

Well, Psycho Sally (not her real name) finally took the bait. She moved closer and closer, and finally, in that sweet, scary little voice of hers, she announced that my picture was pretty – and asked if she could have it.

Never in my life had I more willingly given up a piece of my work. Please, I thought, little crazy girl – be cured by the power of Bob the pink deer!

Well, now came the next stage. Homegirl wanted my shit, and since I had given it to her, she was going to be my friend. At this juncture in my narrative, she has now cut out her bloody knives and pasted them in the hands of a deranged stick figure. Oh, and written the words, “You are going to be dead” across the drawing. WHAT THE FUCK, LITTLE GIRL??!

Well, because the little girl was now my friend, I – and my co-worker – continued our desperate inquiry about her artwork. She then told us that her cousin had been murdered. Someone had come into the house and stabbed said cousin.

ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME RIGHT NOW, LIFE?!

Surely, you jest. All those fucking movies about crazy children are based on fact? Disturbed children like to draw violent images? I probably should have already known this, but crap. I felt like I was living in an episode of Dexter. Hey look everybody! I found a future murderer! Now all I have to do is teach her to only murder bad people, and how not to get caught by the police!

Someone should make a television show about my life, like seriously.

Well, anyway, Little Psycho’s mom came to collect her – I was hoping she’d learned some useful life skills – and we parted ways. The kid took my drawing with her. And cracked a smile. So, yes, public at larger – my superior happy art skills may have saved your life. Because of me, you will not be stabbed to death. I like to be thanked via PayPal.*

*Don’t get fucking pissed, I know this kid needs a freakin’ psychologist. But sometimes, it’s therapeutic to laugh at how art mimics life. And I’m fucking traumatized as shit – if I murder you in your sleep, you’ll know why. And your family will forgive me because I obviously couldn’t help it – I looked into the eyes of pure evil, and they drove me to do it. Duh.

A Tribute to My Bad Ass Grandma, 1910 - 2010

You almost made it to your 100^th birthday. And that’s pretty crazy, considering that you single-handedly disproved the theory that positivity extends life. You were emo Grandma; always ready to talk about how shitty shit was, and how your life sucked harder than anyone’s, and how we should all shut up and be grateful that we, too, didn’t have to pick cotton at the rate of a penny per pound.

Grandma, you were awesome.

You were awesome because you were totally passive aggressive. Yeah, you thought you were the most important bitch in the room, but you didn’t say it – you just talked right over us and blamed it on age and hearing loss. You never stopped looking at the bad stuff. Grandpa’s been dead for years, but you still talked constantly about his alcoholism. Which lasted for 2 years. Back in the 1950s. It was your favorite topic; probably because those AA meetings were the highlight of your social life. I’ve never seen a 90-something year old get so excited telling a story about all the nice people she met in AA. And how fun it was to have all those bumbling alkies over for muffins.

Grandma, what made you awesome was your complete lack of tack. You didn’t need it. You were old; you could say anything. You read me my estranged half-brother’s suicide note, dropped the bomb about my cousin being in prison, described in vivid detail your brother’s horrible cancer-related death to Cancer Dad on the day of his diagnosis and you didn’t even bat an eye.

You were never ashamed. From you, I got a first hand account of electroshock therapy. A speech about why God sucks. You told me to get your purse one day – it’s it the closet, next to Grandpa, you said, shocking me to my very core. That’s when I discovered you had been keeping your husband’s remains on the shelf next to your handbags since I was ten.

You were obsessed with your own life story, even though you never did anything at all after marrying Grandpa (besides briefly ending up in the nuthouse. No one I know – besides you – could hate the home their husband bought so much that they hallucinated about a flock ducks in the living room.)

You didn’t learn to drive until you were 40; even then you never made a left turn.

You were the 13^th child of 14, born in a one room house in Oklahoma, only three years after it became a state. You talked shit about the Indian chiefs sitting in front of the general store in Apache, Oklahoma, waiting for their government checks – supposedly, according to you, so they could spend it on booze and chewing tobacco. You wondered aloud why the gardeners were Mexican instead of Japanese these days – why are things so different now? I dunno, Grandma, I dunno.

Other people’s grandparents talk about walking uphill both ways in the snow to get to school, but you were an original gangsta. You took a fucking covered wagon to school everyday! You not only had a pet prairie dog; your twin brothers (sadly named Adolf and Nels) had a freaking crow and a singing coyote that would accompany their banjo playing.

You were weirdly superstitious – and your stories about ghosts always had logical explanations, but you would never hear them. The dead Indian chief ghost that used to carry his lantern over the hill; the doors that would open mysteriously after being locked, supposedly to let in the ghosts of the deceased previous home owners. When the Ouija board spelled out jibberish that turned out to be Danish – your grandmother was trying to speak to your dad and tell him there was a heaven. Obviously. (That would be more believable if you weren’t, like, 6 at the time and had some knowledge of Danish.)

You always had your hair permed, your nails done. The last time I saw you in your home, you were going on and on about how many jobs you had. A telegraph operator for Western Union, a film developer – before you married and never worked again. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings and tell you that I’ve had more jobs at the age of 22 than you’ve had in your whole life – I mean, you were legitimately traumatized that you had to work so much. Until you were 27. Shit, Grandma, your life was hard.

Your mom wallpapered the tiny farm house you lived in with newspaper. Your prairie dog made a hole in the door so he could come in whenever he chose. You were certain your eldest sister was kidnapped and murdered – but the fact that she was last seen with a suitcase and a mysterious man makes it sound like she was leaving her husband for a lover. Just sayin’.

You were diagnosed with every disease cataloged by man. You survived multiple types of cancer multiple times, supposedly recovered from multiple sclerosis, inexplicable blindness, and god knows what else.

You were a tough old bird, and, to the end, you thought you would never die. Your main concern when I visited you in the hospital was whether or not you’d get your voice back – not your failing kidneys, or infected intestines (all of which you recovered from before you passed away). You were 99 years old, but you kicked an orderly and punched a nurse on the way to the hospital. Life was your bitch, and you were determined to win the fight against mortality (even though, as you constantly reminded us, your whole family was dead and you were pissed about it – apparently we just didn’t count as family).

Anyway, I love you Grandma. You’re irreplaceable. No old woman is as angry as you; as bad ass as you; as downright pessimistic as you. You were a complete narcissist to the core, and it was truly awesome. You couldn’t remember your son’s wife’s name (I wish I could forget that too) and you always thought you were broke (despite the seven figure savings).

You, and your tales of suffering, shall be missed.