I thought about beating him with my cane, but decided to quietly terrorize him instead. –Kendra H.

I did have rage issues. Seriously, if you try to fuck with a crazy, cane wielding, redheaded, hormonal, suicidal teenager, you deserve whatever you get. Even if that includes a concussion and a restraining order against you. And maybe a hickey. –ditto

That’s the key to life, Jen...look happy and helpful while secretly harboring subversive rage. –Shawn S.

I’d like them better if my face didn’t look like a lump of self-rising dough. –ditto, re: the stylish borrowed glasses he was wearing in a photo

I look like a fucking bowling ball on top of 2 tits. –Melissa L.

You should never touch another woman’s spice rack unless you want your fingers chopped off. –Rebecca C.

...but good lord, put me in any room with a tranny or drag queen and she will flock to me just to give me grief. Jen, similarly to how crazies and retards migrate to you, I have these powers with gender illusionists. –David B.

Shady Maple is my fave place to go for breakfast. The rule is that you have to eat your weight in bacon. –Kelly S.

Kelly S.: I stopped being friends with Audrey the day she repeatedly punched me in the face.
Deana R.: Just ’cause a girl punches you in the face a few times doesn’t mean you can’t work shit out!

Oh girl, the Greyhound bus is as close to martial law as we will ever see. It’s almost post-apocalyptic. –Melissa L., after taking the bus from Pennsylvania to Ohio

So you know what crotchless underwear would look like on a Mennonite girl, right? Like ZZ Top in a ski mask. –Shawn S.

Relationship stuff is confusing and sickening and it makes me want to go on a random shooting spree. –Shawn S.

No one had better crap themselves at my birthday dinner. –ditto

You should have stuffed his venomous mouth with live fire ants then stitched his lips shut with a dull needle. They think Texas is barbaric with its death penalty policy. They have nothing on us. –ditto

If you eat that moth, I’m done. –Abby F., when a drunken Melissa swore she was going to eat a moth that just flew by

I’m gonna eat that motherfucker. –Melissa L., re: the aforementioned moth

I’m a jovial fat fuck. –Melissa L., while drunk

It would say, “Diagnosis: Beast.” –ditto (she was talking about what the medical report would say if we took her to the hospital for drunkenness)

The whole thing is just so sad and a good reminder that when your time is up, it’s up. So Carpe Diem everyone because one day you could go to work and fall over dead. –Angela W.

Sometimes, violence is the answer. –David B.

Ugh...retirement. I think I prefer the option of just dropping dead when I reach the point of no longer being able to financially support myself. –Shawn Seabold

If Lebanon had a Hellmouth, it would be on my property. That’s the kind of luck I have. –ditto

I hate being back at work. It really infringes on my online time. –Danielle B.

I really hate interacting with society. Because people are stupid. –ditto

I listed my reasons for needing a transfer as anxiety and panic attacks on the drive to and from work. Nice! So thrilled that I’ve finally gotten mentally ill enough that I need to rearrange my life for it. I’ve finally had to request a job transfer due to mental illness. I should be proud. –Melissa L.

I fucking hate being busy. –ditto

Why do I feel the need to destroy my parents’ illusions? Oh right, I’m dead inside. –Shawn S.

I’ve just been so busy with work and with joining the gym that I haven’t had time to sit down and make a voodoo doll. –ditto

I should have smothered him in his sleep when I had the chance. –Shawn S., on an ex

He isn’t even worth the price of the gasoline it would take to set his body on fire. Girl, it would take at least a gallon to set all of that mess aflame…and I ain’t wasting the $3.29. –ditto

When the time comes to thin the herd, that one is going down. –ditto

Have you ever had Nutella? It’s some kind of weird peanut buttery stuff made out of hazelnuts and chocolate. I always have to laugh because on my jar it says “Try Kobe Bryant’s favourite!” and every time all I can think is “What? Forced intercourse?” –ditto

Yeah, my family is German, but I don’t swill beer, eat sausage and exterminate whole races. Okay, I eat sausage, but not in any type of celebratory fashion. –ditto

You’re seeing patterns and clues where they probably don’t exist, J.Bo. I ain’t saying that you’re nuts, I’m just saying that you might be a little paranoid, that’s all. –ditto

And maybe it’s just me, but the school cafeteria always smelled of fear. –ditto

It looks like a GAP ad from an alternate universe. –Shawn S., regarding a group picture of my friends and me from 1995, when we were dressed up for a wedding

If the sky were falling, you’d run to take a picture and hope that you’d got a good shot! –Antoinette Rudolph (Ah, my friends know me so well!)

Xmas makes me realize how much I hate my family. –David B.

Also, today I read either Hello! or OK! magazine; it had pics of Jordan with her retardo kid Harvey. I really wanted to laugh, but that would only ensure my damnation. –ditto

I am so over this whole election thing. Can’t we just shoot Bush and say he lost once and for all? –ditto

Yesterday I went to Sears over lunch and got a Bears t-shirt. It was like trying to get bread in the Soviet Union. –ditto, on buying a Chicago Bears shirt in Chicago three days before they played in the Super Bowl

I’m not dead. Spiritually, I’m not alive either, but technically I’m not dead. –Melissa L.

I’m so bedazzled by the sexiness....I can’t even think properly. Maybe I’m not dead inside after all!!! –ditto

If you are dying, though, I’ll buy you a “we’ll miss you” balloon. Maybe I’ll buy you one anyway, since technically we’re dying a little more every day. Maybe I’ll buy a “we’ll miss you balloon” for my dead spirit. –ditto

... I think that if I could muster up the energy, I might vote for him. Had I any emotion left in my broken, black shell of a soul, I’d say that I’d be happy if he won. –ditto

I gotta tell ya, a giant bowl of ravioli just numbed the horror of living for me for a while. –ditto

Dude, I would love to go to Iceland. I would love to go to Iceland when it’s constantly dark. I would just sit, in Iceland, in the dark, and stare. I wouldn’t move for a full week except to weep like my heart was being torn out of my body, all because of the numbing horror of life. Damn, that sounds like a good vacation!!! –ditto

Oh, how I love piss and shit stories. Really, I think they are what bring humans together and keep us from slashing each other’s throats. It’s like Daniel Carver and Louis Farrakhan could find common ground if they just sat down and talked about the times they shit their pants. –Danielle B.

Using the puke bag as a weapon—now that is only something YOU would come up with, Jen Boyer!! I love it! –Angela W.

Seriously, five people could take huge shits into the same toilet, let it sit overnight, and it would deliver a better performance and storyline. –David B., after seeing Basic Instinct 2

I can’t stand this. You have no idea how hectic my TV watching schedule has gotten. Oh, what the hell am I saying. You know about hectic TV schedules. It’s out of control though! AI! TAR! Showbiz Moms and Dogs! Air disasters! I can’t stand it!!!! –Melissa L.

I actually think bats are very cute; I just think they’re fucking rabid little bastards that were put on this planet to destroy me. Cute little faces, though! –ditto

She sucks and she’s so miserable—I love it. It’s Lent week. I shouldn’t be saying that stuff. Oh well, I’m not giving that up for Lent—just bread! –Antoinette Rudolph

Women pull out shit from years ago and will give you exact dates of instances when they were wronged. I think you would be especially good at this considering your affection for detail. –Shawn S., offering me a heck of a compliment

Wow, you know you’ve hit a dry spell when a dog with a boner is the best offer you’ve had in long time. –ditto, when one of the dogs in my office begged for treats in my cubicle while sporting a big erection

Damn, that’d be hot to get Jon Secada’s face tattooed over mine. Just because. I should get my face pierced so that I have an entirely metal face. That’d get [Clay’s] attention. Can you imagine being fellated by someone with a metal face. I read in an interview with him, he was asked what he looks for in a woman. His answer was “a pulse, a heartbeat, and someone that does good things for others.” Why oh why couldn’t he say “obese with giant tits.” –Melissa L.

God, I think Stockholm Syndrome will be my only chance to have him fall in love with me. Hey, at least that means there’s still some hope, slim as it may be!! At least there’s a chance!!! –ditto

Gram is convinced that I’m going to get cancer from my tit bruise. Apparently this is an old [Pennsylvania] Dutch wives tale that you get cancer from severe bruises. Viggadee also seconded this, and said that she knows some woman who got kicked in the tit by a cow and then, like, immediately dropped dead of breast cancer. I fucking love that. Only Viggadee would know a woman who got kicked in the tit by a cow. Or would make that up. –Melissa L.

Man, why couldn’t I have that availability? I would’ve excelled in that class. Oh yeah, I graduated from a West Virginia university...they still think the south will rise again. –Antoinette Rudolph, upon learning about a mafia class being offered at a Rome university

Gay Pride. Well, there was pride all right—a pride of bison, often mistaken for lesbians. –David B., after attending Gay Pride in Vegas

I know how to be nice! What goes on in my head is another matter entirely. While I’m smiling and telling you that it’s “not a problem,” what I’m really thinking is “I wonder if my mouse cord is long enough to hang you from the light fixture?” –Shawn S.

Most of the emails are prayers or nauseatingly sweet messages about rainbows and angels and puppies kissing kittens. It makes me want to vomit. I can only handle so much cute before I have to kick an old person just to clear my head. –ditto

How appropriate that National Quirkyalone day is February 14th. Now I don’t have to call it “Lock my door and cry alone in my room day” or “Give every happy couple a dirty look day” or “So long as I can make it till 5:00 I won’t kill myself today day.” –ditto

I hate relationship crap. I’m not even in one and they still piss me off. So much bullshit just to have something warm to rub up against! –Shawn S

What a fucking ridiculous nightmare the circus of love is!! I sit back and laugh at these peons who aren’t dead inside and who attempt to connect with each other in these silly ways. –Melissa L.

Life is so much easier without love in it. Honestly, I feel that way. When you see people who are miserable, most of the time it’s about love. At least when I’m miserable it’s usually about money, and I can make more of that if I have to. Romantic love does not yield in rewards what it does in heartache. –ditto

Love is retarded. I want no part of it. I’m so glad that I’m dead inside because I will never have to worry about any of this. –ditto

These silly women and their ideas. Thank God no one is ever going to ask me out. –ditto

I hate being a woman; we are always in this position of getting worked up over these asinine men. –ditto

Being a girl is fucking ridiculous sometimes. Especially when ridiculous boys are concerned. I’d say I wished we were lesbos, but all the lesbos I’ve known have been even more over-dramatic than us. And drunks, too. –ditto

I hate affairs of the heart. How absurdly normal and boring and mortal they are. –ditto

Ain’t love funny? One minute you want a stripper to shove a vial of black death up his ass, and the next you’re out buying Tiger Beat. –ditto

I wish there was a magic wand that could be waved to show women the douchebagness of their men. But then there would never be procreation. –ditto

If I am going to be miserable [with a cold], I might as well do it at work and hope to get other people sick, too; my mama always told me to share. –David B.

I have so many great ideas for porn, it is not even funny. –ditto

I’m so happy about this development, I called in sick and am taking a day to watch porn and eat mashed potatoes in my underwear. –Melissa L.

We should start a business of making piñatas and filling them with vile things of the customer’s choice. I think that’s got a place in the revenge biz. –Melissa L.

What’s this, Wednesday? God, it never ends does it? –ditto

Did I ever tell you that I passed out in the snow outside of a seedy Puerto Rican gay bar in Lancaster? Passing out in the snow fucking sucks. –ditto

I can’t believe that asshole of a president vetoed that stem cell bill. I’m so unbelievably tired of Christians. I want to roam the streets of Lebanon with a bullhorn shouting, “Hey, guess what assholes! GOD’S. NOT. REAL!” I bet people would drive by and pelt me with pot pie. –ditto

They were a few miles away from the diner they were going to and Charlie’s tire popped. As they were out of the car by the roadside changing the tire, this giant pack of crows just came out of nowhere and swooped over them and all simultaneously shat at once. There was so much crow shit pounding down around them that it sounded like a rainstorm. And the best part was, they had nowhere to shower and no clothes with them to change into, so they had to stumble into the diner covered in crow shit. –ditto

Oh goddamnit, I’m not letting anyone realign anything or wave crystals over my head while chanting. None of that hokey, holistic, qigong-ding-dong shit. I need to punch, kick, and stab something. I prefer the traditional Western answer to stress...bottle it up and then once it becomes unbearable, release it on the masses in a flood of carnage. –Shawn S.

Diapers are disgusting. If I ever have kids, I’m going to train them to use the litter box as soon as they can crawl. –ditto

You haven’t lived until you’ve expelled bile-laced pasta through your sinuses. –ditto

Girl, I’m so tired right now I could probably fall through my own asshole and hang myself. –dito

She was kind of a big girl, not fat, but really tall and solid, like, everything was just a little too big, you know? –ditto

Tengu had me so pissed at him yesterday I actually spanked him with a fake poinsettia. Merry effing Christmas. –ditto, re: his cat

Maybe he wouldn’t mind a woman with a bawdy mouth—it would make up for him never swearing. Man, I bet he’d look at me with a mixture of horror, shock, and revulsion if I ever met him. Oh well, why be different than any other guy. –Melissa L.

We should do a reality show where we tell men that I’m a multi-millionairess, and that I’ll marry them and give them half of my money, and see how many run when they see that I’m fugly and morbidly obese. –ditto

When I splurge on mags like InStyle or Cosmo, to make my blood boil over how much I hate magazines for women, I always spend the extra money on the British versions! It’s much more pleasant to read magazines geared to make women hate themselves if you can read them in a British accent! –Danielle B.

A few weeks ago, my friend Marisa and I used our planning time at work to look for mp3s of all the theme songs from ’80s nighttime soaps. Then we played them on a loop, even while the kids were working at their desks. –ditto

Oh, they’re fucking respectable all right. –ditto, when I said that my love of Dallas, Dynasty, and Knot’s Landing weren’t very respectable

Ipecac couldn’t be more effective than seeing me in my bra. –JLB

I’m an ulcer waiting to happen, but on the bright side, I’m so avoidant that I’ll never get it checked out and it will cause me to bleed to death internally! Haw haw haw! –Shawn S.

Yeah, it’s kind of sad isn’t it? We are now officially getting as much action as people with serious physical deformities. –ditto

dOOd, I HATE SUVs. There’s no reason for them. There is no sense...unless you’re like a fucking mountaineer or something, and if you were, you probably wouldn’t be caught dead in 90% of these fucking stupid SUVs that are nothing more than giant cars. I also hate SUV drivers because they get these giant vehicles and have no idea how to drive them. There is simply no reason for anyone who lives in a major metropolitan area to have an SUV. It’s not like you live in some remote wilderness area where you have to crunch over 5 feet of packed snow to get to your closest neighbor’s house so you require a powerful behemoth of a vehicle to get you there. That said, I think the Porsche Cayenne SUV is one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen and if someone offered me one, I would gladly take back everything I just wrote. –Melissa L.

Last night I was still incredibly hungry for tikka masala, so Charlie picked up takeaway from the place in Dover. When he brought it home, do you think it was tikka masala? Nope! It was chicken motherfucking curry. I’m not real wild about chicken curry and I was filled with rage while eating my dinner. Just one more fucking cross to bear. –ditto

...I don’t have a calling card and I don’t want to charge the charges to work, because I have some scruples. Actually, I just think I’ll get caught and I don’t want to get in trouble. I have no scruples. –ditto

I’m terrified that when she finds out that I didn’t call him, she’s going to rip off my head and shit down my neck. –ditto

Nothing new has happened. I’m still ugly, and life’s still hard. –angst-ridden 15-year-old me, in my journal, on September 28, 1989

Isn’t it sad how the only thing that urges us to care about our bodies is the improbable event of someone actually wanting to sleep with us? –Shawn S.

And hey, look on the bright side...even though you were dehydrated, ashen, and smelled like sewage, at least the guys across the street and the old guy at the grocery store found you hot. –ditto, after guys flirted with me when I was forced to go to the grocery store while recovering from a stomach virus

There’s no way to be seductive when you’ve got bug eyes. –Vickie Smith

If Missy, Tony, and I were on a team, it would turn into Lord of the Flies so damned fast. We would be cannibalizing all the other teams and hanging their entrails from the balconies. –Danielle B. re: us competing in a VH1 pop culture tournament

God! That is really sad that you needed to plan an escape route because of crazed co-workers. That’s a pretty clear sign that Human Resources isn’t doing their job. –Shawn S., re: a hellish former job of mine

That’s just such a fucking shame that you worked at a place where you had to even consider keeping a football helmet in your desk for protection. –Melissa L., re: that same job

I want to be a celebrity so bad. I want to be a celebrity in Britain so The Mirror can plaster huge photos of me running from the paparazzi under the headline “Missy’s Agony at Photog Shock.” –ditto

I really want to “do it” with Wills. Can you imagine that shocker? “Wills Agony in Obesity Shock.” “Wills Shame in Obese Hermit Shock.” –ditto

…I was just thinking last night about how he was sweating like a stuck pig at our last reunion and it really embarrassed me. I mean, he was significantly sweating more than anyone else in there. I know it was a million degrees and all, but come on, maintain some dignity. –Melissa L.

Jesus, there is some profile on the news of a 9th grader at Pequea Valley HS who just flew to Mozambique to volunteer at an AIDS orphanage. The contrast between that and us as 9th graders is nothing short of staggering. –ditto

Morrissey shock in obese sloth horror! I can’t wait to see him tomorrow. I hope he vomits when he sees me because I will be the walking embodiment of fat America. I also hope that BB5 Dan is there, and he gives me the Shell haircut, then convinces me to audition for the X Factor, where I will become the new star in Britain, and will put the final nail in the coffin of the marriage of Bryan and Kerry McFadden. Then I will be interviewed by telly presenters Fiona and Eammon and they will expose that I am in a shock affair with the entire band Girls Aloud and I will be exiled from British society. –ditto, before a Morrissey concert

Well, I got home to a rare treat last night. Someone had shat all over the house, from one end to the next. I walked in and got smacked in the face by this horrifying smell. I honestly thought that an animal had crawled in the house and died. I was seriously running around the house throwing open the closets and rummaging under beds looking for this dead animal. Then I walked into the living room and saw the pile. I cleaned it up, then I looked to the left. The rug in our living room was just smeared with diarrhea. There was diarrhea everywhere. I was gagging so bad, I just had to roll up the rug and immediately throw it in the trash (thank goddess for hardwood floors). I couldn’t believe that one of the animals could make a mess like that, and I actually checked the screens because for a moment I was convinced that someone had broken into the house and shat on the floor and then left. I still can’t figure out who did it. I mean, it had to be a dog because a cat couldn’t shat like that, but I can’t figure out which dog. You would think that after a mess like that, they would appear sick, but both of them were totally normal. I gave them both a Pepto pill though just to be sure. –Melissa L.

Then, to make it even better, I just split my fucking pants. Right up the ass. Didn’t even notice it until I was walking down the hall and someone I know pulled me aside and informed me that my pants are split right up the ass and my zebra striped underwear is hanging out. w00t!! –ditto

So what are you getting that smirking lothario for xmas? Or aren’t you getting him anything? I think you should bring him a withered old whore from Atlanta. One who’ll rasp, “Take a bite out of this Georgia peach, sonny!”while forcing his face into her desiccated bosom. –JB

For the record, I never liked the video for the original [David] Bowie/[Bing] Crosby duet. I just thought it had a very creepy air to it, like they had gathered around that piano to sing after ass-fucking and eviscerating a bunch of kids they had tied up in the basement. –JB

Did you know that there’s an International Organization For Heterosexual Rights? I just saw their website. It makes sense...since, you know, heterosexuals have no rights. –JB

Yeah, we’re mean, but how else are we expected to trudge through a Wednesday with our sanity intact? –JB

I never got that vibe off her, but hey, whatever floats your unmedicated, bioplar boat. –JB

He said one of the doctors actually said “In any surgical procedure there is an element of risk.” WTF? I’ll remember that in case the next time I have my teeth cleaned, the dentist accidentally rips out my prostate. –Shawn S., after an acquaintance’s minor sinus surgery went horribly awry

I had my tooth removed. OMG. What started out as a normal [dental] visit very quickly became a reenactment of a prison rape scene. –Shawn S.

I’m sitting here at my desk constantly bursting into stifled laughter at the thought of having to wear garbage bags and duct tape while being hosed down at Chernobyl. There are only 2 people on earth who would think of that as a vacation, and that’s you and I. Jen, we HAVE to do this. ...it HAS to be done. You and I (and only you and I, it’s the only way to do it) simply were born to board a bus to the Ukraine and travel through Eastern Europe. Local freaks will follow behind our bus like it’s the pied piper. There will be a caravan the whole way from Budapest, Hungary, all the way to the gates of Chernobyl. –Melissa L.

If I win the lottery, girl, this is what we’re going to do. First, I’ll buy you a house. Then, we hit the road. We’re going to hit all the hot stops—East Moriches, Montoursville, Colleen Stan, Lockerbie, Chernobyl, a coupla gulags, Duluth, GA, for the runaway bride, some concentration camps and maybe a Clay Aiken concert or two. You name it, if it causes destruction, we’re gonna visit it. Hot diggity dog, I’m gonna start playing the lottery!! –ditto

Why not? Don’t we already have the Devil in a Christian’s clothing in the presidency? At least this guy recognizes that people will find his religious beliefs to be off-the-wall and doesn’t appear to be pushing those beliefs on his would-be constituants. –Heather Hubbard, after I sent her the website of some Satanic vampire dude who plans to run for the governership of Minnesota

I have no desire to ever have contact with another human being’s body. The thought makes me shiver with fear and sickness. It turns my stomach and makes the bile rise in my gullet. –Melissa L.

Thank God my urge to mate is so stunted that most physical contact sickens me. –Shawn S.

Nothing says fun in the sun like being tasered and losing bladder control. –ditto

He’s good looking, and if you have the misfortune of being British, that’s a rarity. –ditto

Normally I’d say “have fun” but that seems like kind of the wrong thing to say when visiting a photo exhibit involving nuclear disaster. –ditto, when I told him I was planning to attend a 20th anniversary Chernobyl photo exhibit

We only got cable back yesterday and after being TV-less for so many weeks, I have completely forgotten the TV schedule. I was like an unfrozen caveman last night, sitting in front of the TV, grunting and looking puzzled while I tried to work the remote. –Melissa L.

...I just don’t understand the ways of the human anymore. –ditto

After the fire was contained, I began to gag and retch in a release of compartmentalized terror. –ditto

She can’t clean herself right because she’s so fat. She got so pissed about it that she finally managed to get back at her ass and chewed off all of the hair around her ass. I took her to the vet and when the vet saw her ass, he yelled “HOLY SMOKES! This is all chewed up!!” God bless Delaware. –ditto, on her cat

...I’m just going to drive to Salisbury and go to Barnes and Noble. And treat myself to Chick-Fil-A. Hell, maybe I’ll do that anyway. Love that it’s a treat to go to Chick-Fil-A. Good job ruining your life, Missy. –ditto

I just have this feeling that I’m going to spend this weekend alternately surfing websites, shoving cake in my maw, and weeping. –ditto

I love when company fun-days make you come home with a raging tension headache. I suppose that’s when you know it’s time to bid [the job] adieu. –ditto

OMG, I haven’t heard that much self-serving mental masturbation for quite a while! It makes no sense! It’s like he pulled out the dictionary and looked up all the big words, then tried to stick them in a poem, but then realized that it didn’t make sense, but hoped that in being obscure and disjointed it would be considered ironic and deep. That’s reason enough to want to hang him from a tree and beat him with sticks until his insides spill out like some piñata from Hell. –Shawn S.

Musical was kind of a horrible conglomeration of freaks, wasn’t it? Most of our disastrous relationships in high school were begun in that auditorium; it was like where geeks go to spawn. –ditto

Yeah, I don’t think any of our friends stand a chance of getting placed any higher then the 5th ring of Hell...and that’s if they lie on their entry applications. –ditto, after taking a “Which Ring of Dante’s Hell Are You Going To?” quiz

Ugh. I know that they have been looking for the particular combination of hormones/pheromones that produce the euphoria associated with love. I think they should find it and then find a way to kill it. Nothing good comes of it! Pain, stress, and apparently projectile vomiting. –ditto

It never ceases to amaze me how unrequited love can make you want to see the person whom you have obsessed over suddenly wash up in charred pieces on some cold, gray shoreline. Love is a schizoid bitch-mistress. –ditto

Remember in college, I would eat Golden Grahams with dinner!!!! But then again, I ate like EVERYTHING with dinner—pizza, Chinese, salad, milk, diet coke, water, cake, cereal… –David B.

I am becoming obsessed with the idea of us going into the Cinderella Shoppe to get fitted for my wedding. I just want to see the looks on their faces when we ask for a frilly adult baby outfit for Chaz, a centaur outfit for Seabold, and an assless tux for Bootsy. –Melissa L.

This weekend, I am going to sit in my pajamas for at least 48 hours. I am not even going to go outside the house to take the garbage out. I plan to just sit and stare. And maybe eat pudding. –ditto

I wanted him to worry and suffer. Because that’s what love is all about, dawg. –JB

We all have our crosses to bear. Yours just might be an ectopic fetus which is aborting itself from your throat piece by piece. –ditto

That would help me temporarily forget the fact that since I can’t get a man to love me when I’m healthy, my changes of getting someone to love me when I’m confined to a wheelchair are below zero, unless you count wheelchair fetishists. –ditto

And what kind of commie pinko bastards do you work for that don’t give you Veteran’s Day off? I’m still sitting at home, lazing on my couch in my long flannel nightgown, with not a possibility of getting a shower in sight. Thank you veterans, for keeping us free so that I may sit on my couch, eating vegetable soup and intermittently masturbating. –anonymous

Ugh, sorry, I had to attend a United Way breakfast and try to pretend that I give a rat’s ass about society. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true, I do care about the poor and downtrodden, but some of the people you have to deal with to help them are just insane. –Shawn S.

I fucking hate practical jokers!!! What the fuck retarded ape even thinks practical jokes are funny anymore? They’re so not! –Melissa L.

What if [he] throws me in the loony bin before American Idol tonight? I’d just die. I bet loony bins in Delaware are hellish throwbacks to the early 1900s. –ditto

How am I going to meet him? You have to help me engineer a series of misadventures that will allow us to meet him. We should just go on a wild road trip from state to state bouncing checks and crashing cars all the way, like in a wacky buddy movie. “Clay—I’m willing to suspend disbelief in Jesus for you!!!” “Clay—I’ll believe in the terrible lie for you!!!!!” –ditto

Food where the color has been altered to be cute is just disturbing. I can’t choke down green or purple ketchup. Even some colored chocolates make me suspicious. –Shawn S.

We all have our little problems and quirks, but that group of nut jobs just takes it to a new level. The part of me that would want to hook up and share my life with someone is continually beaten back down by the part of me that says “This is what is waiting out there! Cover your head and find a happy place. Check back in a couple of years.” I know not everyone is a freak, but my track record ain’t so good when it comes to finding normals. –ditto

Today is one of those days where it’s all just too much. Just going through the motions of the day, it’s just too much to ask of me. –Melissa L.

Hey, I gotta tell ya—squeezing peanut butter out of a tube? One of the most revolting acts a human being will ever have to witness. –ditto

God, I hate the loud, dimwit women that work near me. I can hear them shrieking and laughing over stupid, provincial jokes and idiotic forwards about babies and husbands all day long. –ditto

I think there’s nothing wrong with us other than the fact that we don’t flirt, don’t giggle, and don’t project interest in every man we meet. We project individuality, and well, I guess the only people that are interested in that are street lunatics and psychotics. It says more about men than it does us. I have no respect for men. Honest to god, I have no respect for them, I just think they’re sad, pitiable creatures who have lost all sense of direction and purpose. –ditto

I never knew it was such a production to cough up one hairball. She sauntered into my room around 11 pm, and laid on the floor, so I knew that something was wrong because she always sleeps on the bed, never on the floor. She was panting really badly and just looked miserable. So miserable that I sat up until 1:30 monitoring her. Finally, she started barfing, and then was immediately fine. Acted like nothing had ever happened, and like I wasn’t on my hands and knees scrubbing barf off of the carpet at 2 am. I love cats. –ditto

I am really obsessed with my rash, but then again, I guess anyone who had giant, raised, fiery red splotches on every part of their body, including their lips and palms, would be. I guess any time regular clothing feels like you’re sitting at your desk all day wearing a suit of flames, you’d tend to be obsessed. But you know the miraculous thing? This rash spared my genitals and anal area. If I believed in god, I would think that he had a hand in that. –ditto

Today is one of those days where all the little annoying things just come at you like bees. Killer bees. Killer bees with annoying cell-phone ring tones. –Shawn S.

You have the coolest office. People actually care if their coworker lives or dies. It must be nice. –ditto

We get tons of pics of our unworthy nieces and nephews, but none of the cool ones. –David B.

I can only think of like 3 topics that they had on Degrassi Jr. High that my “glamorous” family hasn’t touched yet. –ditto

I’ve gotta get off so I can fight. –Antoinette Rudolph, excusing herself from the phone so she could yell at her husband

I think they were from Jersey—talk about sounding funny. The whole state sounds like they took speech lessons from Marlee Matlin. –Shawn S.

Some people from New Jersey came to look at our house this weekend. I couldn’t tell if they were stoned, or just from Wildwood. They were really pitiful wretches. –Melissa L.

Well, it’s better than B.O. –Michelle Gates, when Melissa L. commented that she wanted to make honey her signature scent

Once again I am amazed by a human being who has failed to pass an intelligence test that a mildly retarded chimp could sail right through. I hate him. –Shawn S., on his former tenant

I hope that I don’t have bubonic plague from fleas. Now I’m nervous. Oh god, I can’t wait to settle down with Clay and raise disabled goats. We’ll be so happy on our disabled goat farm. Everyday will be beautiful. During the week, we’ll raise disabled goats and on the weekends we’ll teach Sunday school, and of course during the summers, I’ll teach Vacation Bible School, and life will be so gorgeous. –Melissa L.’s delightful train-of-thought

[His] failure to recognize the history of our family for the sick game of genetic roulette that it is really pushes me over the edge. When you start adding up the defects, disorders, and diseases that hang out in my family tree, it’s truly frightening. –anonymous

The irony that I’m her godfather, and should be seeing to it that she is brought up in the church, is not lost on me. Screw that. We were monkeys, are still monkeys and will always be monkeys...and I will cite her mother’s family as proof. Some of them missed a rung on the evolutionary ladder. –anonymous

From our 7th grade years full of pimples and awkwardness to our adult years full of pimples and awkwardness times three... –Antoinette Rudolph, in a friendship card to me

You know, if it wasn’t for autism, my day would be so much more peaceful... but these are the types of unfortunate occurrences that we have to deal with when otherwise intelligent women make babies with slovenly, ingrate Semitic pigs. Let that be a warning to you! –Michelle Gates

I wish I were a dog. I would run up to some handsome, smart, intelligent, kind man and start humping his leg! –Angela W.

My god, I don’t understand healthy people!! –Melissa L.

Monday mornings are such shocking disappointments. I can’t stand working. The thought of performing work really turns my stomach. –ditto

And yay for the second job!! It’s always nice to find a second job that doesn’t make you think about slamming your car into a tree. It’s always good when you don’t have to spend the drive home from work white-knuckling the steering wheel, in a constant, arduous struggle with your mind, to keep from driving off the road into a bridge abuttment. –ditto

Ah yes, the lovely, shocking smack in the face that is returning to work. How I enjoy it so. –ditto

...returning to work is heartbreaking. It honestly kills my spirit a little more each morning. –ditto

Oh, man it’s hard to come back to work after a couple of days off. I don’t want to do a freaking thing. I just want to sit and stare. And eat pudding. We had a delay this morning so at least I got to stave off the agony as long as possible. My commute to work this morning was bizarre and riddled with near-miss accidents. For some reason, every 5 minutes packs of birds would fly out of nowhere in front of my car and I would have to swerve wildly to avoid them. –ditto

Oh girl, this going-back-to-work shit sucks. I am going to pray to god every night that one day, I will be a housewife. Or at least a wife. Or at least alive. –ditto

If they knew an uber liberal democratic gay vegetarian athlete was coming to town they’d cringe. –David Byrne, after attending a wedding in a small Pennsylvania town

I think you & Michael Ian Black would make a great couple. Oh the laughter would run aplenty. Even if he did a serious movie, like, oh I don’t know, Saving Private Ryan, I would just bust out laughing, even if he was not intending to be funny. –David B.

We are all so hot. Moaning, drooling, snoring, ooh baby, the fact that no one has snatched us up just defies all logic. –Shawn S., re: the sleeping habits of us and our friends

Good lord are we fucked-up souls. –Terry Mumma, reminiscing about the animated Spiderman films the two of us used to create on his computer

There is a little kid in our lobby screaming and crying and yelling, “Mommy slapped my thing. Mommy slapped my thing.” It’s days like these that make working at the welfare office worthwhile. –Melissa L.

Have a happy new year! I hope you have a great night tonight. You deserve it, and hey, let’s try to feel a little bit of hope in our hearts that 2003 isn’t a disaster, huh? My New Year’s Resolution for 2003 will be to not die. –ditto

There is a reason why people don’t know what goes on behind their neighbors’ closed doors. –ditto, upon finding her neighbors’ stash of homemade porn

I wish I didn’t know that Christianity was a lie so I could believe that god heard my prayers for sweets. –Melissa L., after a neighbor unexpectedly brought her a basket of cookies

I would still like to see [her] compete for his love via physical challenges. Maybe in a Triathalon of Gore, or a Triathalon of Horror, wading through rivers of blood, shooting at [her family] as they are forced to be moving targets and eating mounds of human flesh. I’d like to see her have to belly flop repeatedly (in a bikini, natch) until her stomach is black with festering blood, then immediately get up and run, huffing and puffing and panting, to a course where she has to keep plopping her ass on balloons to pop them. And this wouldn’t be, like, 2 or 3 balloons; we’re talking 20 or 30. She’d have to keep getting up and plopping down, up and plopping down, over and over, and we’d have a time limit so she’d have to do it fast. By this point, she’d be so out of breath and sweaty, but she couldn’t stop, or she wouldn’t win ____’s love. After the balloon bustin’, I’d like to revert to the old stand-by of a hot dog eating contest, but I want her to keep getting more and more tired, so I might make her eat the hot dogs while jogging in place, or on a treadmill. Actually, maybe I’ll make someone shoot at her feet to make her dance while she’s eating the hot dogs. When her stomach is filled to bursting and she’s reeling around, looking for a place to vomit, she can be corralled into a ropes course where she has to cross an alligator pit on a tightrope with the alligators hissing and snapping at her ass, because we’ve tied raw chicken to her bikini bottom. If she completes all those things, she can be eligible to give ____ a blow job. Oooh! I’d also like to see her have to crawl in a bikini through a field of Quik-Dry cement. That would be hotttt!!! –Melissa L.

Hey, here’s an idea for the Triathalon of Horror. Make [her] run through a wall of burning fire. That should be her first task, because how horrible would it be to run through a wall of fire, in a bikini, then have to eat 10 pounds of hot dogs, and then pop balloons with your ass. I mean, all you would want to do after that wall of fire would be [to] jump in water to try to cool your flaming skin down. It would be fucking torture. So maybe we’ll make it a Quadrathalon of Horror and her last task, after the Wall of Fire, Hot Dog Eatin’, Balloon Bustin’ Feats, can be the Belly Flop. Can you see her frantically scrambling up the diving board ladder to get to the water as quickly as she can? And the animalistic howl of pain when she has to get out of the pool and back up the ladder to repeatedly belly flop? –ditto

J.Bo, J.Bo, she’s da man
if she won’t eat it
then it must contain the charred flesh of another sentient being, you death-mongering predator!
–Shawn S.

Our lady who art humane
J.Bo be thy name.
Thy kitties come, their will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our munchy snacks
and forgive us our jerky trespasses
as we forgive those who force us to eat them.
Lead us not into temptation and deliver
us from pork products.
Amen.
–Shawn S.

And I love looking at pictures of myself from high school because it reminds that I gained over a hundred pounds when I became addicted to drugs and alcohol. HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! –Melissa L.

This is ridiculous! You’re a fucking disgrace! –Michelle Gates to Melissa L., when Melissa was sloppily drunk

I am actually not in a men-hating stage right now, but guys are pigs. –David B.

...I will be lost without my teacher, mother, and secret lover, the TV. Goddamn I’m over this terror shit. –Melissa L.

Man, the TV is a god to me. –ditto

This whole terrorism thing is freaking gay. –ditto

No part of me enjoys the camping experience and I won’t take part in it, not even to be a team player. –ditto

Damn them and their purple pride. –David B., on our alma mater, the University of Scranton

No one’s gonna know, J.Bo. ... Damn you and your vigilance to specifics. –Melissa L., when I primly declared that two songs would not make it onto my Class of ’92 mix, since they were not released specifically during our 12th grade year

It’s those things that seem like almost nothing that can, in the end, nearly kill you. –Angela W.

It is a Catholic tradition to wear the ashes until you shower again. For some Catholics that could be DAYS! –Mark B., joking about Ash Wednesday

Why on earth do we live lives like this???? I mean, I guess they fit with our personalities, really, but isn’t it so ridiculous?? –Melissa L., bemoaning the pathetic lives she and I lead

My god, Jen, we honestly cannot relate in normal human society. It’s fucking hilarious, though. –ditto

Oh, people are so silly, the things that they do. I will never understand the ways of the human. –ditto

I find him vaguely troubling. Maybe it’s just because I know what he’d say if a lard ass with tuberculosis like me showed up on the other end of his jaunty personal ad. Especially if I had a scarf that reeked of gasoline wrapped around my mouth and nose. He sounds like he’d make you participate in extreme sports. –Melissa L., after reading a personal ad I sent her

May god smite him for being a fool. –Melissa L., regarding a boy who broke my heart

So today I kind of like him. But mind you, on the great roller coaster of love, I still want to eviscerate him and feed him to [my dog]. –Melissa L.

I am convinced again that he doesn’t like me. He makes me sick. I really want to have sex with him. –ditto

I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s life by cleaning out the closets, doing laundry, and cooking a dinner that I think is going to give me the shits in about an hour or so. Later, I will also masturbate. –anonymous, on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

Who would hook up with somebody whose teeth are not only missing, but brown and soft? Yuck. Nobody can have that great a personality. –David B.

Does super PMS strength make you stronger than retards? –Mark B.

I fucking hate salad. Maybe I should use mini Kit-Kats as croutons. –Melissa L.

Every time I feel anxious, I should do crunches. I was thinking about doing crunches on the floor of my office today, but I think it’s kind of mentally ill to do that. –ditto

If it makes you feel any better, I really fucking smell today. … I mean, I smell so fucking bad that I don’t even want to close the door to my office because I am afraid that the stench will fester. –ditto

I may be dressed in all black, but face it, I’m the only sunshine in your life. –Mark B., to his boss

Things I don’t understand just piss me off. –Michelle Gates

My god I’m a ridiculous creature. –Melissa L.

I find that most flirting tactics from elementary school work. –Angela W.

I’m a mess. But a reliable one. –Mark B.

Jen, that is hot that crazy fat kid hit on you at Weis, although I, too, would have met it with a mixture of humor and horror. We are weirdo magnets, god bless our hearts. We should form our own alternate-universe version of Sex and the City. –Melissa L., after the town freak hit on me in the supermarket

We are freak magnets. Why? I think in general we are pretty intelligent, semi-normal human beings. We hold down jobs. We have meaningful conversation. But the wackos just zoom right on in. Maybe we are too nice...imagine that. –Shawn S.

Maybe I’m too nice. Never thought I’d be guilty of that. –Terry Mumma

All I ask is to be a famous socialite. –ditto

He’s running for Republican something or other. I think he is one of the flunkies that may carry paper from one office to the next. Basically a job that any able-bodied chimp could do. –Shawn Seabold, on a former classmate of ours

Yep, cause you know that any culture that manages to combine Christianity, voodoo, and animal sacrifice into one will definitely deify that mess. –Shawn S., on our conviction that a person we knew would become a Santeria/Voodoo priestess

Wow! Good job getting all that stuff done in under an hour! With the pace of life that you and I move at, that’s a fucking achievement. –Melissa L., after I told her about all I accomplished during my lunch break

You have to look at the pattern of our lives when making this trip, J.Bo. Whatever can happen to us, will. The Stansted transfer is just begging to be a nightmare. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. –Melissa L., when I was planning my flight to Scotland

These are Dutch people, for god’s sakes; being sensible and well-prepared goes out the window as you cross the county border. –ditto, when I asked her if her family had evacuation kits prepared, in the event of terrorists striking Three Mile Island

I don’t know why you would take the collectively dumbest people in the country and plant them all in the evacuation zone of a massive nuclear power plant. They’re just sitting ducks. –ditto, talking about Pennsylvania Dutch people and TMI

Maybe if I would have flirted with the clockmaker he would have dumped the gorgeous thin babe and decided to date a fat lump of garbage like me. – Melissa L.

Just the thought of biting into meat suspended in ice-cold Jell-O is ridiculous. If I were a 1950s husband I would surely slap my wife around and demand that she fix me a martini. –Terry Mumma, upon seeing 1950s recipes that included serving meat in Jell-O

For some reason, like, my mind couldn’t make my mouth make words. –Michelle Gates

As far as your place goes, I’m sure it’s fine. Anyone who has pets understands that certain smells are unavoidable at times. Not that it should smell like a stable, but things happen. –Shawn S., trying to console me when I moaned about my spraying cat

Well, I gotta go pretend to get some work done. Actually I am going to eat pudding and stare into space. –Melissa L., signing off an email

Well, I am going to go daydream about the love and affection I’ll never find. Talk to you later! –ditto

Well, gotta get back to staring into space and mentally berating myself. –ditto

All right, well, I am going to go spew my filth and hatred around the office. Talk to you later! –ditto

Fuck them for not giving you the giant raise you deserve, but I’m glad that you are earning 30Gs. Do you remember when earning 30 a year seemed like a really great salary that you wanted so badly, and now it’s just a matter of survival? –ditto

Can you imagine the two of us hitting the casinos and the 99 cent steak smorgasbords? (I wonder which side of you would win out at a 99 cent steak buffet—the penny-pincher or the vegetarian?) –Melissa L., when we thought about going to Vegas together

He was a real uncontrollable mess by the end of the night. It was a night of magic. –Melissa L., re: dealing with a drunken friend

My friend Stacey and I, we used to beat him up in the [junior high] cafeteria. And this one time she pounded his head repeatedly against a pillar, until his entire head was red and his ear was, like, sticking straight out. And I just remember how funny I thought that was. To this day, I still remember the look on his face. He was all red…it was just so funny. –Terry Mumma

School is such a dysfunctional, fucked-up microcosm. –Melissa L.

…I replied, “I can bench my own weight” and he said, “If I could, that would really be a feat.” So I said to myself, “No shit, you fat fuck,” but I really said, “Yeah!” Let Ginger Spice be the Goodwill Ambassador, not me. –David B.

That’s what husbands are for—money and sex, sometimes company. As long as they are kind of good-looking, hygienic, rich, and don’t do heroin, I’ll marry. –ditto

Lebanon has a plague that does not leak from the county limits. I know this! People here cannot communicate. Even in Shamokin which is a much smaller town, I see people in shops and even if they are stupid, they can still communicate in an effective way. –Terry Mumma

Everyone seems to think I have important things to talk about or that I am a sympathetic listener. Neither. I just want to email friends. –Angela W.

I just had a thought that [she] is in England getting laid right now. I’m kind of jealous and repulsed at the same time. –Michelle Gates

I don’t think you have Asperger’s. I think you’re just weird. –Melissa L., when I fretted that my social ineptness stems from Asperger’s syndrome

I think that the 7-11 shirt is an awes idea, and very pre-bop, post-fusion, neo-funk. But listen, you have to make sure that you wear other extremely trendy things with it. I don’t want this to turn into a situation where you see someone and can’t tell if they’re really trendy, or retarded. I love when that happens. When someone tries really hard to be trendy, but misses one element somewhere, and it honestly can’t be discerned whether or not they are hip or “slow.” Not that I think you could ever look retarded. You might look like a “refugee,” but you wouldn’t look retarded. –Melissa L., when I pondered buying a secondhand 7-11 uniform shirt in an attempt to look pseudo-trendy

Well, if you ask me, I think that Toni and Phil are worth having as in-laws to marry a piece of ass like Justin Hubbard. –Melissa L., when I said that I didn’t think I could ever marry Heather’s brother because of their parents

…there is a wrist-slitting scene…Pretty graphic scene and I think you would like it, Jen. –Angela W.

The guys’ bathrooms were horrid. There was one bathroom in the school that had a stall with a door on it, so everyone tried to use that one. The rest were just nightmarish, no tp, no soap, smells, some looked like they had been used by farm animals. And the graffitti was truly amazing. Being an art student, all I wanted to do was correct the pathetic attempts at anatomical renderings. –Shawn S.

What kind of damage would a person have to have suffered in their life for them to look at this as a good alternative? –ditto, re: Westboro Baptist Church

She is a fucking retard. She is a fucking retarded asshole. –Melissa L.

Me: Help me! Help me!
Terry Mumma: Help you what, bitch?
Me: Help me get your thing in me!
–from one of the nonsensical animated Spiderman movies Terry and I made on his computer

[as one of the characters is set afire]: Help!!! I’m drowning! –me, in that same Spiderman movie

Those chicks were DOGS!!! I mean, real fucking bow-wows. –Melissa L.

You are an EXTREMELY talented crazed woman!!!! –Jill Schade, upon reading an article I wrote

Just the thought of giving blood every again makes me queasy—well, if I was fat, I’d be all over it—“Take some more blood out of my ass and stomach!” –David B.

I like Delaware but I think I am becoming old before my time. –Melissa L.

I don’t have your current address since your place got flattened by the tornado in September. –Stuart MacKinnon (I loved the hyperbole!)

Everyday will be a Saturday for me; I brought some books to read, I have my passport, traveler’s checks, tickets, and scented lubes. –David B., preparing for his trip to Germany

You can see your WHOLE…THING! –Michelle Gates’s sputtered reaction when she saw the photocopy I accidentally made when I sat bare-assed on a copy machine

He looks misshapen. …He is practically corpulent. Major yuck. –Melissa L., upon seeing a recent photo of one of our high school classmates

I want Charlie to get so horny that he hammers nails into his cock, pours Coca-Cola on it, and lets rats devour it. –Terry Mumma

This house fucking smells like...cigarettes, BO, lingering bad breath, and gay sex. –Melissa L.

I can pig out on occasion, but if I had to try to keep up with them on a daily basis, my stomach would rupture. –Angela W.

Had the trots yesterday from eating a radish and could not drink any Cuervo. –Mark B., in an email from Mexico

Don’t frown, ’cuz I know you hate to move… –Antoinette Rudolph, after telling me she wants her bridesmaids to work out a gym for her bachelorette party (she knows I’m a total sloth)

For some reason, even though I am afflicted with it to the point of not being able to function normally, I think OCD is the funniest goddamn thing. –Melissa L.

Guess what??? I am wearing my Angles tank top today underneath my sweater!! Sshhh! It’ll be our lil’ secret. –David B.

I really hope I don’t get so hyper that I have to bury my face in a pillow so Doppie and Vig will not be awakened by my screaming and parroting. –Terry Mumma

That might work, but I was hoping for a better lie from you, Jen Boyer!!! –Angela W. (my friends think so highly of me! J)

I can’t express how much I really genuinely hope I don’t wind up on psychoexgirlfriend.com one day, although I think that for us, it is inevitable. –Melissa L.

Look fuckers—QUIT IT! –Stuart MacKinnon, to the obnoxious girls who were throwing spitballs in his hair during an international culture fair we were attending

What a fine life I’ve made for myself; I’m sitting here in dirty panties, not having gotten a bath all weekend, drinking warm birch beer that is starting to taste like licorice, feeling the rumblings of the shits starting, wondering if I should watch a porno... oh well, at least I still believe in romance. –anonymous

Well, how’s this for fucking miserable: it’s 2:39am on a Saturday night, I am completely alone, sitting here emailing and watching a porno, lacking the energy and too apathetic to even masturbate. –anonymous

Don’t you love how you and I sit around and think about ways to torture each other’s obsessions? I think that is a sign of true friendship if there ever was one. –anonymous

Maybe other people aren’t like us; they won’t sit around for years and wait for the person they like to ask them out… –Melissa L.

I guess I better go slap some makeup on this lump of chopped-up hamburger I call a face. –ditto

Do you think I am disgusting, fat, and sickening? [from] your friend, the useless piece of fat shit... –ditto

Let me know when you’re gonna come, so I don’t puke. –Michelle Gates

I always knew we had a lot in common (me and God that is). –Terry Mumma, after reading an Onion article about God being diagnosed as manic-depressive

I’m of the mind that all men are ASSHOLES; even if they are nice assholes, they cannot escape the fact because they have penises and just having a penis is enough to make one an asshole for life. –Laura Koiner

I have a thousand things to do and now on top of that Doppie wants me to mow the lawn. I’m not even sure I know how to do that. I just know it’s going to be a disaster. –Terry Mumma, bemoaning life while his father had a post-surgical eight-week recovery

Anyway, he needs at least eight weeks of good drugs and no work and now we can’t order him around. Life is chaos with Doppie out of commission; we ran out of Diet Coke and ice three times since. That’s just wrong. –ditto

I used to walk that [route] every day, sometimes a few times a day when Stacy lived there, and now it just seemed like a never-ending corridor of cookie cutter houses spiked with creepy construction workers. –Terry Mumma, on walking through his neighborhood

That is such a fun side job and further reinforces the notion that we are misfits. Only misfits become lab study guinea pigs as their second job. I am proud of you. –Melissa L., when I told her I wanted to become a clinical trial participant at NIH to earn extra money

Those deadbeats got their phone shut off. They have no bills, but they managed to get their phone shut off. I hope pulling the lever at those slots is worth not being able to call 911 if someone breaks into your house to slaughter you. –Melissa L.

I was depressed to hear about Mr. Belvedere. But not nearly as depressed as I am about the lack of Chandra Levy news lately. I’m not ready to give it up, why is the news media? –ditto

Why buy the tux when you can rent it? –David Byrne’s view of relationships vs. one night stands

…he can be quite a malicious old cracker… –David B., on his father

One more thing. Horses born during Whitsuntide (the week after and including Whitsunday [your birthday]) will be insane and surely kill somebody in this lifetime. Also Whitsuntide is considered the most unlucky time of the year. More happy thoughts to add to the story of your birth! –Terry Mumma, sending me some birthday cheer

I cannot wait to read the gay erotica [you gave me] on the El; not only will everybody know what I am reading, but I will more than likely have a boner and nobody would want to sit next to me. –David B.

For some reason all day today, I kept thinking of this time in like fifth grade when Jess Seguinot said to me, “You wouldn’t be so bad if you lost weight and cleaned your face up a bit.” Isn’t that awful!! I kept thinking of that and laughing and laughing and laughing. I wish at the time I would have had the capacity to say, “And you wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t a Jehovah’s Witness whose parents have 52 children because of their archaic religious beliefs so you have no money and have to live in filth.” How, even in fifth grade, would you not have the social skills to know not to say that? –Melissa L.

I hate that fat prick so much I could kill him myself. I hope that smarmy fat son of a bitch drops dead from alcohol and pot poisoning. –ditto

You are just so clever with the computer. –Susan Boyer, after I simply sent her a link over email (my action did not strike me as being particularly clever!)

He may not always get his sentences structured correctly or say words the proper way, but I feel he is a warm-hearted individual who is made of “sterner stuff” than even I gave him credit for. –Susan Boyer, on Dubya after 9/11

I thought this said “Euthanasia—the ultimate adventure”! –Susan Boyer, misreading a TV listing

They better get the power back on. I don’t want to get looted! –Kristen Boyer, afraid of the people in our ghetto apartment complex during a power outage

Cleo, you look retarded. –Susan Boyer, chiding the cat

Cleo, you can’t be so damn delicate! –Susan Boyer, when Cleo took too long to eat the table scraps we gave her

Isn’t anything safe from your meat hooks?! –Susan Boyer, exasperated with my kittens

We are more, shall I say, well-adjusted than people like the Gump and [her]. Settling is in their future, not ours. –Angela W., in response to my worry that I’ll have to settle for a crappy husband someday

HEY! My Uncle Mark is retarded and I think if he could talk he would be offended by being lumped up with the likes of [her]… –Angela W.

They are both dumb, virgins, ugly, and have funky teeth. They should open a sterilization colony facility and the first experiment should be on each other! –David B.

Let me be the olive in the martini,
Let me be the fun in dysfunctional,
Let me be all the wiser from Budweiser,
Let me be asleep.
Oh, wait I am at work, right?
–David B.

I suspect that I am still asleep and do not notice it yet, because my life is a nightmarish dream. –ditto

My commute for me is very much like the Holocaust—the flock in which everybody moves to and from train to train to train to office building, especially in the morning which is usually cold, muggy, with people just standing in the dim gray-lit stations and on the platforms waiting, waiting, and waiting; some try to make conversation with others, some smoke, some read the paper, then once the train comes they (we) are herded like cattle to the slaughterhouse, knowing full well what lies ahead. –ditto

Ho can anyone expect you to remember anything when you are jumping out of a plane 10,000 feet in the air with some hot dude strapped to your back??? –Angela W., on my skydiving experience

I’m glad you had fun even though you were out of control and possibly might have died. –Terry Mumma, on my tailspinning while skydiving

Food is the only friend you’ll ever need. –Terry Mumma

We ate so much, we made ourselves sick. And then we ate some more. –Melissa L.

Missy likes this really creepy kid named Shawn and she keeps talking about him and he’s this little wimpy dude and if you met him, you’d think he was really strange. –Jenn Heller, on a tape made at Gates’s 16th birthday party

Sex before marriage is a very bad thing, because I am holy and I am pure. –Melissa L., on that same tape

I’m not a narcissist; I gave you an English muffin. –Terry Mumma

You look like a fucking stupid clown. –Terry Mumma to Laura Koiner

Well, someone’s going to suck my dick before this night is through! –Joel Sattazahn

Rosie the Riveter don’t need no man! –Heather Hubbard and Jennifer Boyer’s senior year war cry

You’re not just stupid—you’re STOOPID! –Melissa L.

blood…everywhere…puddles of it on the floor
from my wrists, my eyes, my brain
I’m dancing in the blood and it splatters on the wall
the piano tinkers in the background
(collapses) I’M TIRED OF DANCING!!!
–Heather Hubbard’s Isca profile during sophomore year

If you love me, why do you condemn me? –Heather Hubbard

Don’t ever flip off big black men in expensive cars—that can only mean one thing: mafia or drug cartel. –Michelle Foster

All right, I got blew once. –Jason Peters

Oh, why don’t you go down on me for a bit? –ditto

It’s a lot better once it’s blowed up. –ditto

Can I touch your nipples? Oh, I mean nips. –ditto

Do you want it? –ditto (during sex)

Jerk me off right now! –ditto

I’m glad I got to met yous guys. –ditto

Dinner’s ready! –Terry Mumma, while thrusting his crotch

Can someone, like, beat this for me? –Terry Mumma (referring to an egg, but it sounded perverse!)

Del sol! –Joel Sattazahn’s war cry

Did you knew that we leaved? –Terry Mumma

Roll over, bitch, I need some anus. –Joel Sattazahn

How should I know? I ain’t gay! –Melissa L.’s response to the question “Who do you think is the prettiest girl in school?” in Foster’s 7th grade slam book

The real landmark of love is the penis. –Terry Mumma, after hearing someone call the Eiffel Tower the landmark of love

Oh, I don’t know if I want ice cream. I just had a sticky bun. –Jason Peters

Okay, well gimme a call when you get home so we can like “hey man” and hang out, okay? –Jason Peters

I’m ready for round two. –Jason Peters, after sex

[Biggest fear—] That everything about me is a lie and I may one day find out the truth. –Laura Koiner

That’s physically repulsive. –Heather Hubbard, Jennifer Boyer, and Michelle Foster, referring to the scummy guys on the Strip in Lebanon

i wish i could tell you how i feel,
why these scars are on my wrists,
why at night i sit alone.
i want to let you know who i am,
to show you my thoughts
and philosophies about life.
i long to be honest
and not hide my real identity.
for social acceptance i must pretend,
cover the scars and make up lies.
i cannot tell you of my deep depression.
i cannot be myself.
i will sit on a step or walk alone,
and only be me when i’m not around you.
–Heather Hubbard

He doesn’t look a damn thing like Dan. –Melissa L., who constantly had to remind me that not everybody in the world looked like Dan

I think they should just throw a bag of gnocchi up in the air; it would fill up the hole. –my solution to ozone depletion

Kill everyone who’s hungry. –Melissa L.’s solution to world hunger

Did you know that there is a man named Shawn Seabold who is more gorgeous than you can ever imagine? I mean, this guy Shawn, he is just, like, the most sexy thing, the most gorgeous thing that has ever been created… –Melissa L. [before]

I just got dumped by the geekiest fucking asshole on Earth!!! –Melissa L. [after]

EVERYBODY wants to be Joan Crawford. –Terry Mumma, as Joan Crawford, in “Who’s Who in Mental Illness”

Sure, I am captain of my soul. But where the hell is my boat going? –JB, from a journal entry

I work 27 hours a day in a machine shop… –Melissa L.r’s alter ego’s main complaint

Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?
No, no, white sheep, stop oppressing me.
–rhyme by Melissa L. and Jennifer Boyer, sung at a CAUSE meeting

FUCK!!! I gotta EAT!!! –Melissa L.

You know, self-hatred is a heavy cross to bear. Maybe that’s why so many people end up crucifying themselves upon it. –JB

Just fight to the death, ladies. –Melissa L.’s advice to Michelle Gates and Heather Hubbard, before they were scheduled to fight at my 19th birthday party

he accused me of thinking i’m the
antichrist. he never saw the stigmata
on my wrists, hurting like a dark religion
all their own.
–JB, from an untitled poem

If you don’t stop laughing, I’m going to have to kill you! –Terry Mumma, in Who’s Who in Mental Illness

A bear is nothing but a big, furry butt. –Michelle Gates, in ZooAmerica

I don’t like to make sense. –Terry Mumma

Sitting on the high throne of life, lovin’; love it so much like a studly woman! –Terry Mumma, singing in Who’s Who in Mental Illness

Hey now, yous kids these days, that’s all you think—you think that we don’t know what’s good for you, but, but you do. –Melissa L., making no sense in Houseguest

So much—so very immensely in love. I just can’t believe it—I’m overwhelmed. –Terry Mumma’s character in Houseguest, when asked by his wife how much they were in love

Sunlight sucks. –Shawn S.

I wanna be dead. If I was dead, everything would be better. I wouldn’t look like this. I wouldn’t feel like this. –Melissa L.

Looking past and around
the lifeless grove
keeping in the smoking ring
there are two links
links that are rusty, but still bound
quickening from root to bough
the locks are weak and pale
and in the vast and stormy clouds above
lie the oozing gaps scratched by the groping branch tips
sharp as knives screeching across the
chalky, musty depths of my being
twisted tree shape
piercing the soul
and shattering the stained glass windows
of my desperate, tired eyes
god tinkers with life
peaches drop from between my
toenails
low to the ground
the earth quakes, you are gone
concealed behind rough bark and rough hands
stop this feeling and finish with me.
Amen.
–round-robin poem composed by Michelle Gates, Laura Koiner, and Jorge Rosas in London in January 1995 [note: a second round-robin poem was composed in London a year later, in January 1996, by Jorge Rosas, Annida Christofi, Isabelle Chenaud, and myself, and that is in the Goldsmiths section of this page]

So do you believe in doppelgangers, Jen? Because I almost called out to yours at lunch. The thing that stopped me is that I realized it in no way could be you because she was jogging. –Debbie Stultz

You know, looking at Italians’ fridges is almost like porn to me. –ditto

Fried dough—one of the finer things in life!! –ditto

I’ve long given up any hope of happiness—I simply drink to dull my misery. And eventually even the protons will decay. –Mike B.

Where’d he come from? The third ring of Hell or what? –Barbara Bryant, when told that one of our new division directors came from a place worse than our office

Bush must’ve been declared the winner. –Lynda Tennent, when, during the 2000 election, the weather suddenly changed from pristine and sunny to ominously dark and stormy

Dude, anything nihilistic, I’m digging. –Mike B.

If you’re the sunniest person we’ve got, we’d better start calling ourselves the Hemlock Department. –Mike B., to Julie F.

You have to remember that the universe is a place of unimaginable violence, beyond our ability to comprehend, where stars rip the hearts out of other stars. –Mike B., after Julie F. accused him and me of being hardened cynics

The universe is a cold and meaningless place. –Mike B, interrupting himself in the middle of discussing a project with Angela M.

If my wish comes true and western civilization falls... –Mike B.

I’ll piss on the grave of western civilization. –ditto

Are we a class act or what? –Barbara Bryant, when she removed her name tag (affixed with only Scotch tape) from the wall outside her office and a chunk of wall came off with it

Life is like a dead black flower. –Betsy Colgan, illustrating the type of sayings that would be found on a calendar I’d produce if I were Mary Englebreit

So, I guess I’m going to the mall. Sniper or no sniper, I need a bra, damnit! –Skevy Leavens, during the 2002 sniper killing spree

Yeah, eager people are annoying, although [this office] tends to suck that out of people rather quickly. She will soon be like the rest of us: tired, depressed, and angry. –Chris Bocquet

You are truly insane—I meant that in the nicest possible way. –Jim Hawarden, to me

The guys who are attracted to me are always at death’s door. –Carol B.

I’m dead on the inside. –Cody Mooneyhan, upon returning to a management training session after a short break

Holy fucking shit!! No way!! Your house was hit by a tornado and you are organizing a bean bag toss?!?!? –Debbie Stultz, after I told her that I had to create a bean bag toss game for an office party the day after my house was hit and severely damaged by a tornado

Man, I feel like I’ve done my time in Hell today. –Carolinda Hales, on Monday in our office

Tomorrow’s the day I will cry all day. –Cody Mooneyhan, thinking ahead to his next day in our office

He doesn’t drink, so I can’t trust a word he says. –Mike B.

I’m married—I’m used to being beaten up. –ditto

I’m married—I’m used to women being rude to me. –ditto

Beth, as a married man, you’re going to have to use sharper digs than that to get to me. –Mike B., after Beth M. insulted him

Wow, it’s like research prostitution! And it’s right next door! –Skevy Leavens, thrilled when I told her about NIH clinical trials

At this rate, he’s bound to get shot within the year. Can you imagine so many people hating you?? At least it makes for good comedy for the next four years! –Skevy Leavens, on Dubya

I don’t want anybody to write my biography because my life is so horrific. –Susan Washington

What was the matter with him? Didn’t he notice my gray, balding scalp? –Susan Washington, when told that our waiter had been flirting with her

Debbie Stultz: Don’t make faces at me, Carolinda!
Carolinda Hales: That was a smile!

Donate the money? I’m gonna donate it to my bank account! –Mike B., when Julie F. suggested that he sell his old washer and dryer on Craigslist and donate the money to charity

I should have left a long time ago. This place is crazy. These people are nuts. –Susan W., after a long week at work

Some of these Christian stations are scary. He’s Alive, He’sAlive.net. It’s like a horror movie. –Martin M.

I only run if someone’s chasing me. –Cathy S., when asked if she was going out running

I always thought it would be nice to have a guy who’s gone to sea for half the year. –Julie F., on the benefits of dating Naval men

Knife fights, gunplay, baseball bats. –Mike B. to Beth M., on what would be involved if one of them served as manager for the other

I thought I could make do with the minimum. But it was never enough! –Debbie Stultz, showing the desperately addictive qualities of Flickr

So, aside from thoughts of hijackings and death, are you excited about your trip?! –Skevy Leavens, before my trip to Scotland

I can do that for you, Mike. I’ve got a rusty dull Exacto. –Beth M., when she found out Mike B. had to get a mole removed

We’re just surrounded by mediocrity. –Debbie Stultz

Oh, stop calling me, whoever you are. Stop it! Leave me alone! –Carolinda Hales, to her ringing phone

We did the rosary stuff and all that shit. –Barbara Bryant, neatly summarizing her Catholic upbringing

JennyB, who cares about your eyes in the first photo? ’Cause your hair looks bitchin’. It’s like wild-woman fuck-me-now hair! –Shereen McAdams, after seeing the resulting photos after I scanned my head

Your taste is all across the board! –Susan Washington, shocked at my wide array of dorky celebrity crushes

I’ve got to go upstairs for my weekly dose of idiocy. –anonymous, before a meeting

I’m going upstairs to get my weekly dose of backstabbing. –ditto

My greatness is just unappreciated by you. –Cynthia Harper

The planets have aligned, not in my favor. –Mike M.

God, you’re in big trouble if you need me for anything. –Carolinda Hales, notoriously computer-unsavvy, when paged by one of our IT guys

It’s good to know though that you are spreading your very special brand of sunshine where it is appreciated. –Lynda Tennent, after I received an employee award [NB: my special brand of sunshine involves raging misanthropy, pessimism, and cynicism]

John Saville: Chickens are nasty!
Betsy Colgan: Some of those lambs are nasty, too.
John: I’ve never seen a nasty lamb! Ask Mary!
–puzzling conversation overheard in my department one day

Insanity is creative, that’s for sure. –Carol B.

…she’s a real burr under my saddle. –Paula J.

Jennifer, you look completely nonplussed. You look disgusted. –Rob Blizard, upon seeing me in my cubicle first thing on Monday morning

Why do people even bother giving cards to Accounting? It’s not like anyone knows them anyway! –Eduardo Nunes, after my farewell card disappeared in the Accounting Department as it circulated for signatures.

Just stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. Lots of stuff. –Janet McGrath, when asked what is going on in our section on the department

I like your watch, Jean. Things aren’t so bad when you miss them completely. –Vicki Hawarden, when someone commented that her watch stopped working at the Annual Meeting

Good die or bad die? –Frank Berry, after Betsy Colgan told him she had to show him something that was going to make him die

All right, at some point I have to stop eating. –Betsy Colgan, muttering to herself after dipping into our boss’s candy dish one too many times

Amazing...everyone in Olney is reading about their elderly parents, their kids’ upbringing, dog training, and cake! We are so sheltered, huh?! –Skevy Leavens, after I introduced her to looking at the wonderful world of amazon.com purchase circles

I desperately want to stick my head in a vat of fudge! I’m chocolate deprived!!! –Skevy Leavens

Dr. G. to Mike B.: I left something for you on your desk.
Paula J.: I hope it’s not duck poop!
Carol B.: That’s pretty random, Paula.
–conversation in our weekly dept. meeting

I enjoy punching things. And kicking things. –Sara Miller

Do you know how much duct tape we’d have to use to cover all the drafts in our house? We’d have to have stock in the duct tape company. –Beth M., on the government’s urging of people to put duct tape and plastic sheeting on their windows and doors

Manners are overrated. –Heidi H., relieved that the employee newsletter staff planned to ditch the Ms. Manners column

Jeez, all the opportunities we miss because of our insane workload. –Carol B., lamenting the way pesky work interferes with our lives

I’m sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who’s healthy. –Missy Clifft

There better be some kind of pig product in there! –Debbie Stultz, when I asked her what she thought we were getting for a staff breakfast

You know me: if it comes from a pig, I’ll eat it! –Debbie Stultz

I’m not paranoid—I’m right. There’s a difference. –Laurie Munk

Her haircut is really unfortunate. –Hannah Durocher, regarding a coworker’s hairstyle

I don’t even believe in god and I was praying last night. It’s pathetic. –Debbie Stultz, after her favorite hockey team lost a game

If they get their hands on the booze, it’s bedlam. –Dawn Rumsey, on the residents of Yellowknife

I want to see death and damnation. –Cody Mooneyhan, disappointed that an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired with no killings

Are these people insane or what? –Lynda Tennent, on my former employer, who became her printer

Liz frightens me. –Frank Berry, on my ex-supervisor

We need watermelon and beer. –Nina Hutchinson, when our office was stifling hot

I’m constantly in search of the little woman. –Theresa Wiegmann, when she couldn’t find Barbara Bryant

I don’t give a crap where it fits into this little doodah. –Betsy Colgan, on having to squeeze her widespread job duties into the rigid confines of an SOP

I knew it was too serious to be related to work. –Cody Mooneyhan, after hearing Debbie Stultz’s howl of despair (the agony was caused by bad sports news, not a computer crash)

If they’re not eating, they’ll stop shitting. –Laurie Munk’s rationale for removing the bird feeder from her yard

Goddamn we sure made things screwed up. –Leane Ziebell, on our quality committee.

I’ll do it; it makes me pay attention. –Angela Buscemi, volunteering to take notes at our quality committee meeting

All I know is that underneath that great writing ability lies a weak, lily-livered, cheap, easy-way-out idiot. Pa-thetic. –Debbie Stultz

I’m impressed. What a dog and pony show that was. –Janet McGrath, after her computer was upgraded

Man, little people can run. –Debbie Williams Saffour, upon seeing our coworker’s son racing through our office halls

Summer is just way too short. We need to add, like, a month to summer. –Debbie Stultz

You’ve got that heater on—it’s going to cook your feet. Smells just like chicken! –Debbie Stultz to Cody Mooneyhan, regarding the portable heater in his cubicle

It’s not a freak of nature—it’s a freak of manufacture. –Cody Mooneyhan, on cherry 7-UP and green ketchup

An aching heart is one that’s working overtime and inefficiently. –Carolinda Hales

Let ’em burn, because I’m out of here. –Nikki Bass, when asked what she would do with her department’s files if our office burned down.

I’m turning into the Quality heretic here! –Phil Schiff, on the anger roused by our fledgling quality program

Here you can almost smell the stupidity in the air, that’s how bad it is. –Chris Cuprys, on the mentality of Lebanon County

Weekends were made for Michelob. –Steve Martz

I can’t keep it straight, all those Christian religions. –Andy Nothnagle

That redbeet egg is just vile. –ditto, preaching the virtues of pickled eggs over redbeet eggs

You’re a fucking pretty whore, you know that? –Annida Christofi Clark, after seeing photos of me dressed as a Soviet whore for Halloween

Trying to be romantic, I thought I’d send him a message in French saying what I thought was “I will always love you” (cheesy I know) but got a message back from him saying “Did you really mean this—‘I will never love you?’” Oh dear. Much apologising was the order of that day. –Richard Hughes, on the difficulty of foreign languages

I guess the most outrageous situation was when I saw The Most Desired Man, when an Australian guy [sitting] in front of me offered me some chocolate and we ended up having sex in the toilets—not at that cinema, but at another one further down the road. –anonymous

I’m going to, um, get up and clean the hairball up...wow...that dazzled me. –Annida Christofi Clark, after her cat spit up a particularly large hairball

Oh, look who’s talking, Mr. Spell-Check-Everything-Correctly-Wrong! –Annida Christofi Clark, to Jorge Rosas (a notoriously bad speller), after he criticized another guy’s spelling mistake

She’s taking it like a real trooper! Don’t hurt my friend anymore! She’s made of wax, not stone! –from Annida Christofi Clark’s inexplicable Christmas card to my boyf

When I went to see [Independence Day] at the cinema here, everyone laughed so hard at the whole idea of the US President single handedly saving the world. Can you imagine Dubya being able to do that? –Richard Hughes

Who the fuck does Jools Holland think he fucking is?! –Annida Christofi Clark’s puzzling outburst, after I asked her if she thought Jools Holland would be at our local pub that night

Being single is sometimes best, don’t you agree? That way you can seriously fuck men’s brains out and say afterwards, “Oh no, it wasn’t serious” and give them a wonderful feeling of self-worth. –Richard Hughes

I decided I don’t believe in love. It’s such a stupid fucking thing. –Camilla Stabell, one morning at breakfast

Where you live, Annida—in the jungle?? –Emanuella DeLucia, disgusted at Annida Christofi Clark’s tales of cockroaches in Greece

Once again, Jen, you are beating yourself to the point of which your life is just one sore cut-up piece of flesh lying on the cold slab of life waiting for the pricks, the prongs, and the eyes of it all. –Jorge Rosas

Maybe it’s her intelligence bursting out! –Isabelle Chenaud’s theory on why I had a lump on my temple

She is appalling. She is a female Satan. –Alex Mullane, on Bitch O’Grady

90210 has nothing over 17042. –Jorge Rosas, on the antics of my friends back in Lebanon

Quick, Jen! Hold your breath and count to ten backwards from twenty! –Jorge Rosas’s inexplicable advice on how to cure my hiccups

Stupid woman. –muttered by a Rac Mac cleaning lady, after Bitch O’Grady yelled at her to do something

Wow, that’s nice. –Jorge Rosas’s spacey reply, when told that Sina Shamsavari’s first memory was of lying under a table while bombs crashed around his house in the Middle East

I’ve been such a potato today… –Annida Christofi Clark, on being a sloth

Shit, man, I can’t believe the things that are happening …even my own bicycle refuses to carry me. –ditto

Hey…can you imagine a huge lard-ass on a bike? Hey! That’s me! –ditto

I’m going stir crazy, and I think I’m going to be the first opera singer with a huge mental disability. –ditto

I’ve become such a slob, you probably won’t even recognize me! I’m a pig of great proportions, and stuff…but I don’t care! –ditto

I like to eat Wild Boar…that’s when you know you’ve finally become a fat slob—when you enjoy eating Wild Boar. I’m destined to a life of fatness. –ditto

New Year Rapesody
[A round-robin poem composed by Annida Christofi Clark, myself, Jorge Rosas, and Isabelle Chenaud in a Rac Mac kitchen on January 1, 1996]

Shut up, you make me sick
And the fog is heavy on the river
But we have a long trip ahead
And rabbits can’t fly but they can bite
Vulgar children throw up on the pavement
Leaving me with my blood, sticky on my hands, and I ache
I don’t ache pain, but joy for their simple misery
Can’t you hear desperate cries amidst the howling wind gales
The wind blows flailing the fog to the city
“If you had 99p,” it whispers suggestively, “you could buy my oblivion.”
But who needs oblivion when we have life
Who wants a cheap life when death offers endless better being
The truth hurts; can you believe that?
But death doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t sting or scar
It caresses and pats you on the back
It is the most unique feeling ever experienced in life, some communion with Nature
Utopian death calls us all for that matter
I’m afraid no one’s there to answer the phone
But leave a message and they’ll get back to you
“I hate you but let’s have sex,” says some voice on the phone.
“I’ll rip your eyes out with my Instant Hot Chocolate Drink.”
I’ll cut off your fingernails with rusty nails
And you’ll have nothing left to do, but clean yourself up
Beware, though, a pair of eyes is watching in the middle of a blood puddle
It all dries up.

You realize that if I have a kid I’d have to punish the father severely during the pregnancy, and the birth. Like at the birth, when the head finally pops out, I would pull a gun from under my pillow and shoot him in the balls just to make sure he never came near me with that thing again. –Annida Christofi Clark

FUCK OFF, there’s nothing nice about summer. Except the ice cream. –Annida Christofi Clark

Jen, you’re such a cripple! –Lucy Chaudhuri, when I couldn’t figure out how to get Annida’s pen to work

What’s an attractive bin like you doing in a place like this? –Neil Shorney, to a Lewisham Council bin

Stop saying “aye”! –Steve Martland, to James Buchanan

Snails are not fucking innocent. They’re fucking fornicating every day, and they can fuck anybody! –Isabelle Chenaud

It would be easier if you took your knickers off. –Jon Loomes, trying to seduce Annida

That’s not true—his world stops. –Deborah Malki’s cold response to the lyric “without me, his world will go on turning”

Move it, Graaaaanny! –James Buchanan, to a slow-moving Annida

Come on, Grandad! –ditto

I don’t know, I mean…I have been pretty lucky in my life; I have always had food and clothing, a home and good parents. But what’s the point, ya know? –James Buchanan

Go and get juice from the bloody garage, you dick! –Faye Piper, after Jorge Rosas drank the last of Annida’s blackcurrant juice

Marriage is a 3-ringed circle. First you have the engagement ring, then you have the wedding ring, then you have the suffering. –Silvia Maggiore

You still eat these? –Min Yung, while examining my birth control pills

Oh yeah yeah yeah… –Min Yung’s favorite expression (after “you know”)

Annida Christofi Clark: You should adopt an animal.
Silvia Maggiore: I have a brother!

I think that Freud was a bit of an asshole. –Deborah Malki, spontaneously during dinner

I’d rather be a sexual dynamo! –James Buchanan

But anyway…Björk’s nipples! –ditto

Struggle, fail, try again, fail, try new things, fail—I won’t let you win! –ditto

If we were all dead, this planet would be worth living on. –ditto

I don’t care for nothingness; the world should be blown up, baby! –ditto

I must not adapt to English; English must adapt to me! –Stephanos Dianellos

On your knees, bitch! *slap*
I am not an animal; I am a human being!
–Annida Christofi Clark and Jennifer Boyer’s nightly Rac Mac pre-dinner performance

Go lie down and get a headache. –Annida Christofi Clark

He does give a fuck; that’s his main aim in life. –Faye Piper on her ex-boyfriend, Alistair Justice

Meet an empty space,
it wasn’t empty in the beginning,
but it is burned for so long,
that its contents
have long been extinguished.
All that are left are the scars
from the burning
with the odd flick of fire
from time to time
to make sure the contents can’t grow again…
–Jim Buchanan

What do you think you’re doing down here in my office, without any clothes on? Now go get some clothes on! –Bitch O’Grady, to Faye Piper

Jon Ball: It’s going to very uncomfortable playing in orchestra tomorrow.
Bob Wilkes: Jon, I’m a bloody horn player! It’s never comfortable!
–after Bob fell on the pavement

I was the victim. Now I am the victimizer! –Sina Shamsavari

There’s no way any man could maintain a boner around her. She’d start screaming and calling you “dear” and you know how temperamental dicks are! You have to treat dicks nicely! –Daniela, on Bitch O’Grady

You forced yourself on me! But I liked it! –Gordon after Sina snogged him

I believe in Karma, man. Believe me, anyone who fucks you around is gonna get triple-fucked by a water buffalo, eventually. –Matt Dyer

In Virginie’s area they put human shit on cars. I hope they put it on her HEAD! –Sara Shamsavari

I have no prejudices; let’s leave that for the lower classes. –Sina’s cousin Dana

A person who has a lot of friends doesn’t have any friends; it’s clear. –Sina’s mom

If you can’t beat them, make sure you cut their legs off, otherwise they will continue to be one step ahead of you. –Sarah McMillan

Do you take postage stamps? –Jonathan Ball, trying to pay for his dinner with Royal Mail stamps in Vesuvios

Come back to my pad—I need a chat. –Jim Dakin

You should really not use a mobile phone, ’cause you’ll get cancer and die, and then you won’t be a songbird anymore. –an anonymous man to Annida Christofi Clark

Don’t be doing that! This is not a whorehouse! –Laura B., when Mike B. tried talking to somebody on the street from the window of their house

Shit, I’ll slip you the hoagie. –Bill Gamble, to Melissa L., when she mentioned wanting to buy a magic love charm

Hey! How about that! Do you want a banana? –an anonymous bum to Charlie Troxel in Atlantic City

I never forget a difficult vein. –an NIH phlebotomist to me when I donated blood (my veins are difficult because they’re small and they roll)

I hate the earth
I hate the world
I’d kill myself if I had the nerve
Lovers’ wounds never mend
Alone until the bitter end
I hate you, God
Fuck you
Amen
–Barb Weaver

I say: when you play a New Kids on the Block record backwards—it sounds better. –Professor Seigle’s view of subliminal Satanic messages in rock lyrics

Are we just gonna sit around and pray? –Chris McLoughlin, when asked to go on the freshman retreat by Christy Marshall

What? Are you serious? That is WAY too much meat that doesn’t go together. –our shocked waiter to Michelle Gates in Hard Times Café, after she placed a meaty order

You’re one of the most unusual people I’ve ever met. Not only are you brilliant, devastatingly beautiful, hilariously funny, and superlatively multi-talented, you are also insane… –Barbara Weaver, on the back of her senior picture to me

Please don’t eat my baby. –Rod Oberdick to Michelle Gates, when she was holding his newborn daughter

Everything is twisted if you look at it properly. –John Seigle, my very cool Composition professor

Hold your horses, bitch—it’s Saturday. –Aundria Cummings, when we were being tailgated by some woman

I’m unconscienceable. I have no conscience. I could kill someone and I really wouldn’t care. –Barb Weaver

I think everyone’s insane. I hate everyone. –ditto

Fat chicks are like mopeds—they’re cool to ride until your friends see you on one. –the ever-politically correct Tom Small

Men suck. –DB

Sometimes you gotta make yourself do shit, even when you don’t want to. –ditto

I was a bit of a pyromaniac when I was a kid. –Dr. Connolly, my Earth Science professor

You gotta be a little sick to be a Comm[unications] major. –Dr. Solomon, one of my media professors

I have a very weird, sick sense of humor. I laugh at all kinds of weird things. –ditto

There comes a time in your life when you’re not up to the mosh pit. –Dr. Clarke, my Editing professor, who was quite old

After a while I thought to myself: “Damn, people think I’m lame.” –Chuck Kurpis, a student in my Editing class, after realizing that he accidentally wore green on St. Patrick’s Day

He’s got fingers like ET—holy shit. –another student in that class, after seeing a picture of Ronald Reagan

There’s a whole reality inside ourselves that most people have never seen. –Father Hamernick, my Human Communications professor

Darling, he said, it’s like this: you live, I die; you die, I live, but I’ve already killed you once, in the bloodstained room. You remember? When you cried for me and I slapped your face. I was standing next to the trunk, the one with your childhood? I opened it when you opened your wrists. I’ve been dead for years now, but I still drink your blood, consume your flesh, rot in your mind. –Jason Miller, “flowers for the dead”

Are you mad? –Grimace

Four, please. –the rusty-haired pig, mistaking a restaurant patron for a hostess

I’m ALL fired up! –Dennis Barnett

Tomorrow starts strict diet and strict working out so I’ll be thin and beautiful by _____. –Melissa Hoehn (mantra #1)

When all else fails, start a diet. –Melissa Hoehn (mantra #2)

Help me. I need help. Diet starts tomorrow but I’m addicted to food. –Melissa Hoehn

What the hell is a misologue?! –Dennis Barnett’s anguished cry in Ethics class

It seems like the more I know, the more I fear. –Nina Agostine

A lot of good things happen on Earth. I have fun here. That’s all that matters. –Dennis Barnett, in Ethics class

Fuck them. You can’t let people like that get you down. –Paul Borian

Yeah, I remember her. Cool. –DB, on the subject of me (man, was I thrilled when he said that!)

We can be devoured by our own interior poisons. –Professor Benestad, my Theology II professor

Dude, that was the funniest damn thing I think I’ve ever seen in my life. This lesson’s on me. –allegedly said by DB’s 8th grade piano teacher, when Dan drooled on the keyboard during a lesson

If you can’t laugh at yourself, make fun of other people. –SP