Ah, Freaks.

Tonight was a great night at Freak Train. It's too bad that I'm not A/V savvy enough to get some YouTube action going so you can all see it. My cousin Chad, who lives in Austin, has caught the show when he's visited Denver, and has fervently requested that we stream the video live on the night of the show.

What a great idea.

Who will do this?

In the meantime, you'll just have to trust me: If you're in Denver, or even NEAR Denver, just come and see the show. It's like a combination of any given open mic + your cousin Kenny performing his "I Have A Dream" speech for the whole family at Thanksgiving + a busker convention + (when you're REALLY lucky) an impromptu performance by masters of their craft + FREE BEER.

And after nearly nine years, it hasn't gotten old. Just truly habitual.

Thanks to all who came out to the show tonight! Special thanks to all the Regular Freaks -- well done. And farewell to Bradford Wills, to whom I wish all the very best in the Beaumont, TX family bunker. Thanks to John for the the great chat about FT and our podium pioneer Joel, my long-lost love Ashley, and my boy wonder Dave. Finally, thanks so much to Alex, for being my steadfast partner in Freakdom. Hope little Max starts feeling better.

Freaks: See you next month.

Desperately Seeking GerRee

This has never happened to me before.
I am stunned and paralyzed.

I always get to be "GerRee." Always. Does that make me spoiled? Yes. But I earned this. I endured teasing and countless mispronunciations and misspellings of my name all throughout childhood. WITHOUT self-righteous, corrective response from me, mind you. But, by the time we all went wired, and everyone was having to use handles like Jen146 and SteveA7, I came out on top. I never had to compromise, or even throw in my last name for good measure. Nope.

Just "GerRee."

Then came Twitter. I purposely dragged my feet. Ever the early adopter of other social media, I decided to sit the first round out, just to make sure I wasn't taking on a new online habit that soon would evaporate like so many others.

But here I am, coming in on the "late adopter" curve, as everyone tweets. And, what to my wondering eyes does appear?



"Username has already been taken."

I blinked. I typed it in again. Same result, obviously.

I can't move. I can't breathe. Someone. Else. Is GerRee?

The kicker: They first tweeted only two weeks ago. I missed my window by 15 days. The gut punch: They haven't tweeted since.

I have been thwarted by a late-adopter, non-user. Perhaps he or she has been running into me at every turn for the last 15 years.

And they've finally won.

Perhaps I will chose LoserGerRee for my Twitter username. Or DefeatedGerRee. Or FuckYouGerRee. I don't know.

For now, I can't bear to register anything. I am now fully engulfed in the flames of pouting. Burning, burning....

i'm not the only one

This girl has noticed the kissy face phenomenon as well. She calls them "K.F. makers." She seems to have strong feelings about it. But she's very clear that she's not hating on the actual girls in the pictures, just their durned KFs.

Maybe we'll reflect back on this time and the place that kissy face holds in society will be like the stoic face that people were forced to hold when they were getting their daguerreotype taken. Even as photograpic technology advanced and the exposure time decreased, people still made the "Being alive is very serious business," face, almost like it was the proper thing to do when you were getting your picture taken. Seriously, go here and click on the "Comedians" link and see all the serious faces on these guys and gals. Comedians. And, although you'll find some are standing there in RIDICULOUS costumes, they've got a look on their face like they're about to address the Senate. Which, is actually, quite funny. So... bully for them.

Anyhoo. Point is, it took a little while for people to catch on to the thought that, "Hey! I can show people that I'm actually having a good time in this photo!"

Which, in the end, is exactly what all the Facebook and MySpace photos are showing. Evidence of a good time. The KF is, for this generation, the proper thing to do when you know your face could end up on someone else's internet portal. It means, "I was having a great time. And no one can come back later and fault me or make fun of me for a face EVERYONE was making at the time." They're even doing it in Ireland.

I have a bible bump.

For the last week or so, I'd been noticing a weird sort of irritation around the back of my left wrist. Then, on Tuesday, I just happened to look down at it and was shocked to find I have a weird lump on it.

I called the doctor to make an appointment. Well, I called the appointment lady (Kaiser patients call the appointment line. No talky to your doctor's office.) And she said he wasn't available until next week but that she could have them call me. To try to give me one of the slots reserved for "urgent" cases. I said, all brave and stoic, "Oh, no, no. This thing doesn't hurt, really. It's just sort of agitating. Let's just do it next week. Monday will be fine."

How I've suffered. The wait. The anxiety. The WTF?? of it all....

It's so weird to see a lump on your body. And it's sad but true that "lump" is synonymous with "cancer" in my mind. So, I've just been staring at it for three days, thinking, what if I've got a rare wrist cancer? Cancer of the wrist. That'd be so lame.

Today, it finally occurred to me to Google "lump on wrist." And wouldn't you know it? From the looks of things, I have something called a ganglion cyst, a.k.a "bible bump," a.k.a. "Gideon's disease." It's a fluid-filled sac that builds up (different theories on why) and appears mostly on the backs of wrists. Mine isn't as big as the one pictured in the wikipedia entry, but it's totally noticeable. In the not-so-distant past, a common remedy for these cysts was to slam a heavy book down on them to pop them. So, people thought, "Hmmmm... I need a heavy book. Nooo... not the 'Joy of Cooking'... no, not the L-M volume of the encyclopedia... Oh! Here we go. The Word of God. Perfect." Not only is that insane, it's also creepy to think this thing could pop. Gross.

I'm so totally grossed out by my bible bump.