Dude.

A Christmas Story 40″ Leg Lamp, only $179.99 from Toys ‘R’ Us/Amazon.com.

You know you want one.

It’s true, folks. I sold out.

Kohl’s has stuffed hedgehogs for only $5 each, and the proceeds go to charity. So the only question is, how many hedgehogs do I want?

They’re great for throwing at people. They even curl up into a furry little ball.

You know what’s even more fun, though? Stuffed animals at the dollar store. I went to a dollar store in La Habra, for instance, that had meerkats (they’re sort of like prairie dogs) for $1 each.

Because really, how fabulous would it be to have thirty meerkats?

“I’m going to see the new Harry Potter movie,” I told my mom.

“Who are you going with?”

“Ashleigh, David, and Stephie. You don’t know them.”

“Is Ashleigh your girlfriend?”

My mom is so cool like that. And as my brother pointed out, she didn’t even ask if Stephie (or David, for that matter) was my girlfriend. She knew it was Ashleigh. And how did she know? Because she’s my mom, that’s how.

Who knew? When I add lots of water to it, the coffee at work is actually halfway decent! And it only needed two packets of blue stuff.

Granted, I’d prefer pink stuff, but they’re out of it. I’d also like some half-and-half, but they only have powdered shit, and I can’t stand powdered shit.

Starbucks needs to start putting their packaged drinks in twelve-ounce aluminum cans. That way I can get a Caramel Frappuccino from the Coke machine.

I finally have three days off from the insanity of Cabaret. The hell week from hell was topped off by a matinee performance for which both my ASM and my spot right were absent. I filled in for my ASM by running the backstage portion of the show (even though he forgot to leave his notes and I had no idea what needed to be done and when), while the director filled in for part of my job by calling spot cues, and the assistant director ran spot right and kept burning herself.

My new local-best-friend Ash and I have decided it’s our mission to find a black-and-white four-picture photo booth that actually works.

Already, in the past seventy-two hours, we’ve tried Fun Zone and Belmont Park, and we have pictures from both places, but they’re not black-and-white four-picture strips like we want. The one from Fun Zone is a crappy webcam-style single picture, printed on a white sheet of paper using a horrible laser printer, with a tacky-but-amusing “B.F.F.” border on it. The one from Belmont Park is a high-quality four-picture strip, but it’s in color.

And Monday night we managed to find a black-and-white four-picture photo booth at a fifties diner, but it was broken.

So now we’re going to try every boardwalk, amusement park, etc. until we find a working black-and-white four-color photo booth. And along the way we’ll collect all of the non-qualifying pictures (color, one-picture instead of four-picture, computerized, etc.) we can get.

So really, although the humor is often lowbrow, and the acting is very wink-in-the-camera, I really need to appreciate the brilliance of Mad TV. The one thing they’re really good at is not letting a sketch last too long (like SNL). And really, they have way better ideas than SNL. They just don’t have as good of actors.

Right now I’m watching their commercial for a fake CD, “Gangsta’ Shop Quartet.” It’s rap songs sung by a barber shop quartet. It’s really brilliant.

My friends often talk to me about their relationships. Most of the time, I want to help them stay in their relationships. Once in a while, though, I realize that the healthiest thing might be to let them break up. It really saddens me, though. It’s the advice I hate to give. And I always hope that they’ll eventually reconcile.

Now that two of my three kitchen light bulbs have burnt out, I think it’s time to replace all three with fluorescent bulbs. There are already fluorescent lights in my living room, hallway, and bathroom. Once I replace the ones in the kitchen, most of the lights in my apartment (except the ceiling fan lights in the living room and bedroom) will be fluorescent.