This Week in Nelson, volume 3, number 3

Okay, I think our problems with word processors and cutting and pasting and Peruvian llama-show porn have been solved. If you're reading this without opening an attached file we'll know for sure. Our long national nightmare is over.

Birthday shout-out to nobody. I think. I just don't know anymore. Do you guys want to do me a favor? Do you want to drop me emails confirming for me when your birthdays are? So I can attempt to be good about mentioning them, shout-out style? Please? Please let our long national nightmare of me missing birthdays be over. Choose birthday hope over birthday fear.

Books read this week:
-Finished reading Vacation by, Deb Olin Unferth
-Still reading The View from the Seventh Layer by, Kevin Brockmeier

I second my initial assessment of Vacation being the bee's knees.

Random out-of-context quotes of the week:
--"John Kerry would make a great Japanese game show. Eyes open! Win car!"
--"Girl Scout cookie time! Happy ending!"
--"We've tried everything! Baseball! Strippers! The man won't eat a damn pancake!"

The O'Reilly Factor for Kids book quote(s) of the week:
-"I know I've been serious here about having fun . . . but I've had fun doing it! I really enjoy sharing what I know about life to help you enjoy yours more." (For some reason, this quote creeps me out more than even some of his more traditionally creepy quotes. I guess the thought that there might actually be somebody perusing this book unironically and looking for life lessons from O'Reilly scares me more than when he makes a comment that comes off all inappropriate uncle.)

Interesting news articles of the week:
-Once again, no decent news to regurgitate. I'm kind of getting tired of/ mad at that, but not enough to move it down to the next section. Yet. Get in the game, news!

Something I'm tired of/ mad at:
-The fact that Larry the Cable Guy is going to be at the Granada in Lawrence tomorrow night. The thought of having him in the same town as me makes my fucking skin crawl. And only a little more than 24 hours to plan an assassination attempt! So mad!

Something I'm delighted by:
-Lost coming back tomorrow night. Very excited to watch that television program. Very excited. And I guess it displays a sort of karmic equality to the universe that while Larry the Cable Guy soils the very ground upon which he stands and the air he breathes here, in my town, I will be watching Lost. However, it does throw yet another wrench into my assassination planning. Damn! Stop kicking me in the balls, universe!

Something I found really kind of odd:
-I was driving around yesterday and saw a guy at 23rd and Iowa wearing a full cow costume and eating an ice cream cone. I can't explain it. But I felt like something was both right and wrong with the world at the same time. Perhaps I should have recognized it as an omen. I need to work on perfecting my divination skillz.

This Week in Answers to Your This Week in Questions This Week!
-"Can you please pass the carrots?"
-Yes. Yes I can pass the carrots. And I will. By God, I will.

So, I started up one of them high falutin' actual on the internet blogs. (Sidebar: I may have misspelled falutin'. My spellcheck suggested "fellation." Oh spellcheck, you fail me again.) This is where it is: http://thisweekinnelson.blogspot.com/ For those of you who get your This Week dose via email, I will still send it out via email. However, I will probably drop some small bits here and there on the actual page, so feel free to get on over and check it out from time to time. For those of you reading this on MySpace, this will be the final MySpace entry. Just a heads up. And sorry I was never able to post the last entry there. Laziness and computer failure is a potent combo.

I've recently become obsessed with the show How I Met Your Mother. I'd been catching it more and more recently and found an insane deal on the first three seasons on DVD, and now I've been watching it in big chunks at night. That show is rock solid fun.

I took Willie's suggestion to name my gallstone in honor of the recent passing of a great man. Henceforth he shall be 'Lil Ricardo Montelban. Please address all his correspondence accordingly.

I've been eating a lot of fruit lately. I'm not sure why. Fruit is good. I thought you should know.

I keep having weird, long, narratively structured dreams almost nightly. And Gaus and Willie keep playing substantial supporting roles. Get out of my head! The last one involved us at some kind of convention and Corey Feldman played a villainous role by trying to impregnate my fiancee. Do I have a fiancee? No. Do I know Corey Feldman? No. But the whole episode was deeply haunting. Corey Haim remained admirably neutral throughout the entire slapsticky affair, to his credit. Although at one point he and Gaus stole a car. Which strangely enough has happened in real life. For more on that, I direct you back to This Week in Nelson: The Prison Years. Which was a lot like The Wonder Years, but with a little less Fred Savage and substantially more rape.

Yes, Fred Savage raped me. No, I didn't get his autograph.

And on that bittersweet note, I leave you until next week.

–> N.

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