I'm going to use the headless bodies as diversity paperweights

There is a battle of wills going on in my office. Our office Christmas tree is still set up in the middle of the office an no one wants to be the one to take it down. Each day the effort to avoid looking at it, and therefore be designated as the one to take it down, gets more and more difficult. Each of us has devised creative methods to appear busy or engrossed in something else as we walk by it. None of us acknowledge that we are avoiding it. We all act like it's perfectly normal to still have the undecorated tree up on January 20th.

Up until last week I had been trying out different strategies to avoid being the one to take it down. I kept up a pathetic looking limp for two weeks just to shirk it. Another successful method of mine was to crazily mutter to myself while shuffling a stack of papers around as I walked past the tree. If anyone talked to me I would just say something like "How do they expect me to get 700 mules to Arkansas by Friday? Huh? You tell me!" and then walk away, twitching my head to one side.

Last week I grew tired of the charade so I devised a strategy that would allow us to keep the tree up for another few months at least. I figured I could hang a bunch of Martin Luther King figurines from the tree and make it a Diversity tree. What racist asshole decided that Martin Luther King day didn't deserve a tree anyway? Like Christmas is so superior? I realized that I must make a Diversity Tree to stick it to The Man! Equal Tree rights for all, motherfuckers!

So I bought some MLK bobble heads online and tried to hang them from the tree, but they were too heavy so I pulled their heads off and just hung those up with some twine. I was pretty happy with it and felt like not only had I finally brought justice to a tragically under-decorated holiday, I'd also allowed for an extended period of laziness by giving us a reason not to take down the tree. This is why I was totally surprised when people started freaking out. They were like "you can't just hang decapitated Martin Luther King heads off of a tree with pieces of rope! Don't you know how that looks?" And I was like "Hell yeah I do, it looks like a kick-ass Diversity Tree!" because it totally did. They kept going on and on about how bad it looked, and how I was celebrating the practice of lynching, all the while completely ignoring my festive 'Diversity! Yeah!' tree topper.

As usual people refuse to see my vision.

Maybe my real name is "Tries too hard to be funny." Like an Indian or something.

I had the same dream two nights in a row that I had a baby. His name was Potter and he was born with 17 teeth. He liked to sing songs about dinosaurs and eat short ribs. I was pissed about his name because I didn't even get to choose it. After he was born I left the hospital to go get some Indian food so the nurse let her idiot man-child name my baby and he named him after Harry fucking Potter.

It is a fact, that in my family, who or what you are named after will determine your personality. I was named after some depressing, hippie, anti-war song called "Come Away Melinda" by Uriah Heep. It is pretty much the most depressing song of all time. Look at some of the lyrics:

Daddy, daddy, come and look
See what I have found
A little ways away from here
While digging in the ground

Come away melinda
Come in and close the door
Its nothing, just a picture-book
They had before the war

Daddy, daddy, come and see
Daddy, come and look
Why, theres four or five
Little melinda girls
Inside my picture book

Come away melinda
Come in and close the door
There were lots of little girls like you
Before they had the war

Oh daddy, daddy, come and see
Daddy, hurry do
Why, theres someone
In a pretty dress
Shes all grown up like you
Wont you tell me why

Come away melinda
Come in and close the door
That someone is your mummy
You had before the war

Jesus Christ, Parents! What kind of fucked up message is that supposed to send a five year old when you tell her she was named after this song? I can only guess that you wanted me to grow up completely neurotic and believing that the Apocalypse was always around the corner. Then you give me the middle name Lemish which is just a crazy made up name. So your secondary aspiration for me, after your desire for me to be one of those assholes on the corner with an "End of Times" board around my neck, must have been for me to be slightly crazy with little to no grasp on reality. What were you hoping for? A telephone psychic? Thanks douchebags.

My siblings are no different. I named my sister Allison, who was born when I was 4, after the Lewis Carrol story "Alice In Wonderland" which in my mind was called "Allison Wonderland" about a girl named Allison Wonderland. My parents were very close to actually giving her the middle name 'Wonderland', and let's be honest, they had the capability to do that (Lemish, assholes.) My sister has peculiar ambitions, the most recent of which is to move to Peru and live in a tree. This is obviously the result of being named after a character conceived in a drug-induced haze. Oh, and good job parents for letting your 4 year old name your child. She came this close to being named Rainbow Brite.

My brothers faced a similar fate. The older of the two, Keith Richard, was named after Keith Richards.

Awesome. My brother, unsurprisingly; is also a fan of the drink.

The youngest brother, Dylan, was named after Dylan from Beverly Hills 90210. Again this came from my parent's brilliant judgement to let the kids pick the name for the new baby. I was 12. The names came down to Zack (Morris) and Dylan (McKay.) My 17 year old brother is now a little Casanova. I guess compared to the rest of us, a crazed neurotic, a psychedelic hippie tree-hugger, and someone whose blood could hold a flame, being a popular kid who all the girls like isn't the worst possible outcome. But he has to live with the fact that he was named after a lame tv star whose biggest role since was a small part in an episode of "Biker Mice from Mars" an animated show about.... biker mice... from Mars....

My point in all of this is that I can't have a kid named Potter. The kid would grow up to be some little weirdo waving his "wand" at people. Unfortunately, because I am neurotic and a little bit crazy I now must name my future child Potter because my dream demands it to be so. The little bastard will probably also be born with 17 teeth just to fuck with me. So when you see me in a few years, toting around some little 17-toothed freak looking for a good place to eat short ribs, don't give me any shit; it wasn't my decision.

The terribly true story of Gospel Sue and Pee Pants and the time my soul was saved

When I was four I was kidnapped by a Christian music personality named "Gospel Sue."

There was a really strange family that lived in our neighborhood when I was little. They had a giant bell attached to their front porch that they would ring when it was time for their kids to come home for dinner. That wouldn't be so strange if we lived, like on the prairie or something, but we lived about 20 minutes outside of New York City and it was 1984, not 1884. Their youngest, Danny, was my friend but even at 4 I knew he wasn't one of the "normal" kids. They were super religious and had all kinds of rules about what kinds of games their kids could play. Danny wasn't allowed to dig in the dirt. I don't even remember the fucked up reason he gave us for that but we just continued digging to China without him.

They had two twin teenaged daughters named Heidi and Bambi. I shit you not, Bambi. Who names their kid that and doesn't completely expect them to grow up to be a stripper? I'm pretty sure the girls were already up to something with the Albanian drug dealers who owned the pizza shop around the corner. They made awesome pizza.

Anyway, one day Danny and his family invite me to a "puppet show" and ask my parents if it would be alright for me and another kid from the neighborhood to join them for about half an hour. My parents, obviously oblivious to the general weirdness surrounding this family, agree. They should have known something was up. His parent's faces lit up with crazed smiles like they'd just heard we'd declared war on Albania or that doing blow was a good way to restore your virginity.

They took me and the other kid with sucker parents into their Jesus mobile and we were off to see the puppets. On the way we stopped to pick up their "advisor." The door opened and I was almost knocked unconscious by the smell of knock-off Chanel number five. A sparkly blue mass of blond curls and mascara slid into the truck. She leaned down close into my face, smiling wildly and said "well hello Darling, my name is Gospel Sue" and poked the tip of my nose with her long, squared off claw nail.

I tried to do a Google search for a picture of Gospel Sue to show you guys, but I guess her confession that she was once told by the blind, bastard child of a whore that one day she would be known the world over as the "Messenger of the Spirit" didn't quite work out. I have done my best to create a composite image of what she looked like. I think it is a pretty fair representation.

The other boy from the neighborhood and I were instructed to get down on the floor of the truck. We weren't given an explanation, there was plenty of room in the truck for us to sit. I was 4, I thought my best friend was Big Bird, I didn't think to question why we were sitting on the floor so we did it. The rest of the trip seemed to take a very long time and I occupied myself by picking at the sequins on Gospel Sue's pants.

Finally we got the "puppet show." Now, I don't see how this could be really true, but I swear I remember that the place they took us to was an abandoned hot dog factory. I remember walking among the machines in the dark and the whole place smelling exactly like you would expect an abandoned hot dog factory to smell, like ass.

So they took us down into the basement of the hot dog factory (and this is another hole in my story because do hot dog factories have basements?) The basement consisted of three large carpeted rooms. The other neighborhood boy and I were escorted by Gospel Sue into a room with three other confused looking children while Danny and his family went in to the main room do to do whatever they did in there; roll around in loose hot dog meat probably.

Gospel Sue sat us down and proceeded to tell us that we were so lucky because they had brought us here to be saved! We were in terrible danger and she was going to lead us away from the danger. I assumed this was some kind of prelude to the awesome puppet show we were about to see so I laughed a little with anticipation. Gospel Sue's head whipped around, her eyes narrowed, and she said "there is nothing funny about your soul burning in hell for all eternity is there? Don't you want God to love you? Or would you rather have your skin burn up in a fire and never get to see your parents again?!?" I think that was the moment I realized there would be no puppet show.

She made the five of us kids get up and stand in a circle and hold hands. She held my hand and dug her nails into my hand and began shouting "God forgive us! God, Jesus forgive these children their sins! Their parents might be damned to Hell for their wicked ways but must these children suffer?"

She held our hands up over our heads and instructed us to yell "Please save us from the fire God! We don't want to live forever amongst the hellfires of Satan with the sinners! Forgive us Jesus and save us!"

I had no idea what this bitch was talking about, my hippie parents were from the church of "be nice to other people" and had never mentioned hell, but I was there yelling my head off to be forgiven. It seemed like the right thing to do. This Satan character sounded like a bad dude and I wanted to see the goddamned puppet show like I had been promised. Some of the other kids were not as enthusiastic as me. A few kids were crying and asking for their parents and the boy from my neighborhood had peed his pants. Gospel Sue stopped holding his hand after that.

This shouting business seemed to go on for a while. After a while I got tired of it and started lifting up my dress to check out my Wonder Woman underoos and tried to remember if I even liked puppet shows. By this point Gospel Sue was wriggling on the floor and had been singing Amazing Grace over and over again for about an hour. Pee Pants had gone into some kind of over-traumatized coma and was lying on the floor, straight as a stick with his eyes closed twitching a little. One of the other kids had turned over all the chairs and was playing some kind of war game with himself. He occasionally stuck his fingers out of his fort and made shooting noises while pointing at all of us. A little girl in the corner was scooping dirt out of a plant then carefully sprinkling it into her hair. She looked like she might have eaten some as well.

I looked up as Danny walked into the room and told us we had to go now. We shook Pee Pants awake and got out of there. Apparently we were leaving Gospel Sue to continue her worship. As we got back into their truck Danny's parents asked Pee Pants and I if we'd had a good time. It's fucked up but I think I might have actually told them I did have a good time because that was the polite thing to say. Pee Pants, sitting next to me on the floor of the truck, remained silent.

It was pitch black when we pulled into my driveway and my parents came running out of the house yelling. Danny's dad mumbled some bullshit about the puppet show taking longer than they had anticipated and drove off with my dad yelling at him about how he was going to rip his fucking head off and shit down his throat. My mom was crying and asked me if I was okay. I said "well I guess because my soul will no longer be burning in hell with you and Daddy." Then I showed her how to lift your arms and kick your legs and say "Jesus suck the sin out of my bones!!!" so that she could be safe too.

After that day I wasn't allowed to play with Danny any more. Pee Pants got moved to a different school after after he developed some compulsion to pull out all of his eyelashes and hair and then eat it. Danny's family eventually moved after his sisters ran off with the Albanians. I pretty much got over the whole experience but I do notice that my eye will begin to twitch uncontrollably whenever I'm in the presence of either gospel music or any type of puppet. Oh and I still ask Jesus to suck the sin out of my bones, but really, who doesn't?

OCD spells P and cream soda bottles make shitty shivs

When I'm alone in my car and listening to music I have a weird compulsion to sign out the first letter of every word in the song. I am pretty sure my scary kindergarten teacher who got fired for stealing our milk and then blaming it on the poor kids forced us to learn the deaf alphabet that way and it is burned into my psyche. Come to think of it I should sue that bitch for contributing to my early onset rheumatoid arthritis. Anyway, I have been doing it for years and cannot stop. I call it hand jamming.

My OCD tells me that I must get at least 80% of the letters signed otherwise the sky will rain down acid and I will burn for all eternity. I am good at preventing this but I can never remember the sign for 'P.' I can't stop the flow, so I just throw out any sign for P. Most often this one:

Usually I am able to hide this shameful deed from the "normal" people but the other day I was driving home from work, rocking out to my The Best of Bob & Marcia album (my totally awesome 70's hippie reggae. "Young, Gifted, and Black" is like my personal mantra.) when my favorite song came on, "Pied Piper." So I am sitting at a red light innocently hand jamming away. Unfortunately for me there are a lot of 'P's' in that song. The guy facing me apparently thought I was having some angry Tourette-like episode and started honking his horn at me over and over again. Well I can't stop while I'm in a hand jamming groove so I just kept on throwing out those P's like I was some 90's west-side gansta rapper.

The light turned green and I drove off. I stopped a few miles up the road at a gas station and went inside to get some cream soda. When I came out the guy from the light was parked next to my car waiting for me! I was totally freaked and walked quickly to my car. I held my cream soda bottle by the neck, ready to smash it and slash the fucker with my rudimentary shiv in case he wanted a Piece of Me.

The guy looked at me and said "do we have some kind of problem?" I got so nervous that my soda slipped and smashed on the ground. Awesome, there went my shiv. I had no other choice but to be honest with the guy. I was very reluctant to do this because everyone knows that the OCD penalty for revealing my ritual is that I lose five minutes off of my life for every person I tell unless I spin around three times after telling them.

"Oh that is just this thing I do, kind of like a dance? I spell out the first letter of every song with my hands.... but I don't know the sign for P..... and see... I can't mess up my rhythm for fear of the acid...." and then I spun around three times.

I think he understood because he immediately broke eye contact and got back in his car. I finished spinning and got back into my car, figuring screw the cream soda. My Ipod shuffled to the next song, "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" by Cake and I was on my way. I love that song.