No thanks -I brought my own

I'm feeling touched by the spirit of gratefulness today, and in that spirit offer my thanks to a few people -

Thanks to a certain blogger who lives in Wisconsin and is linked to on this here blog and might be writing her very own novel, I was exposed to "The Porcine Funnel-shaped Whirlwind" who, in a disservice to all of us who have quite enough nightmares, thanks so much for asking, put up a picture of a "Collectible Doll" offer he got in the recent distribution of the "Valu-Pak" in his neck of the woods.

Also, thanks to a certain OTHER blogger that I read with a near-religious fervor who is now on the fast track to stardom with his linkapalooza to the National Lampoon and is getting all swaggery in his "West by-God Virginia" britches, I was exposed to pictures of what crystal meth can do to you if you don't have enough open facial sores.

For this, Pork Tornado and Jeff Kay, I thank you.

I thank you both because I wanted to shed a few pounds anyhow, and those pictures have put me right off of the notion of eating.

I thank you, Mr. Tornado, because now I have a mental image of what the inside of people-who-collect-dolls houses might look like; with the lifelike silicone (or soft vinyl!) dollies of newborn babies or (inexplicably, really) "fashion dolls dressed in stripper costumes" encased in clear high-quality plastic sheaths, posed either with a ramrod of plastic shoved up their stripper butts or, if a baby, nestled, as though asleep, in itchy-looking tulle. The owner of the collection would perhaps, from time to time, remove one of her babies (or the stripper doll, if she was feeling naughty) out of her/his plastic sheathing and stroke it with her 4-inch-long fuschia laquered nails, gently crooning - "naneenaneenahneee" - while rearranging the finely crafted fashionable clothing in which her darling baby is clad and bestowing onion-scented kisses on its little silicone (or vinyl) head. And I shudder.

I thank you, Mr. Kay, because now I have a slightly better understanding of what those people who injest methamphetamines at such a furious pace that their skin drops off of their faces in round chunks leaving gaping red holes in their once-doll-like visages that appear to be just the size and shape of the end of a lit cigarette look like (yes, it's a real sentence). I didn't know this before, and I do now. And again, I shudder.

Oh yes, I thank you.

You've taken this heretofore brave and inquisitive woman, and on the same day, in some karmic twist of, er, karma, turned her into a link-shy wreck. What special new horrors will you have for me NEXT?

Naked Clowns?

Neglected teeth?

Handknit gastrointestinal tracts?

Bring it on.