They say it’s my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

You’re like me, right? I mean, you HATE the song “Happy Birthday to You” as much as me. That saccharine dirge that well-wishers croak as they lug out some lit-on-fire, tacky cake smeared with artificially-colored vegetable shortening? It’s the sonic equivalent to that inedible frosting; coating your orifice with a greasy slime, leaving you wondering why you ever tell people when you were born. And then you remember why. Because they pay for dinner.

But that song! Most foul! And you know that it’s copyrighted, right? Someone actually owns that sucker. Warner/Chappell Music, specifically. The company bought the company who owned it (The Summy Company) in 1990 for $15 million dollars.

If I had $15 million dollars, I’d buy the world a piñata, and inside I’d stuff it with hope and love, and when it was busted open it would heal the planet.

Anyway, royalties have to be paid to Warner Music if you want to use that song. It’s why you rarely hear it, in its entirety, in films and TV.


I wish everyone had to pay to sing the song. Yeah, you heard me right. I wish every joker who decided to sing that song to me on October 22 had to pay the $10,000 price-tag. And yes, they would still have to pay for my dinner.


Now, because it’s my birthday, I can do whatever I want, no questions asked. I can throw every single 6th grader into a volcano, sew the elderly together into one, great, old-person lei, and chop down every Ikea store in the world to make materials for trees – I could do any of these things and more, since it’s my birthday, and that's the law. Yet, I choose to spend it here, with you, my Amoeblog family.

I’ve recently returned from the Great State of Texas; more specifically, Houston and its surrounding communities. I’ve also just eaten a lemon-blueberry scone. What do these facts have in common? They both concern me, though only one of these things will be mentioned again in this blog.

I went to Houston to accompany my boyfriend to his 10-year high school reunion. It was my first time in Texas. It was also my first time at a high school reunion, having never been invited to mine. It’s not my alma mater’s fault, though – I was probably handed a form to fill out so they could reach me, and, knowing me, I ignored it in favor of flirting with Zach H’s girlfriend in the campus theatre lobby instead. Or maybe reading an Anne Rice novel while drinking screwdrivers from my thermos. High school was bleak.


The trip was delightful. Corey gave me a tour that covered his life’s history up to his flight to the Sunshine State. One stop on the tour was Wes Anderson’s high school, where the film “Rushmore” was shot. Faced with this spectacle, I said:

“Oh.”

It occurred to me that I should honor the State that so graciously fed me the greasiest* taquitos on God’s Earth, found at the epic Tex-Mex fast food chain, Whataburger (imagine McDonald’s breakfast menu wrapped in a steamed, flour tortilla). Here then, is a list of some proper nouns I love which I have Texas to thank for:

The endlessly pithy Japhy Grant paid Walrus Day some lip service two days ago on his brilliant blog The Modern Romantic. When you're done plundering Amoeblog, go check it out! I mean, what else are you gonna do - read a book?

Happy Walrus Day, Amoeblog readers!

Don’t believe the propaganda – December 25 is NOT the “most wonderful time of the year” – today is!

Walrus Day is celebrated all day, every year, on October 8. It’s fun, it’s easy, and no native tribes had to be persecuted in order to bring it about!

A little history: When I was a kid, October was my favorite month (autumn, Halloween, my birthday, the month my parents would visit me at the orphanage), eight was my favorite number (the implications of infinity, the balanced aesthetics of its shape, the date my parents were sued by the orphanage for conning them into admitting me), and walruses were my favorite animal (the Beatles song, their grace in the water and might on land, the animals that raised me after my parents left me with them on the ride away from the orphanage).

I took these three elements and created my very own holiday, and my friends and family have celebrated it ever since.

“But Job,” I hear you asking (I can hear you asking because I can hear your thoughts… even now as you read this… although it’s not that interesting because your thoughts right now are echoing this sentence you’re reading, so I’m basically listening to myself) “But Job,” you wonder, “How does one celebrate Walrus Day, and also, does this shirt make me look fat?”

Well, dear friend, celebrating Walrus Day is easy. Basically, it’s your excuse to do whatever it is that you’d like to do, but normally wouldn’t because you don’t have an excuse.

[Insert cuss word here.] I forgot to buy cone filters. Now, instead of waking up with a fresh cup of organic Sumatra, I’m waking up with a cold can of diet Coke. This is low. I really should just crawl back into bed and start over tomorrow. Of course, if I did that, I still wouldn’t have any cone filters.

But maybe some kind soul would read this blog and, as I hid beneath my comforter, re-enacting the third trimester of my mummy’s gestation process, they would come to my apartment and gift me some cone filters. Then I could safely slip out of the vaginal opening I’d have reconstructed using tin-foil, Ikea tumblers and cat fur, and greet the world as a newborn baby. That would be sweet. I’d wipe off the after-birth, put on a fresh pair of diapers, sip on a yummy mug of coffee and wait for my cord-stump to fall off.


I saw Rufus Wainwright at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night. I went there with my gorgeous pal, Carrie. We walked there from my apartment, an act which our LA-native friends thought akin to The Donner Party.

“You’re walking from Sunset Boulevard to the Hollywood Bowl?!” Cameron gasped, “That’s uphill!”

“It’s not uphill,” I answered, “It’s up slant.”

As Carrie and I neared the famed half-shell, I started to worry that we were there on the wrong night, and had actually arrived for a Bear Convention. I’ve never seen so many burly men in designer jeans.

(For those of you who don’t know what a “bear” is, I’ll explain:

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