you betta work, akismet.

So, this is a random thought and somebody who wrote the book on how to blog probably said not to ever start a post with a random thought. I’m sure of it, now; it was in chapter three, right after the chapter about keeping your blog posts short and sweet and goodness me, never over 300 words. Which was right before he mentioned that you should use italics sparingly, if at all.

And nope, I never did read that book.

But see, I go to my website’s dashboard in order to write a new post and every day, right at the top, it says something like, Akismet has kept your blog free from 128 spam comments today. And I am left indebted to this nebulous Akismet.

And curious.

Who is he, exactly? And is he single? Obviously he’s got a job, so that’s a good sign. And I mean, if he sounds like his name, then the only logical conclusion would be that he’s probably an ancient Egyptian spirit of some sort and I should also probably see about getting him a pyramid sometime soon. I know that the zoning laws around here prevented my parents’ from building the pond they had wanted, but I wonder how good ole PA would feel about a pyramid?

So now my to-do list looks something like this:

• wrap up Esther the Musical
• sell my stupid wedding dress
• finish memorizing the song I wrote for an upcoming show
• go back to the family court in order to finish filing for a divorce
• find out how to go about building a pyramid

Oh, and I need to add one more thing to that sensible list:

• eat four, yes FOUR! bailey’s irish creme cupcakes

Because when I was about to get into bed, I picked up a pillow and found this tonight:

Pretty sure the Tooth Fairy has been put out of business.

So let it be known that in the great Case of the Stolen Cupcake of ’10, restitution has been made. More than made, I would say.

And now it looks like I am going to have a party. A cupcake party. Cause I am going to need help to eat these things. If you’d like to attend, just let me know.

And you want to know what I’ve now successfully crossed off my to-do list?

• attending the funniest and maybe most pointless (other than it made me laugh!) rehearsal ever.

Which was tonight. See, Shane and I are playing at this benefit concert for Haiti at UofD tomorrow night. It’s kind of cool that we get to play because it was pretty legit in the sense that you had to submit a video and everything in order to get selected. So we were notified that we were, indeed, selected and then we were notified that we have to come to a rehearsal for the show at ten p.m., Wednesday night.

And at ten we walk into the room and see a huge group of people all singing We Are the World on the stage. So, naturally, Shane just goes and joins them. On the stage. And yes, I’m a lemming, so yes, I do too.

Though neither of us know the song. And neither of us are supposed to be singing it anyway.

But we sit there on the stage and everybody around us is belting out nice lyrics about something collective and something supportive, and there we are: sitting while laughing in the way that you do when you don’t want to look like you’re laughing cause everybody else is being really serious around you.

And then they decide to do the whole song over again and Shane looks pleased as punch to be sitting among them–still on the stage, I might add!–and I ask him if we can please go sit somewhere else. He finally relents and we go to a less conspicuous area which basically means we are no longer on the stage as the only two people who don’t know the song that everybody else is so passionately relaying.

Thank. God.

And then the guy in charge tells us that it’s our turn to rehearse on stage. But there are no microphones and no cable to plug in Shane’s guitar; guess we’re just doing this one for ourselves. Oh, and there is also a pretty big, mostly female a cappella group already practicing on the right half of the stage. The guy tells us to just go on over to the left side of the stage and practice anyway.  Cause it’s not like a whole other song being played and sung directly to their left is going to bother a group that has no background music.

And then, to make the practice even more interesting, the guy in charge follows us and sits right in front of us, cross legged. He then takes out his phone, sets it to stop watch mode, and proceeds to tell us to “go.”

So Shane starts playing and we start singing and then–surprise, surprise!–the a cappella group gets annoyed and someone walks over and asks us to please stop. The guy in charge stops his stop watch and Shane and I stop our playing and then that’s it. The rehearsal is over and we are more than ready for tomorrow night, I suppose.

We look at each other, laugh, and both agree it was one of the best practices ever.

Too bad Akismet doesn’t keep me from silly practices like he keeps my blog from spam comments, I guess.