Author: Colleen Kruse

A girlfriend of mine just suffered a pretty bad breakup. So I did what I could. I took her out for the Colleen Kruse Pity Party (patent pending). A proper Pity Party begins with the sixty-minute Walk/Cry. I have found that it is best not to talk at all during the Walk/Cry. An hour of ambling in silence is much more theatrically poignant. It’s a cleansing ritual, similar to a Scientology birth.

When the Walk/Cry is finished, a few supplies should be at hand: fuzzy blankets to hide under, a couch long enough for two to sit facing one another, and a decent cabernet, for its spiritually numbing goodness. Also any salted and fried food product, plus maybe some Smokehouse almonds, must be part of your triage kit. Crying plus alcohol depletes sodium levels in the body.

By the time the two of you are settled on the couch, everything you need should be in place (don’t forget Kleenex, bottled water, dark chocolate, the remote for the stereo, and the phone). Also—this part is very important—HIDE HER PHONE. Now the talking can begin. I don’t like to give my pals any advice during the first forty-eight hours of any romantic trauma. I find it is better to bleed all of the poison out of them. My strategy is to keep eye contact and bear witness to their sorrow, leeching as much misery from them as I can before the famed 20/20 hindsight kicks in and they recall each excruciating moment of betrayal. Once the anger sets in, you will be so happy you remembered to HIDE HER PHONE. And she will thank you. Later.

After forty-eight hours, it’s time for one bit of hard-earned wisdom. If your heart is broken, nothing will fix it but time. Friends can ease the pain, being active and bawling your eyes out will get the dopamine moving in your bloodstream again, and a binge of French fries and vino won’t hurt. But Lord help any woman who gets herself a haircut within one month of a bad breakup.

I’ve been there. Am I a cutter? Yes. I am the former queen of self-inflicted bangs. It starts out a little bit here, a little bit there just to even it up. And then before you know it Girl, Interrupted is crazily staring back at you through the medicine cabinet looking-glass saying, “Ha! I look like a whole new woman! HaHaHaHa! Won’t he be sorry!” Trust me, you will not make an ex-lover rue the day he lost you if, when he runs into you on Nicollet Mall, you’re sporting a matted skullcap of choppy, multi-colored cowlicks. He might say something noncommittal, like “Wow, you got a new haircut!” (hint: acknowledgement is not a compliment), but as soon as he’s twenty feet away he’ll be heaving a sigh of relief.

Once the wild dingo of self-flagellation has eaten your bangs, then you’ll have to wait out both your heartache plus an ill-timed hairdon’t. The most extreme example of this last year was Britney Spears. Let’s recap!

Crazy Britney walks into a hair salon in Tarzana, California. She sits down in a chair and asks the stylist (also the owner of the salon) to shave her head. The stylist is horrified and refuses. Crazy Britney calmly takes the shaver out of its holster and begins to shave her own head. Oh, and she is laughing and crying the whole time. Thirty minutes after shaving her head, she stops laughing but continues crying and ends up text messaging her ex, pleading with him to come back to her. These messages later get mysteriously forwarded to the tabloid press. (WHY DIDN’T ANYONE HIDE HER PHONE?) After that, she goes to a tattoo parlor and gets a cross inked on the inside of her lower lip.

I give Pity Parties to friends for free. Watching the whole Britney thing unfold last year, I realized Hollywood would be the perfect place to hone my skills as a comforter to celebrities in crisis. If I could get my hands on Britney, I’d bet anything that, within a year, they’d all be speaking in hushed tones when I walked into the Ivy. “Is that her?” “Yes. She’s the Britney Whisperer.”

It’s a niche market, I know. My parties also work for job loss and pet death. But there’s almost nothing you can do about a really bad haircut.

I love a to-do list. In fact, I am such a master at list-making I can make lists of my lists. I can subdivide errands, chores, and activities ad infinitum. Sometimes I go numerically, by order of importance to my day. For example:

1. Work out
2. Breakfast
3. Phone calls

Other times, I mix it up to build in fun when I anticipate that drudgery and boredom will be looming:

1. Return emails
2. Make appointments
3. Make a prank phone call to someone you know from sixth grade
4. Laundry

During periods of depression, my lists have taken on a rather frightening level of detail:

1. Get up
2. Shower
3. Brush teeth
4. Get dressed
5. Go to work
6. Come home from work
7. Stay out of bed until it is dark outside

I don’t imagine that I would have forgotten that those things needed to be done, but at those times in my life I needed to be able to cross them off one by one. A scarily basic daily to-do list was one of my only tenuous links to normality.

I have had four vacations in my adult life. I am so connected to my lists that even on vacation I make a list of must-do fun things, or must-see interesting things. Here are three items cherry-picked from a list made during a trip to New York City:

4. Go to a bar and don’t talk to anyone you know
5. Talk to at least six people
6. Do not touch anyone

That kind of list has a “double dog dare” effect, catapulting me into social situations that would never have occurred otherwise.

When I do stand-up I make a set list and carry it with me, even if I don’t look at it or reference it directly. These lists have a terrific surreal quality. If I am ever in some kind of accident, the paramedics will strip away my clothes to find that I am wearing dirty, sweat-stained, unmatched underwear with holes in them. They will pump my stomach and find a semi-digested handful of Sour Patch Kids, four rum-and-Cokes, and an entire rotisserie chicken. And instead of proper I.D., I will have a list in my pocket that says:

1. Clorox Gel boobs
2. Big Lots’ three-legged-pet store
3. Margery Johnson’s Keebler elf pie

The list, of course, will be given to my children, who will understand immediately.

I like to cross things off lists, but I enjoy making them just as much. It gives me a false sense of security, like everything is under control. The greater me realizes this is folly, yet also indulges my compulsion to write down what I hope will, and should, happen next.

By the time you see this article, I should be about one month into the Big Kahuna of lists, my New Year’s resolutions. I make them annually (duh), with widely varying results. There are efficiency experts who tell you not to make big promises to yourself or you’ll just get discouraged. I’ve made yearly lists of very specific things to do, with very excruciatingly detailed steps. I’ve also gone the route of putting only three things on my yearly list so I won’t be overwhelmed.

Who knows if any of this year’s planning will pan out? Maybe yes, maybe no, and I’m OK with that. Two years ago, because of a New Year’s resolution to learn an instrument, I took four guitar lessons. Now I know how to play Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” which would have solidified my status as a hot chick to teenage boys in 1972, but in 2008 makes me feel a little embarrassed when I play it at parties. It’s like I’m Grandma come to call, kicking it old school and playing “Surrey with a Fringe on Top.” But I do it anyway. Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be following the resolution that makes it to the top of my list every year:

1. Bring all of you, everywhere

We’re all running a day late and a ten-spot short these days, but one thing’s certain. If you can’t do your Halloween candy shopping ’til 7 p.m. on All Hallows’ Eve, even though every other candy display has been stripped bare, you’ll still find racks of Circus Peanuts, a Halloween treat that ranks alongside sticking your hand into the Jack-o’-lantern and pulling out pumpkin guts.

Candy should be a simple joy. But Circus Peanuts are a confectionary metaphor for annoyance and disappointment. Is there any candy as despised as Circus Peanuts? Or as mysterious? What were Willy Wonka and his tiny sweatshop slaves thinking when they created these things? Ponder the decision to cover the surface with yummy pockmarks, or the intriguing attempt to use “Circus” as a mouthwatering descriptor for food. It’s wrong to call them Circus Peanuts. They don’t taste like peanuts. Nor like anything sold at the circus. Circus Peanuts taste like something made from a worn-out sponge. With their dubiously food-like appearance—dimpled orange blobs approximating giant peanuts in the shell—they could be the bloated, dismembered carcass of Planters Peanut spokeslegume Mr. Peanut. They look as if poor misguided Mr. Peanut had a difference of opinion with the Mob (maybe a beef over a shipment of candy cigarettes, maybe roughing up some Ho Hos) and his torso, sans limbs, top hat, and monocle, washed up on a barren stretch of shoreline, becoming Exhibit A in an episode of CSI: Candyland. I can see the scene in the morgue where the battle-hardened coroner pulls back the sheet covering the swollen, carrot-colored remains, staggers back a step and gasps, “Good God!”

Here’s a depressing fact: Circus Peanuts have been around since the nineteenth century. I knew our ancestors lived on a dreary diet of slaughterhouse sweepings and porridge, but this broke my heart. The precise story of Circus Peanuts is lost in the fog of history, probably because nobody was willing to take the rap for developing it. Even in today’s cutthroat candy marketplace, companies are not battling to lay claim to this wretched delicacy. There’s no trademark symbol stamped protectively next to the name, no attempt to turn it into a brand, no court battles over distribution rights. Hershey, Kraft, Mars, and Nestlé want nothing to do with it. The leading manufacturer is Melster Candies Inc. of Cambridge, Wisconsin. Understandably, they keep a low profile. Circus Peanuts generally retail for 99 cents, but at the better dollar stores you can find them marked down to a quarter. Open the bag and out wafts the cloying aroma of a strip-mall tanning salon tinged with banana oil. Once the woozy feeling of morning sickness passes, dig in, if you dare ignore the visual warning of their nauseating off-salmon color. Like Cheetos, Nacho Cheese Doritos, and Tang, Circus Peanuts are an anxiety-inducing shade of orange that is surely nature’s warning of elevated threat. Fresh out of the bag, they have the consistency of the foam earplugs I use to muffle the jets dive-bombing my South Minneapolis home en route to the Hubert H. Humphrey Terminal. I think the earplugs are almost as tasty.

Neither solid nor foamy, Circus Peanuts are chewy, gritty, and gummy all at once, a taste-bud explosion of displeasure. Most of us can recall trips to Grandma’s house, when we took Circus Peanuts from her candy dish and battled boredom by molding them into snakes, footballs, and (for me) glamorous grown-up-lady press-on nails. The late John Holahan, a vice-president of General Mills, must have been in a similarly artistic mood one fateful day in 1963 when he shaved slivers of Circus Peanuts over his Cheerios and shouted “Eureka!” According to company lore, an ad firm suggested marketing his discovery by linking it to the trendy accessory of the day, the charm bracelet, and Lucky Charms were born. It’s a cute story, but what else did Holahan shred on top of his family’s cereal before the big breakthrough? Atomic Fireballs? Pez? Wax Lips? Breakfast at the Holahans must have been a tense experience.

In their defense, Circus Peanuts could be a good candy for Weight Watchers. Dieting is easy when you’ve got treats like this to discourage you from eating. And if it’s your Halloween candy of last resort, the little goblins probably won’t devour your whole supply. When they see what you’re handing out, they’ll turn on their heels, and you’ll have next year’s trick-or-treat candy, too. And as a bonus, you’ll have a wealth of toilet paper in your trees.

I love this time of year. I love having both the sun and the chill in the air, the musky scent of dead leaves and blessed, blessed school. I like having the kids out of the house for a prescribed amount of time each day. I like being alone in my house listening to loud music that the kids wouldn’t imagine I listen to. I like having the kids back at the end of the day, and though I am saddened by the fact that their homework no longer consists of coloring and word finds, I am glad that they realize they have a better chance at decent grades if they do the work themselves.

It’s the routine I am thankful for—an orderliness to the days that helps me actually get more done. I like that it gets darker earlier, and I like cooking autumn dinners. I love baking giant dead animals in my oven. It makes me feel feminine, and also somewhat accomplished. I love it when the windows of the house fog up from cooking. I am thankful when all of the side dishes time out perfectly with the main course, and everything arrives hot to the table. It makes me feel like Houdini.

I love mashing potatoes by hand, imagining that I am crushing the bones of my earthly enemies.

I am thankful for my coffeepot all year long, but particularly when the mornings are dark. I love its robotic timer function. The smell of the beans beginning to brew invades my sleep. The next thing I hear is the clunking, sucking sound of the water drawing up through the reservoir. By the time the cycle is complete, I am shuffling through the dark kitchen with my big mug outstretched, softly walk-kicking the cat out of my way.

She tries to kill me every morning by darting into my path, hoping I will stumble while trying to avoid stepping on her, and maybe fall and crack my skull on the corner of the concrete countertops. If I am ever found dead in my kitchen, this is what has happened.

I love wearing clothes that cover my stomach. I love that the threat of being invited to something that might require a bathing suit is past. I like incorporating more cheese and less salad into my diet. I love watching television while eating cheese while wearing something that covers my stomach.

At this time of year I love soup. It is hot, salty, soothing liquid love. That sounds dirty but it’s not, so get your damn mind out of the gutter; I’m talking chunky chicken noodle here.

I love turtleneck sweaters, the smell of Vicks VapoRub, and having a sore throat so I don’t have to talk. I love catching cold, because I love soup and I love it when people feel sorry for me and I love complaining about my lot in life while people I love make me soup.

I love church at the holidays. I love the swishing of fat old-lady thighs encased in thick nylon stockings. You get a hundred of them in the chapel, and it’s like crickets. I love ladies who wear sequins to morning services. Jesus would approve, because Jesus loves color, and he is happy when you wear your favorite things to his house. He wants you to feel at home.

This time of year I love that my husband doesn’t give a rat’s ass about football. Neither do I, and I love that I don’t have to pretend to care. This leaves us free to use our prodigious powers of pretending for other, more satisfying areas of our lives. We can pretend we care about the subprime mortgage crisis instead, because that makes us seem like responsible, compassionate people, and being mistaken for responsible, compassionate people makes us feel good about ourselves. Win-win.

I like bedtime, and heavy blankets that pin me to the mattress. I like throwing my leg up on that man of mine and pinning him down, too. I don’t even mind stuffing my ears with earplugs to tone down his snoring. I lay my head on his chest and I can still hear him sawing away, revving his engine, poppin’ wheelies to dreamland.

This time of year I like the increasing frequency of house parties, because I like snooping in people’s medicine cabinets. I like knowing what sorts of drugs they are on, and what funguses they are currently battling, and their laxative regimens. It explains a lot of things, and helps me to feel greater empathy for them as fellow human beings. When I have parties at my house, I like to fill my medicine cabinet with ping-pong balls before guests arrive. If you think I am kidding, go ahead and try me, Snoopy.

We all have to eat, but do we have to obsess about it? Hell’s Kitchen is a top-ten, prime-time show, Ratatouille is teaching our kids to rhapsodize over crème brûlée, and the Food Network force-feeds us celebrity chefs 24/7. There’s a story going around about a teacher who asked her class to list words describing food and one young boy wrote, “Bam!” Supermarket delis boast bars dedicated to olives soaking in various seasoned brines and ultra-virgin oils. Don’t even get me started on Whole Foods’ organic hand-harvested herbs, artisanal gelato, and heritage livestock breeds. How did we scrape by in the days before avocado slicers and rainbow-colored peppercorns?

This food frenzy is affecting even sane people like my husband. Although he is generous with others, he’s a skinflint with himself, refusing to accept anything but a card for birthdays and holidays. The only loophole in his anti-consumption policy is cooking gadgetry. My last few presents to him have been a diamond-edged professional sharpener, a mortar and pestle made of volcanic rock, and an Italian espresso machine covered with enough gauges and dials and switches to make it look like a little cartoon atom smasher. Our kitchen layout is more elaborate than some of the greasy spoons where I used to waitress, with a knife drawer that would be the envy of surgeons from any of the local hospitals.

Of course, like so many others who collect gastronomical gadgetry, we’re usually too exhausted to cook dinner. So we’ll toss a pizza in our little specialized pizzeria oven—one of those suckers from Lunds, a “Chef Crafted!” morsel maybe twice the diameter of a hockey puck, dotted with baby artichokes and “rich, nutty Asiago.” It makes me feel a little rich and nutty myself.

It’s all so precious. Kind of a new-fangled eating disorder, you know? If you had told me ten years ago that I would be eating like a deranged fashionista, I would have put down my kielbasa, wiped my greasy maw with the back of my hand and said you were nuts. Obviously, I’m still not comfortable with it. If some guy at a party tells me the pinot grigio is awfully fruity, it’s hard not to snap, “Same back at ya, Alice.”

Nostalgia alert: reminiscences on How It Used To Be forthcoming. When I was a kid, growing up in a working-class neighborhood on St. Paul’s East Side, having a spice rack with more than four little McCormick tins was hoity-toity. Gourmets lived in France. They ate crêpes, which was funny to say, and brie, a cheese that echoed their national character by being soft, pale, and runny. Here in America, if you wanted to get creative you’d find interesting things to do with a packet of onion soup mix. The East Side word for a guy who thought a lot about food was chowhound.

Mancini’s, on West Seventh Street in St. Paul, was the place to go for a fancy meal. It was a sprawling, bustling supper club that billed itself as a Char House and cooked your meal on giant, open charcoal grills. Anything other than beef or lobster on the menu was a misprint. This was the ’80s, but the food was unchanged from the days of tailfins and V-8 Oldsmobiles. Every neighborhood had its version of Mancini’s: Nye’s Polonaise Room, Jax Cafe, Little Jack’s, Murray’s, Caspers’ Cherokee Sirloin Rooms (“Steaks the Size of Idaho”), Lindey’s, the Manor, Kozlak’s, Jensen’s, the Hopkins House, the Carpenter’s Steak House. You’d go there for a big, burned piece of meat, demolish it, down a fishbowl of Johnny Walker, burp, and go home stuffed and content. These places were as honest and Midwestern as the Chicago stockyards.

The restaurants that get all the attention now are image-conscious temples of hipness, frequently raided by glamour vigilantes and given makeovers to keep them up-to-date. Which leads me to wonder if today a lot of us are using food to satisfy complicated emotional cravings. Plagued by economic insecurity and status anxiety? You could take a Prozac for that, but how about a twelve-dollar duck-breast spring roll instead? As you bite into it, your mouth tells your brain, “If we can afford to eat like this, we must have no money problems whatsoever.” It’s kind of like how wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt indicates you own polo ponies. Worried about your health and the ecosystem? You can save both with organic heirloom tomatoes.

But this behavior is placing demands on food that it can’t fulfill. Expecting a meal to cure alienation and boredom leads to mental malnutrition. Gourmets must be unhappy. They’re always on a quest for the next thrill. I’m content to remember the Embers.

Never Google yourself. You might find something you don’t like, and it might bum you out. I’m saying this, of course, because that is exactly what I did, and exactly what happened.

I wish I were a stronger person than I am, but I’ve been thinking about this random critique from this random guy ever since I clicked across it. He says that he hates my stuff because it is typical perky white female crap. Also, he hates my stuff because it is full of poop jokes. Um, what?

First, I am a perky white female. I was born white, and also female. Despite my legitimate street cred as a blue-collar, high-school dropout, single mother who worked her way from the welfare system to respectable middle-class society, I choose to be perky. I do this because a life spent wallowing in the throes of ennui is a life wasted. So have a nice day, jackass!
Second, poop jokes are funny. However, there is a distinct lack of them in my act as well as in my columns. I have no idea what material of mine this guy was referencing, but he is in luck. I do take requests.

But first—and I promise this will come around to poop—a storytelling primer on the trilogy of common experiences at the root of the human condition: Food, Sex, and Dying. Every single one of us will experience life-building-block scenarios within these three contexts, no matter how widely the circumstances of our births and life paths may vary. As a storyteller, it is imperative for me to understand this. If I work from this base—a strong base, like a tripod, since it has three elements—my reach can be darn near universal.

As a comic, I must imagine my story several steps ahead of my listeners in order to exact surprise from them; people can’t laugh unless they are surprised into it. (Sure, people laugh at classic schtick out of nostalgia, but that is more of what I call an “audible smile” than a true laugh.)

The poop story is coming. Hold your horses.

But first, more categories. As we live and create our life stories, each topic can be sorted into categories: Drama, Comedy, Action, Horror. Obviously, there are subcategories, but in truth, everything falls under one of these. The secondary category includes any experience that is derivative of the three main elements mentioned above.

Hence, “That time I crapped my pants at the Walgreen’s in Des Moines after eating a family-size bag of fat-free potato chips,” translates into an Action + Food story, with “Food” being the root topic, and “crap” being the derivative subtopic. The public location of traditionally private activity is an action that creates surprise.

Women are uniquely connected to poop in a way that men aren’t. The fact is, most of us clean up more of it in our lifetimes. And yet, just as many of us are bound by our biology to be primary caregivers, we are also bound to deny the existence of poop in our lives. As attractive women, we must distance ourselves from anything as elemental or base as, say, “The time my golden retriever got up onto the kitchen counter, ate an entire Jell-O mold, then misted explosive lime-green dog-arrhea all over the house before company came.” (PG13. Food+Drama+Horror.)

So, now I get to Mr. Hater out there in Blogtown. He wants to get up on his high literary horse and say that because I am white, cheerful, and a woman who feels free to talk about all aspects of life, I must be a hack who automatically goes to the lowest common denominator—e.g., poop stories—to get her laughs. Whatevs.

So now, a poop story.

I have a friend who was fresh out of nursing school when he accepted a position at a hospice care center. One of the residents, “Gertie,” took a shine to him. On his second day at work, Gertie soiled herself. My pal was the first responder. Though he had been trained in the art of cleaning up a fellow human being, it can take time to develop a cast-iron bedside manner in such situations. As he bent to his task, Gertie sensed my pal’s case of nerves and she started laughing, which only made the situation worse. Trying to make conversation, my buddy asked her:

“What’s so funny, Gertie?” To which she replied: “When you’re done with that, why don’t you make love to me!”

Death+Drama+Food+Action+Horror+Sex+Comedy=funny.

Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse can be reached at mscolleenkruse@yahoo.com.

There’s no love lost between me and the cat that lives in our house. She’s not really my cat; I bought her for one of the kids a while back. There had been a specific Christmas wish for a white kitten with a red ribbon round its neck. I had worked a lot of overtime that year. And I am theoretically smarter than what I am about to say:It was December 23rd, and I just wanted to make it all better with presents.

I found her at the St. Paul Humane Society, the only kitten who fit the Christmas Wish description. I ignored the bloodstained Post-It note attached to the wee beastie’s cage: “Can’t go home with children—behavioral issues!” I bought the snarling, pointy-eared succubus, and invited the devil into our home.

Thankfully, the cat never attacked the kids—just us grown-ups. Over the next few months, my husband and I sustained several hairline lacerations—one that almost sliced my left cornea to ribbons—before I broke down and had our precious baby declawed. The cat resorted to biting. Like a cobra strike, she would sit quietly in a corner, waiting for me and my insolent stocking feet to dare walk past her without offering a semi-soft “fish-flava” niblet in tribute.

“Fool!” she seemed to say. “How would you like tiny puncture wounds in your Achilles tendon? Or perhaps you would rather just be startled out of a sound sleep by the terrifying sight of an eight-pound hissing bomb poised on your chest? As the glowing coals of my beautiful yellow eyes laser beam at you through the darkness, I’ll watch you weighing the chances of covering your face with the thick blanket for protection before I can lunge, jaws snapping. I would laugh, but I am a cat, and such things are beneath me. Instead, I pity you.”

My friend the animal behaviorist told me that our baby was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, possibly the result of an abusive past. My friend said that our cat was also probably depressed, and suggested Prozac—for the damn cat.

See, I come from a long line of practical, uninsured working-class folk. The kind of folk who would not scoff at shelling out for antibiotics for an honored animal who had been injured in the line of duty, but who would definitely draw the line at mood meds other than Leinie’s, and would never, ever waste good beer on a cat.

I decided to approach the problem like any good East Side grandma would: Feed the depression, starve a cold—or something like that. I started double-filling the cat’s food dish; she stopped attacking and started napping more. Presto, no more midnight raids, no more surprise attacks in the hallway. She’s simply too fat and too tired. My husband recently likened the cat to a mini Tonka dump truck; she exists solely to empty out her food drawer, then lumber downstairs to the laundry room to unload her cargo into the shit box.

I disagreed with him, saying that I could see the feelings etched in her angry eyes, hear them in the petulant pitch of her meow if I am late shaking the kibble into her dish. My hub then stated that he thought I was willing to assign the cat feelings because I had feelings about the cat.

I countered that he also must have feelings about the cat, but he insisted that he didn’t. He then shrugged and said that men were different, that men have about one-fourth the feelings that women have, and they certainly wouldn’t waste any of them on murderous psycho house cats.

I’ve come across this before. The old “men and women are different” line. And I’ll tell you what I know is true: We are different, but it’s all in the language.

Over the last few years, I’ve had a lot of feelings for this weird cat who shares our home. I’ve felt anxiety, terror, hope, and relief. And I think my husband has experienced many of the same feelings, only he would classify them as thoughts, opinions, or gut reactions. Go ahead and try this at home—pick a topic, any topic, ask a guy what he feels about it, and then listen to the crickets. Wait a day or two, and ask him about his thoughts, opinions, or gut reactions on the same topic. Just make sure you’ve got a comfy place to sit. And if you want to calm him down you can always double-fill his food bowl.

Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse can be reached at mscolleenkruse@yahoo.com.

Because I am writing this column almost two months before it will show up in print, we can have ourselves a little scientific experiment. See, I just read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, a book designed to help me tap my hidden personal powers, and I’m going to think convincing thoughts in order to test once and for all whether the universe will rearrange itself according to my desires.

Trying to harness my thoughts is a daunting prospect. If I were to describe my typical mental process, I would say that it works like a machine I used back when I was a waitress at Embers: The Hokey. The Hokey is one of those manual rotary rug cleaners. It doesn’t employ suction. In fact, I’m not sure how it works—early waitresses are rumored to have thrown rocks at the first Hokeys, believing them to be the work of demons.

Stay with me. Say you had a three-year-old in your section. For an hour and a half, Harried Mama would keep asking for MORE CRACKERS. So you kept giving Harried Mama more crackers and she kept giving them to the three-year-old, who did not eat them, but instead crushed them in tiny fists, sprinkling them all over the carpet below the booster seat. After they would leave, you would get your Hokey. You pushed the Hokey over the crumbs, but it only picked up the big ones, leaving the cracker sand behind to be ground into cracker dust.

I have always been terribly afraid that my brain, like the Hokey, only picks up the big crumbs. Those morsels are then transferred to the bingo tumbler cage of my frontal lobe, which is hand-cranked by Agnes, who chooses random thoughts one by one and announces them loudly to my nervous system. But Agnes’s eyes aren’t so good anymore and that means sometimes I come home from the grocery store with buttermilk instead of milk and butter.

The Secret promises to push Agnes down a flight of stairs and turn my Hokey brain into a powerful Dyson, unfailingly sucking up whatever I aim my mind at. Real estate, riches, Rice-A-Roni, it doesn’t matter. It will all be mine if I can only harness my juju and THINK POSITIVELY.

I bought The Secret by accident, originally thinking that I was buying The Seacrest, a quickie autobiography for beach reading. (I wonder if Ryan Seacrest was in on The Secret a couple of years before everyone else, and that’s why he has his career.) God. See? This is the problem. I just spent the last half-hour thinking about Ryan Seacrest’s bitch strips. Does this mean I will manifest a spray-tanned face framed by blond-highlighted streaks?

If we could control our thoughts in the first place our lives would probably be much better. It’s not unimaginable that an average person could experience a ten percent increase in quality of life simply by daydreaming about positive things all day instead of brooding about negative ones. Under these circumstances, it will seem as if The Secret works, and those horrid self-help people will continue to fill their Olympic-sized swimming pools with the chicken soup of our souls.

I have a friend who keeps her house like a modern-day Fred Sanford, calling the mess “creative” rather than recognizing it for what it is—a reflection of stone-cold laziness. She is genuinely stupefied when her dates don’t want to see her again after she invites them over. Time and again she attributes these negative reactions to unassailable forces in the universe. Eventually, I suppose, she will attract someone who loves a little creative mess, or who is a pathological neat freak thrilled to clean up after her. But to me that seems more like waiting the situation out rather than actively conjuring something desirable.

I use this as an example because there is a significant portion of life we can’t control. Housecleaning is one of the parts we can. If my pal kept her house clean, she could invite somebody over and feel pretty secure that they were judging her on the basis of her personality rather than on the dirty dishes piled in the sink. The secret of The Secret is that it encourages thought rather than action. And that, my friends, is where the heart of all sin lies. And I mean that in a completely secular, universe-embracing way. But what the hell? I’ll try The Secret anyway.

If it works, I’ll let you know. If not in my next column, then on my TV show.

Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse can be reached at mscolleenkruse@yahoo.com.