LOOK AT LIFE / COCO HAMES

Another creepy bloggy story... remove all pets from the room before reading... and happy Halloween, from the Ettes!

By Coco Hames

I'm raising my kids on a farm.  My kids will be John the Savage.  I'm going to make them chop wood.  If I am unable to completely block the crazy world from impacting my smart, sensitive kids know this: I am a big proponent for after school activities, if I ever have kids, I'm going to make them do something.  Sports, piano, woodworking, whatever.  Something mentally and physically involved from about 3pm to 6pm.  Then you come home and eat dinner with the family and go do your homework.  You can go out Friday or Saturday night, not both.  Until you are 17.  Your curfew increases in increments of 30 minutes every year.  When you are a freshman it's 10:30, sophomore 11, junior 11:30 and senior midnight.  Nothing good happens after midnight, not for you, future imaginary teenager of mine.  I know you're an angsty, self-absorbed teenager and you think I don't know anything, but you need these restrictions, trust me, because for the brief couple of weeks my freshman year of high  school I got up to SO much no good.  Breaking into construction sites, smokin' cigarettes, stealing road signs, tying boys' bikes up into trees, taking out all of your parents ski clothes and putting them out on the lawn, dyeing cats...

One boring afternoon my friend Jennifer and I decided it would be a good idea to dye her black cat blonde.  We walked up to the drugstore, purchased some blonde hair dye, and just to be safe, called the helpline on the back of the box, since there weren't any instructions for coloring cat hair, and we sagely figured there were probably some differences worth considering.

"L'Oreal helpline, this is Debbie, how may I help you?"

"Oh hi Debbie, I just have some questions about the Excellence Creme hair color."

"Okay, go ahead."

"Well, it doesn't say anything on here about cat hair, and I'm wondering if it's safe or not safe, or if it's going to have the same effect, you know, as what's on the box, 'cause it's different hair?"

Once she understood what I was planning to do, she's all "Oh no no, I do not advise using this product on a cat, no no, that's not what this is for..."  But she was boring me and we did it anyway and that cat was very unhappy, probably because the color came out WAY brassy.

Shhh, I don't ADVISE this, I'm just saying it happened and the cat was FINE, he just looked a bit strange for a while... Well anyway.

Then we found a baby squirrel, named him Kirby (like the video game) and trained him up, carried him around in our shirts.  Then I was forced to join a sports, so I did.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop y'alll.

PS - Officially: no one pays me for my creepy bloggy stories.

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Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power arrived in stores Sept. 29, and you bet we've got a big feature on the band in our new print issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.