I'm kind of interested in seeing those nude photos of Camille Grammer. Does this make me a bad person? Or is it just a little female jealousy?

Hi Worldans,

What do you get when you combine red wine + snow day + insomnia?

Free Association Tuesday! Er...Wednesday....whatever.

On Free Association Tuesday/Wednesday, we get up in the middle of the night and babble on about whatever comes to mind without really caring if anyone reads it. We try to use correct grammar and spelling, but this is by no means guaranteed.

And so.

Good evening, Passengers, this is your Captain. But you can call me Chicken. Well, it looks like we have some gnarly weather conditions out there tonight, Chicksters, so buckle in and flag down your flight attendant for free peanuts and a $5 beer. And don't worry so much. It might get a little bumpy, but I'll get you to where we are going. Wherever that is. Thanks for flying with the Chicken.

Andddd we're cleared for take-off.

As you may recall, over Thanksgiving, between tweets, I unwittingly fell captive to a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills marathon. I went from, "This is so stupid" to "Hey, are those Julia Robert's lips", to "More. I need more" in about 30 minutes.

I don't know what it is that has me so enthralled; maybe the parties, maybe the clothes, maybe the botox. But whatever it is, it seems to me that in between the bitching, fighting, and catty commenting, these ladies are having a lot of fun in the sun. With pretty dresses. And accessories. It is my current guilty pleasure and I'm owning that right up front. Hey. I'm not proud of it. I'm genetically predisposed to bad television. But this is not a cry for help. Let's be clear about that.

If you, too, are genetically predisposed to bad television and have been watching the RHOBH, you know that the bad girl Housewife, Camille Grammer, (Yes, married to Kelsey Grammer, for all you non-watchers), has been the subject of much speculation of late. Not only is she not a housewife, so much as an ex-wife, these days, but her cast mates have found, and recently circulated web-wide, some nude photos of her from a previous career. (Because, after all, if you can't depend on your mates to pump your publicity, who can you count on?).

Frankly, Camille is hot. And I don't want to hear about the enhanced boobs, the manipulative streak, the cattiness, or any of the other unattractive traits that personify the bad housewife. If you do not think she's hot, that's fine, but I challenge you to find a hot blooded, heterosexual male who doesn't (and it has to be an honest one, not your husband who might get hit with a shoe if he says, "yeah, I'd tap that"). I know, I know. It pains me every single time she purrs that all of the ladies are jealous of her. And then does the shrug thing. And flashes the sly smile. It does. But she's a little bit right.

Camille looks great. There are naked pictures on the internet. And I want to see them. Am I the only one? I'm not really sure what to make of this urge. First of all, it's not like there's much left to the imagination on the show. Do I really need to see pubic hair and nipples to complete the picture? I'm curious, but even my curiosity does not generally sink to that level of shallowness.

I blame genetic mapping. Yes. Somewhere, back when evolution started, after the apes, maybe, but before language, back when real women were cave women, there was no shame in checking out the competition and sizing up the threat. And beating them with an ugly club should the opportunity present itself whilst out picking wild berries.

"Oops. Is that you Camille? So sorry. Thought you were a wild boar. (shrug/smile)"

Now we do not do that. We say, "Well yeah, I guess she's hot, if you like silicone and peroxide (shrug/smile)". And then we either look for damaging photos on the internet, or make a play for Kyle's husband, depending on our perspective. But I could be projecting.

Where was I? Oh. So all over America, women are cheering because they think Camille has been thrown from her high horse. We are oh so wrong, Chicksters. She's not been thrown. Dude, she's been launched! She's single, she's wealthy, she's hot (I still maintain), and now she's famous. She'll be co-hosting the Regis and Camille show before the end of 2011.

Well, perhaps she might not be pegged for Kelly Ripta's role, given that Kelly is both hot and well liked, but mark my words, she'll be hosting something. Right in your face.

Hide yo' husband.

Chicken out

Chicken Homework...

Hi World,

Ok, time for Chicken School. Or we could call it a game. Let's do that. It's not homework, it's a game.

On this website there is a fun game for us to play.

What is your type?

For Dad

Hi World,

It is a lonely old night. All of the chickens here are roosting and I'm thinking. If you came here looking for a laugh, I will disappoint you this time. Humor was not the available muse this evening.

Back in September, I disappeared for awhile from this place. At the time, my mother was very ill. She passed away towards the end of September. I never wrote about it because this is my fun place and, well, there's nothing very funny about your mother dying. There are, however, many funny stories about my mother, who was unique in that you don't often find the mind of a toddler trapped in the head of a grown woman, and I mean that in the very nicest way. I've been playing with the idea of telling some "Vi stories", and one of these days I may, but tonight I'm here to talk about my father.

He went into the hospital a couple of weeks ago. To make a long story short, there were some ups and downs, but finally he was released, after a successful surgery, just in time for Christmas. Unfortunately, the surgery didn't take. The day after Christmas I got a call; the kind that all of us dread, from my brother, letting me know that our Dad had passed away. There was nothing that could be done.

Again, I had no intention of writing about it, but then something funny happened. I was sitting around tonight, playing with my fancy new laptop (thanks BigB), and I decided to check out my site statistics. I was surprised to find that one old post had been resurrected, seemingly. Not remembering what it was about, I went back to read it and discovered that it was about my Dad and his way with nicknames. I took it as a sign, because I do that. I'm like Mel Gibson, with a pointed tinfoil hat on my head, always looking for signs. Signs and crop circles. Anyway, it seemed like the right time and the right thing to do, so I'm writing tonight about my father.

Wherever he is right now, he would probably want me to apologize that he won't be getting out with the plow to dig all of you out of this nor'easter we've been hit by here in New England, so I'll get that out of the way right up front.

There are many memories I will carry forward of my Dad, all of them good. He was one of the nicest people I've ever known. He was a great singer. Well, actually, he probably was not, but as a kid riding around with him, I always wondered why he was toiling away in manufacturing when he was obviously born for the Grand Ole Opry. He could sing along with those old 8 tracks like nobody's business. Johnny Cash wishes he could have sung Ring of Fire like my Dad. And speaking of driving around with Dad, if we happened to stop at a store, we knew two things: 1.) We would have to wait in the car, but 2.) there would be m&ms or a Hershey bar in it for us. Make that three things: Nine times out of ten, Dad would run into someone he knew and stand there talking to them for 20 minutes. I think, cumulatively, about 2 years of my childhood were spent waiting for Dad to finish up a conversation.

There are a couple stories that are always the first to come to mind when I think of him and I'll share those with you. The first made him my hero; the second convinced me he was omniscient.

When I was really young, we lived in a trailer park. One Christmas Eve we were hit with a bad storm. Sometime in the middle of the night, my parents realized our roof was caving in from the weight of the snow. Now, a young kid's memory is faulty, but I remember him carrying me out of the trailer, through the snow, and to the safety of our car. In my memory he is barefoot. He was probably upset because Christmas was a BIG deal to my father. I don't remember feeling upset about Christmas-I just remember thinking that my Dad was a hero. I was very focused, the way little kids can be, on this one idea of him being barefoot, and I kept going back to it, in my mind, and thinking to myself how cold his feet must have been. He probably wasn't barefoot. I know that now. But he was a hero.

The second story has to do with one of my birthdays. Birthdays were also big in our house. Not as big as Christmas, I don't think, but important. I was not a kid who lusted after stuff. I was more of a doer than a collector. That particular year, though, I did have a secret desire and it was for a yellow ten-speed bike I saw in a magazine. I started lusting after this beautiful sunshiney bike long before my birthday, and tried to think of the different ways I could earn money to buy it for myself. Well, my birthday came and my Dad said to me, "I heard you wanted a yellow ten-speed, but I couldn't find one anywhere. Let's go see if there's another bike you like". We went to Western Auto and I chose a maroon ten-speed for my birthday present that year. I loved that bike. But forget the bike-how the hell did he know what I wanted? I didn't remember telling anyone. And what else did he know? I was a little worried about that because, frankly, I didn't want my Dad stalking my adolescent mind, ferreting out all of my secrets, and I was now convinced that he could. If he knew about the bike, he might know I had kissed a boy at band camp. Eventually, I remembered that I had told my cousin, who probably told her mom, who told my mom, who told my dad, maybe, but back then I could conceive of no explanation other than the obvious fact that my father was reading my mind. Oh. The. Horror. I'm sure he would agree.

Okay, one more. My father loved the song, "Love me Tender". At my wedding, he requested this for the father/daughter dance. I kind of brushed him off because I thought of it as a love song and innappropriate for the father/daughter dance. I went with some other song and I can't even remember now what it was. At the time, I thought he came up with that off the top of his head, but a month later, when my older sister got married, he again requested it and I'm happy to say that she conceded. She made him wear a tuxedo, too, though, which I did not, so I'm gonna call that even, sort of. I do not remember if he requested it for my younger sister's wedding or not, but he probably did. I got to thinking, what is the deal with this song? And I realized that for him it was probably a lullabye. I listened to it one day. It was a song about a tender love, and what is more tender than your love for your baby? It would have made a great father/daughter dance song.

I'm going to miss you so much, Dad. I didn't see you often enough but every single day, I thought of you. I'm sorry I didn't play that song at my wedding-I want a do over. And I wish that I had been with you at the end to carry you barefoot through the snow and safely into heaven. I'm glad your feet will never be cold again. I hope the food where you are is to your liking, but if it is not, remember, there's not much you can do to ruin a hard-boiled egg:-) You'll always be my hero.

To quote a Cheryl Wheeler song I've always liked, "we're just bereft, not deserted, Lord knows your rest was deserved". Rest well, Dad. We love you.