Thanks for the happy birthday wishes! It was a swell birthday, but it was also a birthday that was EERILY SIMILAR to another birthday I had not too long ago.

Let us flashback to…say…CHAPTER ONE of my book Happy Birthday or Whatever. The title of said book draws from the chapter in which my PARENTS FORGET MY BIRTHDAY.

Now let us flashforward to present day, August 25, 2010, also known as my birthday (and the birthdays of Regis Philbin, Elvis Costello, Ivan the Terrible, and, in addition, my friend Natalie. I should note that I’ve only had dinner with one of those four people. Hint: It’s not Ivan the Terrible). It was a good birthday. I ate a very civilized dinner with a few of my closest friends, including Chris who was carrying a murse. We made fun of him and agreed that in order to offset the mursiness he had to carry bacon, ammo, power tools, various knives, and a bottle of Old Spice. Anyway point is, it was a very pleasant evening, murse and all. I did not want a rage-a-thon this year. Figured I’d wait for the weekend like a responsible grown-up, which I now am. Not really.

But wait…something is missing…hmmm…something is misssiinnnggg.

Oh right. My parents TOTALLY FORGOT AGAIN. Again!!!

You’d think that when your kid writes a BOOK about forgetting her birthday, you’d start, you know, remembering.

So the next day August 26, is my parents’ anniversary. So I call my mom and I’m like heeeyy girl, what’s up? And I say happy anniversary! And she goes, oh is that today? Really? What’s the date? I say it’s August 26th. She goes whoaaa, where did the time go, are you sure its our anniversary? And I say yes, I am sure because I have a thing called a calendar, it is a device from the future in which you can annotate important dates. This “calendar” is also available in digital forms, such as on a computer or on a cellular telephone. And then I wait for it. You know, the REALIZATION that she has made A HORRIBLE MISTAKE. And she goes, oh well, I’ll call you daddy later, what are you doing for your birthday tomorrow?

*forehead slap*

I say DUDE my birthday was YESTERDAY, and she goes, NO, and I say YES and she says NO, and that keeps going for awhile and then she says sorry and says “Oh my gosh, I’m such a zero.” Which actually made me laugh because I have never heard her say that before, I have no idea where she picked that up. Sometimes she says “I’m going to give you knuckle sandwich” which is pretty hilarious and my father calls rolling through a stop sign a “California Stop” instead of a “California roll” even after I explained that it’s a play on words with the type of sushi, but he thinks that is nonsense. I think that cream cheese in sushi is gross. Cheese and seaweed is weird, you guys. Seriously. Who was the dude who said “Oh shit I just had a great idea. What if we take some raw fish, add some cream cheese, add some rice and wrap it with seaweed? Awesome, right?” The man was obviously from California.

Anyway my mother says sorry, I go it’s fine, but really, what is wrong with you? Then she says, oh it’s really hot in Los Angeles! I’m not sure if she was trying to change the subject or if perhaps the 103 degree heat has actually made her “go full retard.”

So then I think, do I call my father, wish HIM a happy anniversary? And I think no no no, in just a few minutes, he will call me. Because my mother will call him and tell him that they forgot something important and in addition, did you know it was our anniversary today? No, me neither! OMG!

Anyway he ended up calling and apologizing.

Oh, I should also mention that my brother had REMINDED/WARNED them it was my birthday. Like, seriously people. He said he tried, but failed. Anyway the whole thing is hilarious and sad, but probably more hilarious. More sad the first time, more hilarious the second time.

I learned an important lesson today: Always order more desserts, even if people say no no no I’m full I don’t really need to eat dessert. Because they are lying. Everyone needs to eat dessert.

Today is my birthday. This means you can’t yell at me for not blogging in a long, long time. I’m specifically blogging today because I know you guys have to be nice to me and not bitch me out for being a bad blogger because it is the anniversary of what is most likely the third most important day in my parents’ lives. Maybe even fourth. Shit, maybe I’m not even in the top five! That is sad, though not surprising I suppose. There’s their meeting/getting married, moving to the States, having my brother, and having me. The question is whether or not my mother kicking cancer is more or less important than me and my brother’s births. Hmm, anyway, the point is, it is a somewhat important day. For me, I’d say it’s an adequately important day. Therefore, you must be nice. Let’s keep things civil, people.

I just returned from my yearly visit to Canada. It was very Canadian, thanks for asking. This is what I saw:

It was a regular, non-double rainbow all the way. You can’t see them, but that rainbow is entirely composed of mosquitoes that were all chasing me. I managed to get a mosquito bite on my face, which feels awesome, and one dangerously close to my ass. They attack me when I’m going to the bathroom and my defenses are literally down. Bastards. Bastards!!!!

I should mention that while I was there, I did see another Korean girl. She was working at the grocery store. I am sure that she went home and told her parents that she, too, saw a Korean girl. Funny how that works.

So what have I missed?

My very, very good friends Karina and John had their baby today. Maxwell was born this morning, and was THREE WEEKS early. But he’s healthy and a wallop of a boy/man at 7 lbs and 21 inches. If he actually came on time, he’d be like bigger than me, which actually isn’t saying much. Congrats to them and their families and congrats to me because now I have a new toy. I cannot wait to teach him stuff. It’s gonna be awesome! First I will teach him how to make a good martini and how to make a pipe out of an apple. These are important skills. Then, we will go break shit together.

Congratulations to BlauerMond, who has won the $55 USD cash monies for the 2010 World Cup Annietown Pool! Even though she chose Argentina to take it all, she still managed to be a winner champion victor trimphant world-beater conquerer. She came in at 241 points. That is over ONE HUNDRED more points than me and like a THOUSAND MILLIONS points more than Mr. Pony, who is the Ultimate Winner. I will be Paypalling BlauerMond the cash monies, congratulations, you are now $55 richer. Please tell us what you will use your new found riches to buy. Hopefully you will buy something totally awesome, like a MINIATURE PONY ZOMG. Dude how cute is that. I want to nuzzle and hold it and put it in my pocket to keep it safe. Anyway, BlauerMond, please do something reckless and dangerous with the cash monies. Don’t use it to pay your electric bill or something. Real winners don’t need electricity anyway.

The second place winner is Mr. Savoury, who is in England. Congratulations, Dave! You have won…a booby prize. Everyone likes boobies! You will have to email me your mailing address and I will send you something at my discretion. I can tell you right now that it will not be as good as $55 USD, so don’t get too excited.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Sorry to those of you who lost. I’m particularly sorry that I lost. I am sure you guys are extra sad that I lost, too. I know I let a lot of people down. The best part is that now we don’t have to talk about this again for another four years.

And now comes the hard part:

sobering up.

Well, the good news is that right now I’m not in last place.

The bad news is that I’m second to last place. But to make it sound extra fancy I will call it penultimate place. That means Mr. Pony is in ultimate place, which sounds eXXXXXXXXXXXtremely exciting. The extra Xs are to denote the actual ranking of the ultimate place he really is, if that makes sense. So really, I’m basically almost the winner of the ultimate place. I am the maid of honor and silver medalist. Hard to believe but it feels not as good as it sounds. I guess that means the uh…proximate(?) place is Blauermond, but things aren’t looking good for her because she has Argentina winning it all and they lost today (HA HA HA JOKES ON YOU and uh…many of us actually). Seriously though what is the opposite of ultimate? God, English really sucks you guys. I feel sorry for people who have to learn it.

In other news? I’m hungry.

Dude today sucks. Both Korea and USA got eliminated. Sad emo tears are streaming down my face right now. In addition, my belly is full of beer.

For those of you who want to follow along at home, here’s the list of winners and losers. As you’ll notice, I am one of the losers.

Last night I went to the deli to buy some beer and the deli-man is this old Korean guy who makes the same joke over and over again. When he gives you the total, say $8.99, he’ll say “THAT BE EIGHT THOUSAND NINETY NINE DOLLAR!” So last night he makes the joke again, and then says, HOLD ON A MINUTE, are you Korean? And then he got all proud of me for being Korean because obviously that’s quite an achievement, and said that I shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, but that I should be eating raisins instead. Then, he gave me a box of raisins. Which I am eating right now. You know how there are kids who hate raisins and then they grow up to be adults who hate raisins? I’m not one of them. I fucking love fucking raisins, man. They are delicious little rabbit turds. I mean goji berries? Acai berries? Whatever, man. Raisins, this is what I’m saying. When I got them in my Halloween sack (which was my Empire Strikes Back pillowcase, which I still have by the way), I totally ate them. I ate them way before the candy corn. Dude, candy corn is gross. It’s like sugared wax. Why should I eat that when I could be eating dried grapes? You know what else is gross? Necco wafers and Smarties (the American ones not the British ones which taste like M&Ms and are delicious despite the fact that they come in lame Easter egg pastel colors and therefore inferior to M&Ms though I do not approve of those stupid blue ones. I want the tan ones back!). American Smarties taste like vitamins and chalk combined. All of the sudden this blog became about candy. Curious.

Ok so I guess I’m rooting for Argentina now. In a related note: I don’t know anything about Argentinian candy.

Have you guys been keeping up with the AnnieCup? You can find the latest here. As you can see, I am not winning. That is really the only thing that matters. I am not currently a winner. I suppose this shouldn’t come to a surprise to me. And yet, it does. I am disappointed, people. I am disappointed about the way things are turning out for me. Am I happy that Bibit is currently in first place? Sure. Sure I am. That’s great. For her. However, I also know that there’s still, like, 100 World Cup games left to play. And surely in those 100 games, I can make up the points and be a winner. Of course I can do that. So, really, I am a winner, just not right now, on this particular day, in this particular hour. That can change.

It is also interesting that Mr. Pony’s strategy of basically picking only ties is not working. Currently, Mr. Pony is in last place. I happen to think he will be in last place for a long time. Maybe even forever. This is the man who in a March Madness pool picked schools based on mascots, which is nice, if you think about it. Mascots never get any credit. And plus, there are some really lame mascots out there (Stanford, University of Hawaii I’m looking at you). I think actually it got him kind of far. Until it didn’t. Then he was the loser. Which is a mean way of saying he didn’t win. Because he’s a loser. Man this circular logic is making me hungry with it being circular and all, much like a cookie.

In squee news, I went to the Bronx Zoo yesterday, and took pictures with MY SWEET NEW CAMERA. I’m not going to “boar” you with pictures (ha ha ha!) but I will share two picture things and one fact thing.

First the fact thing: I learned that 1/3 of all animals on Earth are beetles. It makes sense, since insects are basically the most numerous type of organism here, but when you put it that way, it makes me really want to hurl.

Now for two picture things.

The “Dancing Crane Cafe” has many food options, including Kosher food. Unfortunately, their kitchen is not actually Kosher. As a result, Kosher food is dispensed out of a Kosher vending machine. You can get things like onion rings and fries and some kind of sandwich maybe, hard to tell from the picture. But this begs the question: Wuhhhhh? How can a machine dispense fries? Are they fried INSIDE the machine? Does the machine get stocked with Kosher fries, so does that means someone has to delivery already cooked fries and put them in a vending machine where they will sit for….hours? Days? It is a mystery. A Kosher mystery.

I like this turtle because it has a strange pig snout for a nose. I believe it lives in the waters of southeast Asia. I do not believe this turtle is Kosher.

GUESS WHAT IS IN THE CONTAINER?

HINT: IT IS AS BIG AS MY FINGER AND HAS THREE (3) TIMES AS MANY LEGS AS I DO.

HINT: IT IS A FILTHY DISGUSTING VILE PEST THAT LIVES IN SHIT AND GARBAGE AND ALSO APPARENTLY IN MY KITCHEN.

HINT: IT KIND OF LOOKS LIKE A DRIED DATE.

HINT: I MEANT DATE THE FRUIT, NOT DATE, LIKE THE HOTTIE YOU ARE MEETING TONIGHT AND GOING OUT FOR DRINKS AND DANCING.

HINT: NO ONE REALLY DOES DRINKS AND DANCING ANYMORE, SOUNDS KIND OF OLD FASHIONED. LIKE HEY LET’S GO CUT A RUG!

HINT: THESE DAYS KIDS ARE MORE LIKE YO LET’S GO TO A RAVE.

HINT: OK KIDS DON’T REALLY SAY THAT UNLESS THE KIDS ARE LIVING IN 1994. HONESTLY, I’M NOT SURE WHAT KIDS DO THESE DAYS. THEY PROBABLY DO TWEET UPS OR SOMETHING. I DUNNO. THAT’S NOT REALLY THE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.

HINT: THE PROBLEM IS THE THING THAT I TRAPPED IN THIS CONTAINER BECAUSE I WAS TOO SCARED TO DESTROY IT. IT’S THE HARD CANDY SHELL AND THE JUICY CENTER THAT IS THE PROBLEM.

HINT: OMFG IT WAS CRAWLING ALL OVER MY OLIVE OIL WHICH IS SERIOUSLY MAKING ME WANT TO THROW THE WHOLE BOTTLE OUT EVEN THOUGH IT IS BRAND NEW, DON’T WORRY I WILL JUST DISINFECT IT WITH BLEACH WHICH WILL PROBABLY RUIN THE OLIVE OIL.

HINT: YES I’M A BIG FAT BABY CHICKEN WHEN IT COMES TO THIS SHIT, BUT DUDES, IT IS BIGGER THAN MY FINGER. HOW CAN YOU KILL SOMETHING THAT IS BIGGER THAN YOUR FINGER? I THINK IT WAS SMILING AT ME AND DID THE CABBAGE PATCH.

HINT: I GUESS THE ROACH IS AS OLD AS I AM. NO ONE DOES THE CABBAGE PATCH ANYMORE. ANYONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THE CABBAGE PATCH IS PROBABLY DEAD OR IN JAIL.

HINT: SHITBALLS, I THINK IT JUST VOGUED.

I am not sure what do with this. It is…a situation.

Hey friends! There are 11 total people in the Annietown World Cup Pool, which means the winner will win $55 USD! ZOMG! Now you can finally buy that American Apparel unitard for your mother.

You can see everyone’s picks and the standings HERE. You can re-read the rules HERE. You can see a picture of a squid HERE. I will be updating it as much as I can as soon as I get the scores. But, sometimes, I’ll be watching the games, and I might be drunk, so I might have to update the scores the next day. I’m just warning you now. I want to be upfront and open with you. Because I love you and respect you blah blah blah zzzzz. Now go forth and be a winner.

In the meantime, I will publicly humiliate Mr. Pony, Toi, Bibit, and Aquafortis. GIMME MAH MONIES, NATCH!

Hello friends! I think we have enough people to join our little World Cup pool. So far, there are maybe…5 or 6 people. That’s like $30 USD of champion cash monies! OMG! You know what you can GET for $30?????? Holy shit! You can get like, five copies of my book (qualifies for SuperSaver shipping and, dudes, I think you can find it for six bucks now, sad and awesome at the sametime. A bargain!). You could ALSO get $30 worth of cheese. A really nice bottle of wine. Or 4 really, really crappy bottles of wine. You can get a unitard from American Apparel (just kidding, I just checked and they are over $30 USD). You can get about 30 mousetraps because they are only 99¢ each. You can get maybe 4 and a half cans of cockroach spray. You can get really, really, really nice soap. Like a soap that costs $30 must be pretty fucking nice. I bet your skin will feel amazing. You can get a lot of french fries. If you go to Taco Bell you can get a lot of Chalupas. So the point of what I’m saying is that you risk $5 USD for the chance to win enough Chalupas for your whole office. Maybe you can get that KFC chicken sandwich thing, the one where the ‘bread’ is two pieces of fried chicken, and it has mayo and bacon on the inside. Holy cow what is that about. This is why we’re fat, people.

Ok so here’s how it works. Go HERE and download the World Cup form. My friend Mike made this one, so big shout out to him, he’s the king of the spreadsheet.

Then, you fill it out and mail that to me, your friend, Annie Choi. It’s annie at annietown dot com in case you didn’t know. (There’s a thing in the corner that says “share” and you can choose “email as attachment”). Then I will email you a sweet, touching response with directions on how to Paypal your $5 USD to me. Remember, Europeans–$5 USD is basically free in Euro. You may not even need to send me money. IN fact, I may owe you money.

Problem! Warning! The tournament starts FRIDAY morning if you’re in the United States. But a few Annietown readers are from not the United States and from places whose languages include cute letters that wear hats or ties sooo you guys have to do that math for that. I hate time zones. We should all be free from time. So let us say everyone gets the picks to me by Friday morning 8 am eastern time (basically, if you cats do it tonight or Thursday night we’ll all be cool).

Ok give me questions in the comments section!

This is very exciting. Mostly because I’m about to not win $30.

UPDATE: Here are the RULES in case you were wondering how this whole thing works. Also I stole this from Mike Moyer. He is organizing a very spendy pool, and this pool is for cheapos like myself. All of this doesn’t matter because I’m not going to win, so wtf you know?