NEW RELEASES
Dear Australian People,
We’d like you to meet Douglas. He’s a baby wombat. Now, surely, after watching this video, you understand why we need a wombat, right?
The people from Australia are not returning our calls. Do you think it’s possible they’ve already heard about us? We thought perhaps, since we’re writers, we’d try persuading them with a letter.
Dear Australian people,
We’re willing to go out into the desert and find you a lovely Gila monster. They’re much prettier than they sound. Or perhaps, you’d rather have a javelina. The baby ones are pretty cute. We’ll trade you for: 1 Wombat, 1 Quoka, 1 koala, and a joey. We promise to love them and pet them and feed them and adore them until we meet our demise, probably after being eaten alive by some adorable fuzzy thing we fell in love with and brought home even after being expressly forbidden to do so by our spouses.
Please let us know if these terms are amenable. We’re happy to come to your place and pick them up. We have several kitty carriers we think would be more than suitable for transportation. We plan to tell the airline they’re puppies. Delta Airlines owes us a solid.
Thank you for your consideration.
Amylynn and Ava
The Quill Sisters.
November 15-
We’re freaking out a little bit about the fact that it’s November 15th already. We hate to sound old here, but when did time start going so fast? Really. It’s kinda insane, right? At what age does this happen? We hypothesize it begins sometime around age 30. We’re not completely sure ‘cause some of our data is skewed. Being drunk through your 20’s will do that. We only mention that last part so you’ll have the proper perspective. We know we’re not the only ones who don’t remember our 20’s – or rather remember spending a lot of time with someone holding our hair, if you know what we mean. Now that all this has come up, we really hope our
Hard to tell which one is the bobblehead, huh?
1. Bobbleheads. We’ve addressed the issue with that idiot mayor in Toronto all ready. If you’re unfamiliar with this man pop on any news source and you’ll find it, no problem. The only good thing about the story is that it lets Americans know that there are moronic politicians across the globe. Often times we get the erroneous impression that the US has a lock on morons. Yea! We don’t! They’re everywhere! The good people of Toronto 
are prospering over this debacle by selling “Robbie Bobbie” bobblehead dolls. They’re a steal at $20 apiece. The best part is the idiot mayor doesn’t even realize they’re making fun of him and consequently you might even get one signed by the idiot himself.
2. Reporters with a sense of humor. We complain long and loud about reporters not including all the pertinent information in news articles. It’s beyond annoying, so whenever we find an article, especially an Associated Press article, written by someone with a sense of humor we’re willing to give a onetime free pass. Such an article came out of Copiague, NY this week. Apparently, there has been a horrifying shortage of knishes due to a fire in a knish factory. Who knew that one factory supplied all of the knishes. That seems like a money making idea for some enterprising young person with more time and energy than the Sisters. Anyway, the headline read, “Kvetcing (sp) over lack of knishes to end soon.” That was amusing enough to get us to read further – and let’s be honest, it was about food so the likelihood that we’d read further anyway was excellent. The best line reads as follows, “A fire
at a factory billed as the world’s biggest maker of knishes has created nationwide shock and oy…” BLAhahahahahaa. That’s brilliant. Well played, AP. Well played.
3. More animals we need. We present to you the Pink Fairy Armadillo. We didn’t even make that name up. Seriously. Google it yourself. The name caught our eye and when we found the info on it we fell in love. These little cuties only grow to a maximum of 5 inches long and weigh less than a pound. At that rate, we’ll be able to stuff ten or twelve of them in our 
pockets for the trip home. They live in sand and eat ants. AND THEY’RE PINK! Notice the fuzz under the shell. It’s described as soft, fine hair. What part of this animal is not appealing? They might even have magical powers, they’re so freaking cute. We’re organizing a trip to Argentina. You in?
4. Weird damn art. It just so happens that we love this piece. It’s seriously adorable. It’s official name is Balloon Dog (Orange) by Jeff Koons and its constructed out of stainless steel. It’s fun and light and makes you feel happy – so long as you can avoid thinking about clowns when you look at it. Clowns are creepy whether they make balloon animals or not. Anyway, the reason we bring up Balloon Dog is because it just sold for 58.4 million dollars. MILLION. That makes Mr. Koons the proud record holder of “the most 
expensive work by a living artist sold at auction.” We cannot fathom who these people are that can afford 58.4 million dollars for a sculpture. Honestly, if they have that much God damned money we have a trip to Argentina that needs a sponsor.
5. Other unusual pets. Last week there was a report of a small alligator being found at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, under an escalator. It made the news because everyone was pondering how an alligator just happened to wander into one of the busiest airports in the county undetected. Well, thanks to Big Brother we know where the scaly dude came from. A woman has been found via surveillance cameras with it on the El. The Blue Line to be specific and getting off at O’Hare. When she got back on the train there was no alligator. There’s all kinds of conjecture about why she’d be on the train with an alligator in the first place. Well, how the hell else do you expect her to get from one place to the other with her alligator? People are worrying about all the wrong things. What they need to be worrying about is why she’d have an alligator in the first place. We don’t approve of animals that aren’t fuzzy. In general, they’re a bad idea. Our spouses are overjoyed at this news. They can mark alligators off the list of potential reasons we’re being monitored by the FBI.
All-Zona Book Fest
On Sunday 11/17 from 10AM to 4PM We’ll be at the All-Zona Book Fest at the Tucson Sheraton Hotel & Suites. It’s a really cool idea for a book festival – the authors are all from Arizona – Tucson, Phoenix, Bisbee, etc. Lots of genres will be represented – mystery, romance, fantasy and adventure – for a total of 30+ authors (click here for the full list).
Ava and I plan to be in our ball gowns so you can’t possibly miss us.
Admission is free and there’ll be books there for us to sign.
I REALLY hope we get to see you. And you can find out if we’re really as insane as you think we are.
The answer is probably.
We’ve really got to stay off the internet
Is it wrong that this makes our uterus cramp up?
We really, really need a kitten. A mountain lion kitten. Make sure you have your volume up so you can hear this. This is epic purring, people.
We immediately went to this site – bigcatrescue.org to look for an application. Can you believe there’s no place on that web site to apply for employment? If they think that sad fact is going to dissuade us, they’re sorely mistaken.
This is fair warning
I’m feeling very Amylynn-ish today about my upcoming BIRTHDAY. I want everyone to know it’s on Dec 4th – which is a 
Wednesday this year.
“Why? You ask, is that important? You’ve never mentioned your birthday before now. What gives.”
Well, it’s not because I’ll be turning 49 and can thereby really make people help me because I’m “almost 50”. Not that Amy ever falls for that. Or my kids – they never fall for that either. Instead I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. But I digress.
Camels laughing their fool heads off. We can relate.
I don’t care where you get him from but he’d better be at my office on Wednesday, December 4th. Don’t forget.
Target is not going to like this news
The National Toy Hall of Fame voted in their newest inductees. This year it’s Rubber Duck and chess. That all seems well and good until you find out what’s NOT in the 
Hall of Fame.
This year the following did NOT make the cut: bubbles, the board game Clue, Fisher-Price Little People, little green Army men, the Magic 8-Ball, My Little Pony, Nerf toys, the Pac-Man video game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the scooter.
There are online polls where the general public can vote on which toys were more important, influential, or whatever. Turns out none of the opinion polls really matter since a national selection committee of 23 “experts” get to make the ultimate decision. I personally thought that bubbles are a little more important than rubber duckies, but what do I know? I’m not toy collector, designer, or psychologist. I’m just a former kid and the mother of two of them.
So I was curious about what actually is in the Hall of Fame. Jump rope. Hula hoop. Roller skates. Go 
href=”http://www.toyhalloffame.org/toys” target=”_blank”>here to see the entire list and when they were inducted.
There are two items on the list I don’t know what to think of.
Cardboard box and Stick. They were voted in during 2005 & 2008 respectively.
Cardboard box, I’m totally in for. I’ve got great memories of forts my brother and I built out of old cooler and refrigerator boxes. I still have to sneak boxes out of the house before my kids see them.
Stick? Not so much. Is this a throw back from the Depression? What the hell? I’m taking back all the toys I bought for my kids because apparently all I need to do is go down to the Sears shipping department and the local park and they’ll have everything they ever needed.
Veteran’s Day
Thank you, Veterans, for all that you’ve done, all that you do, and everything you give.
November 8
Hey – if you have any moisture in your part of the world, would you send a little down here to the desert. Holy COW, but it’s dry here. “How dry is it?” you ask ala Johnny Carson. It’s so dry that we think we might be slowly morphing into lizards. This is not an attractive proposition. It’s also very itchy. All this scratching is troublesome. People look at you weird and we have enough trouble with that as it is.
OMG – we totally stole this.
1. Missing sheep. If you remember last week we brought up random meadows being mowed in Austria. Now there’s sheep rustling in Wool, England. Yes. The place where sheep are being stolen is named Wool. There aren’t that many times in this world were everything comes together with such symmetry, you know? This makes us very happy and comfortable, knowing that wool comes from Wool. We also suspect that the inhabitants of Wool are itchy, too. Look – we got off topic. Someone carted off 160 sheep from Wool. The people of Wool and it’s surroundings are asked to notify 
authorities if anyone offers them wool “for very low prices.” We think they should extend the APB to include a truck full of Austrian Grass following around a big truck that smells of sheep.
2. More politicians behaving badly. The mayor of Toronto was caught on video smoking crack. He refuses to resign stating, “I love my job.” He finally admitted the incident occurred “probably a year ago” when he was in a “drunken stupor.” Can you believe he thinks that excuse is the Get Out of Jail Free card? We’re keeping a very close eye on this story because if that excuse works we’re going to start using it all the time. Think of the possibilities. “I may have forgotten my children at the grocery store, but I was in a drunken stupor at the time.” or “I didn’t pay the electric 
bill, but I was in a drunken stupor.” This is going to really work out.
3. Dona Esperanza. All of us at Bank of No Forks have become addicted to the tortillas at Dona Esperanza’s. They are possibly the best thing we’ve had in our mouths in a really long time. Buttery and thin and glorious. One of us will head over to the factory and come back with dozens of them. At least two packages will be gone by the end of the day. They are the best $2.25 we’ve ever spent. The smell is heavenly and we’ll gorge ourselves on them until we’re holding our stomachs, feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve started rationing them out – we’ve eaten six of them just writing 
this blog. We’re not sure if there is a real Dona Esperanza. We feel sure that if we did meet her, we’d squeeze her very hard and never let her go.
4. More members of our tribe. We’re involved in a book festival coming soon. (More news to follow). We received an email from the committee with instructions for set up and take down that convinced us these ladies were more of our people. Like this line for example: “Please do not attempt to shove anything larger than a toy teacup Chihuahua underneath your table…” We like the specific mention of “TOY” dog. It’s like they knew we’d try to smuggle a real teacup Chihuahua into the event. Now, if there’s a couple of things you should have learned about the Sisters by now they are that we dislike being told no almost as much as we love fuzzy creatures. Now, we’re bound and 
determined to find ourselves a teacup Chihuahua before the 17th – which we’ll try to shove under the table, just to see what happens.
5. More weird stuff missing. We don’t know what’s going on out there, but now there seems to be 140,000 pounds of walnuts missing from Escalon, California. Last month someone took 12,000 pounds of nuts. The same people? What’s up with that? Who the hell needs 162,000 pounds of walnuts? Who? Maybe someone should check with the fudge makers in the area. The Sisters like walnuts but not that much. You hear that FBI/NSA? We like ’em but not that much. The Sisters didn’t take ’em. And the sheep want you to know that they didn’t either.
Christmas is 48 days away…
And I would like to have this under my tree. Hint #1.
Get your resumes ready
When I was a child people always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’m certain you were all asked this question as well. I find myself bitter because no one, no one I tell you, ever mentioned that the following are actual jobs – jobs you can get paid for, really.
Obviously this is valid proof. Obviously.
Big Foot Hunter – Granted, the Sisters do not like to go outside and we certainly don’t like to sleep outside but do you realize that there are no less than four shows on cable in which idiots run around in the woods looking for Big Foot? These people are paid for this, PAID. By all that’s holy, who better to look for a large furry animal than the Quill Sisters??? Amy and I pitched show #5 to the cable networks. Sadly, we received a rejection. It basically said – You can’t have a show since you actually think you could find Big Foot in less than a week (perhaps we shouldn’t have pointed out our extreme skill of finding pets anywhere . . . ). We’re not paying those idiots to find Big Foot, we’re paying them to injure themselves and chew tobacco while they’re looking for Big Foot – the Big Foot they’re 
never going to find because they make too much god-damn noise tromping around in the woods pretending to be hunters.
Million Dollar Shopper – this is the one that upsets me the most. WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SOMEONE TELL US THIS IS A JOB?????? How is shopping while spending other people’s money a job??? Who doesn’t want to go shopping if they have money to spend. Do it yourself, you lazy slobs. I’m glad I got that out of my system . . . Now about that job interview. The Sisters can shop with the best of them. Especially Ava. She will search the world over to find exactly what she wants and this is all made possible by the companionship of Amylynn. You can find anything if half of the team is saying something like “Great Zeus! I’m glad you insisted on visiting 160 stores to locate a dark grey
purse with silver hardware and an outside pocket because here it is! In store 160. That lazy millionaire that we’re shopping for will be so happy we’ll probably get a bonus!”
Housewives of Anywhere – How is this even a show? #1, no one wants to watch a show about housewives. Which explains #2 – they aren’t housewives! Not one woman on any of these shows cooks or cleans or housewives. Not one. Which is why we’re totally up for being paid to be on TV to “pretend” to be a housewife. We feel certain we were born to be paid to pretend to be housewives – on TV or not. In fact, we’ve been practicing our pretend housewife skills for years.
What job do you wish you’d known was a thing?