Today is Tuesday, which means that it’s Time For Beaver Talk with Aunt Becky over at Toy With Me. Today, I’m talking about songs to hump to, which is surprisingly safe for work. Totally interested in seeing what gets other people in the mood, since all I could come up with was either pop music or O! Canada.

Click the smiling beaver below to be taken away:

But for those of you who prefer not to think about me having sex, which I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND, I’ve pulled yet another one from the vault to amuse you. Or annoy you.

1. It should come as no shock to anyone who has seen me dress myself that I am actually color blind. I’ll take a moment here to let those of you who have seen my fashion sense (or lack thereof) collect yourself from the gut-busting laughter. Try not to pull a muscle, mmkay?

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Done, now?

Fuckers.

See, it’s actually pretty rare for women to be color blind as it’s an X-linked disorder (meaning both of my chromosomes must have it). I’ll avoid going into further details so that you are not forced to gnaw your arm off with boredom.

It has been the cause for many a (stupid) marital dispute over the shade of a particular color. In the end, I’ve learned to rely on Dave’s opinion (smart as that may not be) about certain shades.

My kids are going to have to get used to looking as though hobo’s have dressed them, eh?

2. I have an intense phobia of canned fruits, in spite of my unrequited love of fruits in general. There’s something about canned anything, floating happily in a goo sauce that completely freaks me out. Ditto for Jello molds.

This may be a throw back to the dissection craze of my 5th grade teacher, who, in all of her glory, decided to spend a large portion of the year showcasing the various creepy jars full of deceased animals suspended in Formalin (or the famous carcinogenic Formaldehyde, it was the 80’s, after all) to us. Now, I loves me my dissections (seriously), but seeing floating suspended baby chicks in glass jars was enough to give me nightmares.

I think this is where the phobia stems from (that, and my hippie mother would likely rather have eaten her own feces than served us something suspended in SUGAR.), but I can’t seem to shake it, EVEN IF I LIKE THE FRUIT IN QUESTION.

3. When I was in my first semester in college, I took an introductory biology class and one of the tasks that we were required to learn was all of the organ systems of the fetal pig (which are similar to the layout of a human).

While half of my class was left gagging into their Bunsen burners, I took to the task like a pig in, well, shit. The instructor insisted that we learn this inside and out (oh pun, pu-pun, pun, PUN), and suggested that we take ours home to study (due to limited laboratory time).

Well, I took it a step further and named mine. It’s the same name as my former heating pad boyfriend: Stu.

To maximize the shock value to my mother (and to ensure that the dogs did NOT have a tasty snack while I wasn’t looking), I decided to casually slip Stu into the meat drawer and then leave the house, knowing full well that she’d discover him in my absence.

She was underwhelmed.

4. Because in the academic realm, I am 110% An Annoying Overachiever, I became a TA for both Inorganic and Organic chemistry as well as a tutor for Anatomy and Physiology I and II.

It was only then that I developed a complete and total appreciation for teachers. Wow. Some of those students were not the brightest bulbs in the sconces.

5. Despite the fact that I blog like it’s going out of style (isn’t it?), I have never in my whole life written for fun. Ever. This includes journaling of any sort. Mainly because, what the fuck would I ever journal about?

In high school, I would occasionally try to write in a journal but it always ended up something like,

“I really like Shawn X. He sat next to me in Brit Lit and I swear he smiled at me. Oh, I don’t know WHAT I’ll do if he doesn’t ask me to Homecoming!”

And then I would look back on it and be embarrassed FOR myself.

6. One of the things I hate most about being a grown-up is that the older we get, the more PC we have to become. As someone who has never NOT laughed at a dick-n-fart joke, and whose all time favorite word is fuck (I actually gave it up for Lent one year DESPITE the fact that I am not Catholic. Maybe it’s better that I’m not Catholic, because I didn’t do a very good job of it.), I hate having to be all conscious of what I say in public and to other people.

I hate having to worry about offending people if I tell them what I think, and I hate offending people even when I’m not trying to. I use certain words to be humorous, not to be offensive (because I promise The Internet that if I am actively trying to offend someone, I will do so), and I hate having to censor myself in order to maintain the peace.

7. I genuinely believe that everything tastes better with bacon.

Now, here’s the catch: see, I’m supposed to tag a couple of people to do this meme, but I’m pretty sure everyone who has a blog has done it and is probably not as full of weird things to do it over and over again.

So I am tagging anyone (this means YOU! LURKER!) who reads this to give me a weird fact about themselves in the comments (use a fake name if you must). Because seriously, the comments are high-freaking-larious and might just help with poor, OH POOR Aunt Becky’s blinding headache.

Laughter IS the best medicine, after all (or so Reader’s Digest tells me, AND WHY WOULD THEY LIE TO ME?).

Now, you’re saying, Internet, because you are not only devastatingly handsome but ALSO witty and brilliant, which hardly seems fair, Aunt Becky, you haven’t had a good breakup in years. And you’d be right.

Sort of.

You see, I’ve been suffering in silence, my friends in the computer, not wanting to spill my pain onto your pixilated screen until I was ready to fully admit the truth to myself. Always the hardest to admit these things to yourself.

But it’s time. Brace yourselves.

I, (deep breath) have broken up with my old friend, my old BEST friend, my standby delicious zero-calorie nectar of the gods soft drink, Diet Coke.

I know. I KNOW.

Be still my heart, for it still flippity-flops in my chest so when I think of it.

While The Daver performs a merry victory dance on the grave of our failed relationship I am stuck screaming at the universe, flailing my hands at the heavens screaming “WHY GOD?” at the sky to no avail. No one hears my cries. No one responds.

And I am alone. Utterly alone.

Surrounded by my three children, loving (disease-man-cold-ridden) husband, two dogs, two cats, bunny and 57 orchids yet completely alone. I cry.

Alone.

My heart is black. Like my coffee. (except my coffee has skim milk and equal. well, fake equal, but black sounded better, like more dramatic and stuff)

And I am alone. Heartbroken.

So good-bye, sweet friend. I will always, always *sniff* love you. I am so, so sorry that the wretched beast Topamax has come between us, making your sweet caramel colored deliciousness taste remarkably like battery acid.

Now go, JUST GO. GO BE WITH SOME OTHER WOMAN (or sassy man) WHO WILL LOVE, HONOR AND CHERISH YOU like I am no longer able to.

1) Elvis, “Always On My Mind.”

Now, my parents let me teethe on “The Wall” and The Dead, so it goes without saying that we rarely listened to Elvis in my household growing up. But once I heard him on the oldies station, I was hooked. The first trip that The Daver and I took was down to Memphis, actually, and we fully intend to go back with the crotch parasites once they’re old enough to not make us insane in the car.

Anyway.

When he sings, “Maybe I didn’t love you quite as often as I could have,” I get shivers and then he crescendos into “You were always on my mind” and the tears start. They never really erupt into full-blown sobs, but the lump in my throat persists.

Because who hasn’t taken someone they love for granted?

(mental note: tell The Daver I love him)

Hey, The Daver, I love you.

2) Elvis Costello, “Good Year For The Roses.”

I never really got into Elvis Costello when all of the emo kids did, probably because I was never really emo. Although, under the spell of some particularly strong dilating solution, I did pick out–and woefully purchase–some emo glasses. The other group of people who were into Mr. Costello were the Really Smart People; a club that I am clearly not a member of.

I don’t remember the first time I heard it, but I remember feeling like the air had been sucked out of the room when he sang, “But at least you thought you wanted it, that’s so much more than I can say for me.”

If you’ve ever been in a committed relationship where someone else broke that commitment (one way or another) those simple looking words, really just drive that home. The song is heartbreaking, if you’ve been there, or if you imagine you’ve been there, and it’s worth a download or a listen.

ALSO, if you have roses? You can do like I do and casually remark to your spouse, “Hey, it’s a good year for the roses.” And then snicker.

I am a very Simple Person.

3) The Cure, “Pictures of You.”

Say what you will about the goths, but they certainly know how to feel things (wait, isn’t that a staple of the emo kids too? WAIT, ARE THE EMO KIDS AND GOTH KIDS THE SAME? I am so confused)(and obviously ill-informed) and no one knows how to feel things and sing about them then Robert Smith of The Cure.

Well before you had Twilight, you had this, “You were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold, you were always so lost in the dark,” and you just knew he meant it. It even made someone as un-goth as me kind of yearn to shop at Hot Topic.

For a second.

But the song is haunting and it’s true and it’s absolutely a great breakup song.

4) Guns ‘n’ Roses “November Rain.”

Now it will either come as a dreadful shock or explain EVERYTHING when I share with you that most of my dearest friends are metal heads. Hair metal, especially the more commercial stuff, is the stuff I cut my proverbial milk teeth on and listening to it is like being transported back to high school.

While I never had big hair (I am a child of the 90’s), and the 80’s were something that saw me in grades measured in the single digits, in high school, we listened to hair metal like we’d discovered it ourselves. Which, we had. I even moonlighted occasionally on my friend Scottie’s metal radio show–Midnight Metal Madness.

I do feel I must tell you that I never actually listened to November Rain while mourning a break-up, but knowing that I could have is good enough for me. In fact, what I did sob post-break up while listening to were both Don’t Cry 1 AND Don’t Cry 2, but November Rain has such a fucking awesome guitar solo (marry me, Slash?) that I cannot ignore it.

5) Damien Rice, “Delicate”

This song is pretty much the opposite of hair metal in every way you can imagine: it’s like a guy in a coffee house singing the hell out a song and it’s good because you know he means the shit out of it. He’s kind of Jeff Buckley-ish but Irish. And, um, alive.

I think this song is probably best to listen to if you’re feeling especially duped by someone. Toward the end he climaxes (cue Bevis-like laughter) with this:

“And why’d you fill my sorrows
With the words you’ve borrowed
From the only place that you’ve known
Why’d you sing Hallelujah
If it means nothing to you”

And it’s perfect.

It’s worth a listen.

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Your turn, Internet. Breakup songs. I want your favorites.

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Be sure to cast your vote for your favorite entry in “Aunt Becky Travels The World And Does Stuff.”

Voting ends on the 15th of September.

It’s been kind of a heavy week here, on Mommy Wants Cocaine Vodka, and I was going to peck out the story of how The Daver and I met, but I think that’s better suited to a day when I don’t have to be up and down and around and out like a chimp on meth. (notice I said CHIMP, not CHUMP)

No, I think today is a day for fluff. So I am going to bring out an old favorite: Love Songs That Make Me…A Little Gushy.

Dave Matthews Band, “Crush”

Now, I’ve always mocked DMB, not because they didn’t have talent, because they do, but because it was always the favorite choice of rich hippie frat boys who wore pukka shell necklaces and deliberately distressed Abercrombie and Fitch shorts. And they’d always call their band “Dave” as in “have you seen the new DAVE album?”

See, now, that sense of imposed familiarity has always annoyed Your Aunt Becky*, but undeniably the song “Crush” is one of the best love songs ever written. Somehow, the guy who looks like a middle-school teacher that routinely got all sorts of panties thrown at him, somehow he captured that feeling of falling in love.

“It’s crazy, I’m thinking, just knowing that the world is round.

And here, I’m dancing on the ground.

Am I right side up or upside down, and is this real, or am I dreaming?”

I’m deeply resentful of the fact that not only do I love, love, love this song, I would probably marry it. I exact my revenge upon him by imagining him as the retarded savant he played on House, MD.

I’m sure he’s weeping into his millions of dollars and teenage panty pile.

Ray Charles & Van Morrison “Crazy Love”

Several weeks before my wedding, I begged Dave to change Our Song from Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” to this song, which combined two of my favorite voices. Van Morrison has one of those voices that seems to coat me in honey and make me warm and fuzzy inside, no matter how shitty a mood I’m in.

(this is also how Johnny Cash makes me feel)

If you like him I beg, no, I INSIST that you go to iTunes and download his version of “Comfortably Numb” with Roger Waters. It’s.breathtaking. No, I mean, it, like you’ll be unable to breathe, it’s so good.

When he sings, “And the Heavens open every time she smiles,” in “Crazy Love” it never feels to give me pee shivers and goosebumps. In a GOOD way, not like an “I’m scared for my life of this clown with an Uzi in front of me.”

Elton John, “The Way You Look Tonight.”

Now, he’s made his career out of singing sappy love songs, and his catalog either makes me swoon or roll my eyes depending on which one I’m listening to (“butterflies are free to fly, FLY AWAY, HIGH AWAY?” BLECH). But this one, this one makes me just melty inside.

(unrelatedly, I think “The Bitch Is Back” is exquisite)

BONUS!!

The one you can mock me mercilessly for, because the song is seriously Full of The Lame and The Corny:

Bon Jovi’s “Always.”

This song came out when I was dating my first boyfriend, back sometime around 1994, and I was entranced.

This was uncharacteristically bad taste for me, whose first albums purchased from Columbia Record Company (buy 4, get like 13 free) included, The Red Hot Chili Peppers album Blood Sugar Sex Magik (arguably their best album, um, EVER), Pearl Jam’s Ten and Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK.

All albums I still listen to.

But there it was, cheesy ass-rock from a guy who spent more time in front of the mirror than a 14 year old girl, and I loved it. I STILL love it, although not because it’s the kind of song that gets a girl in the mood or anything, but because it’s just…awesomely bad.

SUPER BONUS OVERACHIEVER SONG!!

Rod Stewart’s “You’re In My Heart.”

Okay, I know, I KNOW, you’re snickering, I can hear it, people. I have bionic hearing and I can hear your snorts from even here. Rod Stewart is The King of Cheese, I know, and his songs mostly suck, and he’s like eleventy-niner hundred years old.

I DON’T CARE.

“You’re In My Heart” is one of the awesomest love songs ever written. And when I told Daver as much, I swear he looked around for my Depends and my Geritol and then insisted upon seeing my driver’s license. Perhaps he was making sure my AARP card wasn’t expired or something.

It wasn’t.

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Your turn. What love songs make you swoon and get mushy inside? The more shameful, the better.

OH! And I’m going to try and respond to you in the comments, because I’m not awesome about emailing everyone as they comment. So yeah, I’ll be IN THE COMMENTS. STALKING YOU.

*get it!?!