Nutless A**Munchers

A Window Into My Home, Part 10

2008-08-28T22:58:00.002-04:00

Guy #1 (reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to our son for the seven billionth time)(in a fake WW2 movie German accent): On Sunday, he blitzkrieged through vun nice green leaf, and felt much better. Now he is not hungry anymore, und he is not a little caterpillar either. No! He vas UND GROSSE CATERPILLAR! He build a small house, called the Maginot Line, around himself. He vaited two veeks, bombed his vay out, und he vas a beautiful industrialist!

A Window Into My Home, Part 9

2008-07-03T15:31:00.002-04:00

Guy #1: Remember when your pregnancy snoring drove me to the couch?

Me: Yeah. I felt really bad about that. That's why when my snoring woke me up, I tried to go to the couch.

Guy #1: Wasn't having my pregnant wife sleeping on the couch.

Me: But I didn't mind! It was actually more comfortable than the bed!

Guy #1: Well, if I had known this key piece of information at the time...

Me: Um, honey, you did. I told you it was more comfortable when you came to get me.

Guy #1: Oh, well, it just sounded like the kind of bullshit you'd say to make me feel better.

Another Window Into My Home

2007-10-25T21:27:00.000-04:00

Me: You're going to have such great conversations with our son.

Guy #1: What do you mean?

Me: I'm not going to be the one having the porn talk.

Guy #1: "Son, girls don't really like to do that unless you pay them."

Me: Oh, I meant the anime porn. "Son, ever since we bombed Japan, they've been a little messed up."

Guy #1: Did Guy #3 not grieflink you with The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife?

Me: No. I don't click his links anymore.

Guy #1: (sends the link)

Me: Holy smokes!

Guy #1: So don't blame the bombs. Blame the British.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 23

2007-07-10T09:12:00.000-04:00

Me: But you couldn't CALL it "Hustler Online." The great thing about a title like Everquest or Warcraft is that millions of spouses all over the world nod their heads and smile because things aren't obvious. A name like Hustler gives it away.

Guy #1: Leave It To Beaver Online.

Guy #3: "Dear, you were a little hard on the Beaver last night."

Also, Read This

2007-07-05T10:07:00.001-04:00

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/07/l33t-justice.html

Faster Than Telling Y'all One By One

2007-07-05T09:10:00.000-04:00

Me (11:47:42 PM): So, there we are at the ultimate small town America fireworks display. It's ten minutes longer than the DC Mall show. There are hot dogs, Good Humor trucks sponsored by the Lions Club, and a high school girl singing the National Anthem

Me (11:48:09 PM): Only, they've aimed the mortars badly this year, and the entire crowd keeps getting peppered with burning cardboard

Guy #2 (11:48:20 PM): That sounds awesome!

Me (11:48:26 PM): (Friend) gets one fragment in her hair

Guy #2 (11:48:27 PM): I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not.

Me (11:48:44 PM): My sister in law and I both got smacked with giant chunks

Guy #2 (11:48:48 PM): OK if people I know are wounded, it's no longer awesome.

Me (11:49:17 PM): But it's pretty good, still, even up to the point where a grass fire starts next to (other friend)

Me (11:49:25 PM): Bear in mind it rained all afternoon

Me (11:49:33 PM): They had to TRY to get a fire going.

Me (11:49:45 PM): It was a big mortar fragment.

Me (11:50:02 PM): But still, I just put up my umbrella and enjoyed the finale

Me (11:50:06 PM): Which went well

Guy #2 (11:50:02 PM): Didn't anyone notice the flaming debris falling from the sky?

Me (11:50:20 PM): Yeah, but the show didn't stop for whatever reason

Me (11:50:27 PM): But wait, there's more

Me (11:50:34 PM): The last bank of mortars is going

Me (11:50:50 PM): And they'd been doing ground level fountains all night

Me (11:51:11 PM): Then one went off and I thought, fuck, that wasn't a fountain, that one was a half sphere

Me (11:51:19 PM): It was one of the big ones exploding on the ground

Me (11:51:23 PM): Which set off two more

Me (11:51:28 PM): That went into the crowd

Me (11:51:46 PM): Seven injured, only two seriously

Me (11:51:57 PM): They got helicoptered out

Guy #2 (11:52:11 PM): Youch.

Me (11:52:30 PM): I always thought if I were in the front row for something, I'd take pictures and send them to the TV stations

Me (11:52:34 PM): Only I couldn't.

Me (11:52:45 PM): It was a grandmother and a little boy.

Me (11:53:05 PM): We just decided we could let other people rubberneck, and we got the hell away.

Me (11:53:23 PM): Being SHELLED is not as fun as it looks on CNN!

Guy #2 (11:53:34 PM): Well, yes, there's a reason armies use mortars!

Me (11:53:59 PM): The concussion wave does more damage than the burning bits, apparently.

Guy #2 (11:53:59 PM): That sounds criminally negligent.

Me (11:54:16 PM): We'd been going and sitting there for years

Me (11:54:52 PM): We'd never seen fragments at all, it all fell on the soccer field they don't let people sit on.

Me (11:55:33 PM): The only thing I can think of is that the storms caused them to cover the setup with tarps, and removing the tarps fubared their angles

Me (11:56:22 PM): So, the takeaway - I cannot believe we shoot mortars at Iraqi women and children, and I think (friend) is never going to go with me to fireworks again :P

Guy #2 (11:56:49 PM): Well, to be fair the Iraqis shoot a lot more mortars at us now

Me (11:57:22 PM): We don't have civilians in Iraq.

Me (11:57:23 PM): Well

Me (11:57:24 PM): we do

Me (11:57:29 PM): but they're paid to be there

Me (11:58:04 PM): the only American toddler maimed by mortar fire tonight was in Vienna.

Me (11:58:50 PM): VIENNA.

Me (11:59:26 PM): The main street is called MAPLE AVENUE. There's a car show before the volunteer band plays consisting of seven old white guys and their cool cars.

Me (11:59:53 PM): There's a committee that sticks flags on everyone's mailbox.

Me (12:00:10 AM): Norman Rockwell fled this place because the diabetes was gonna kill him.

Guy #2 (12:01:19 AM): explosives can hurt you!

Me (12:01:49 AM): This show is going to get sued out of existence

Me (12:02:07 AM): Vienna is where lawyers go to raise children.

Me (12:03:37 AM): Oh, but there will be lawsuits:
http://www.nbc4.com/news/13622975/detail.html?dl=mainclick#

Me (12:05:02 AM): mutter

Me (12:05:29 AM): so what'd you do for the 4th?

Guy #2 (12:05:50 AM): nothing nearly that exciting!

Edit to add: Washington Post update

Tech Support

2007-06-10T19:06:00.000-04:00

I often call Tech Support, aka Guy #2, who lives in Texas, whenever I have computer troubles. (I tend to fix my expensive hardware with an assortment of techniques such as The Whack, The Wire Jiggle, The Three Fingered Salute, and occasionally The Stream of Profanity. These things almost always work. I recently expanded my repetoire to include Updating Four Year Old Video Drivers and Typing Error Messages Into Google.) Doing phone support for your semi-literate friend is no picnic, I admit. The conversation includes a lot of riffing through submenus and desperate attempts at remembering old passwords.

The only thing worse than old passwords are old people. Specifically, old people to whom you are related, people you love and do not wish to upset. You cannot get frustrated, because you will fluster them and you'll have to start over. You cannot use new-fangled terms such as "USB," lest you cause their brains to reset. You find yourself saying "thingy" a lot.

This is an actual conversation I had today, with beloved old people located two time zones away:

Old person (using speaker phone): My book isn't working. You said if I went to My Computer I could click on the blue book, only, I don't see it.

Me: Wha?

OP: My picture box. I got the one you said last year, only it's been in a moving box.

Me: OH, the external hard drive. Why do you call it a book?

OP: That's what it said on the box.

Me: Okay. Well, what is it called?

OP: It's Western Digital. You told me!

Me: No problem. Okay. Click on "My Computer" and tell me what you see.

OP: (reads aloud the list of icons, none of which are a blue WD icon)

Me: Okay, look at the book. Is there a light on?

OP: Yes.

Me: Okay, good! That means you've got it plugged in right!

OP: Yay!

Me: There should be two cables coming out of it.

OP: Okay.

Me: Now, is the USB cable seated snugly on the back? And is it plugged into the computer tightly?

OP: I don't know.

Me: Take a look.

(Long pause while old person who cannot get onto her knees summons her slightly more flexible mate. Mate crawls behind desk and announces that the cable is plugged in.)

OP: It's plugged in.

Me: Okaaaaay. This is going to sound silly, but try unplugging the USB cable and plugging it into a different USB port.

OP: What's a USB cable?

Me (successfully does not wail in frustration): Look at the end of the cable; the bit that goes into your computer is kind of flat. All one piece, not pronged like a power plug.

(Long pause while able bodied mate crawls back under the desk. He announces that the cable has two prongs in the end.)

OP: It's got two prongs.

Me (still not yelling, but closing eyes. My own mate is laughing hysterically. HIS old person refuses to use computers): Mom, I want you to pick up the book. How many wires are coming out of the back?

(Long pause.)

OP: One!

Me: You need to find your USB cable. Your book needs two wires, one for power and one for information. You don't have the one for information hooked up.

OP: What's it look like?

Me (wondering how the hell I describe a USB cable without using the words "USB" or "cable"): Look on the back of the book and tell me exactly what you see. Describe the two holes.

OP: One is sort of square. The other one has something round plugged into it.

Me: You're looking for a plastic coated wire that has a square end, only, it's an outie, not an innie.

(OP hangs up, because the search is going to take awhile.)

(Phone rings.)

OP (still on speaker): We found it!

Me: That's awesome, Mom. You put the square end in the square hole, and if you look on the back of the computer, you'll find a flat hole that matches the other end.

(Long pause while this wisdom is repeated to the person on the floor, who can hear me. However, he has been married to the OP for thirty five years and no longer seems to notice anything bizarre. He follows the instructions.)

OP: It worked! The blue book popped up on My Computer!

(General rejoicing.)

OP: Our wireless network doesn't work any more.

Me: I know a guy in Texas...

Tweety Was Just Ahead of Her Time

2007-06-07T23:58:00.000-04:00

No shit.

Snicker.

2007-05-30T15:48:00.001-04:00

Me: So (famous company) finally called, I interview either Friday or Tuesday.

Guy #3: Need to borrow my Ocelot costume?

In The Kitchen

2007-05-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

Me: First the party and all these people. Then (departed programmer friend and wife). Then (favorite bossfriend ever) walked in and shocked me out of my socks. And then GUY #2!

Guest #1: And then Jesus came in at midnight!

Guest #2: Oh, good, I didn't miss the rapture.

My Fortune Cookie

2007-05-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

No shit, this really was my fortune:

"New and rewarding opportunities will soon develop for you."

Beagle Watch: Day 6

2007-02-03T09:58:00.000-05:00

I swore that if the Auxiliary Beagle was still eating turds after one week, I would go ahead and google "shit eating" and damn the consequences.

Please, god, make her stop eating turds.

Status Report:

2007-02-01T00:10:00.000-05:00

I am watching American Idol, mainly, and trying to finish a baby quilt for a baby that is probably going to college soon because it has been THAT LONG since I started it.

This is exactly the sort of blog post I swore I'd never make.

It is much shorter than the three hundred OTHER blog posts I swore I would never make, however. For example, the temptation to upload the metric ass ton of photos I took on our vacation in October is high. I also want to rant about interest rates, mortgage lenders, and people who go behind their agent's back to accept crappy offers on my dream house instead of our much better offer.

But the winner of the "blog post I should not make" contest is, without a doubt, a long and rambling discussion of the Auxiliary Beagle's latest trick of eating frozen dog turds. She chomps on these damn things the way someone recently enrolled in Weight Watchers snarfs the frozen grapes, all icy crunches and wriggles of delight. Then she comes inside, and as she warms up, her breath grows more and more rancid. Occasionally she belches *and* farts, and it's like a nuke exploding under your computer desk - first the shock wave knocks you down, and eventually the radiation poisons you.

We don't know why she's doing this! We feed her! We feed her fancy kibble, because we've tried four brands and this is the only variety that her royal highness will consent to eat. We feed her twice a day, we keep the water dish full, she takes heartworm pills and doggy vitamins, and she even gets a daily dog biscuit stuffed into a liver pate-filled kong toy.

The Primary Beagle has given us her share of troubles when it comes to chowing down on inappropriate things, of course. SHE can unscrew the lid of a one pound jar of peanuts, which, incidentally, do not break down in a beagle digestive tract during their journey back into the sun. SHE once ate a half pound of Halls Drops without removing the paper wrappers from each treat. The resulting diarrhea was remarkable, in that the next morning when I went to rent the steam cleaner, the clerk remarked that I should have known the dog'd get the runs because "them things is made o' Kay-roh Seerup, and everybody knowd that Kay-roh Seerup is what you give a baby when she be constipated." The Primary Beagle used to eat wooden pencils, for heaven's sake.

Mainly the Primary Beagle taught me that an ounce of dog-proofing is worth a pound of panicked phone calls to the emergency vet hotline. So the house is thoroughly safe. Food is kept high, or in cabinets. Nothing troublesome lurks on the floor. We're cautious people inside our home. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that dog-proofing would mean removing dog turds from the yard outside, lest they become some sort of kibbly apertif.

But that blog post would be disgusting. So I'll just post about how I am yet again injecting the sweet, sweet crack that is American Idol while I try to finish this baby blanket.

Self-Editing

2007-01-24T22:09:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite people, who still loves me despite the fact that I have not completed an entire conversation with him more than once in six months, nudged me today about this poor blog. Without being updated in six months, it would have made perfect sense for Blogger to delete it.

And even though I haven't wanted to write in it for six months, I don't want it to be gone. I always reserve the right to change my mind. But I'm in a strange place, mentally.

I have been writing for public consumption for ten years now. Mostly, it's been fun. Sometimes, it has been the nadir of a trough in a vomitorium since converted to an outhouse. But mostly, it's been fun. I wouldn't take any of it back, either, and I include the time I suggested that someone in the industry (who got her job through nepotism) smelled like tuna fish. I'm sorry I said that, but I wouldn't take it back.

The reason I can say I have no regrets is because I've never posted anything without thinking about the consequences. Yes, even the nutless rant. At the time, I was not aware of HOW GINORMOUS the consequences would be. This is because at the time, I didn't realize how big the internet was. My world online was a small world and everyone knew everyone else. And my experience was with print. The only reason my newspaper articles exist anywhere at all is because I saved a few copies for my clips file. I had no clue that every word I committed to cyberspace would never die.

Despite all that, I still thought about the consequences before I hit post on that first rant, on the old Emarr EZBoard. I was (reasonably) sober, (mostly) awake, and while still angry, I was no longer burning with the white hot fury that inspired me in the first place. That first rant was edited. Yes, Virginia, I edited my rant. I varied the swearing, I punched up the similes, cleaned up the grammar, and rearranged it so the flow would pick up until it climaxed in an incoherent Learylike howl of id.

You might remember that I admitted outright that I deserved to lose my job over the incident. That is because I knew it might happen when I hit post, and accepted that. I had intentionally written the rant to entertain, as well as to vent some outrage.

My point is that contrary to appearances, I have almost never in my life written something without having some idea as to the effect my words could have on other people. Anyone who writes well enough to have readers will agree with me.

This blog came into being so I could write about things that moved me, things that infuriated me, and as a repository for the funny shit my friends say at lunch. This blog didn't come into being so I could immortalize the material that would have miserable consequences. It also didn't come into being so I could bore everyone with my life.

When I started to slow down the posting, it was because the thing I most wanted to rant about was a family thing. I've intentionally not shared this link with many people, but it's still public. The thing I wanted to post hit the trifecta of themes from hell: Religion, family, and childhood drama. I believe that my opinion was right, that the other party was not just wrong but delusional, and moreover the anecdote was the funniest damned thing since a cream pie to face. I also believed that posting it would be the kind of thing that would make a future relationship impossible.

It seemed like the rest of the summer had drama with the same cast. Every time, I said to myself, fuck, you know, I don't care if I never talk to these people again. I might as well entertain my friends with the story on the blog. And I started to! I am not a particularly good person! The saved post is somewhere in the editing window. I just never flipped the flag. The internet is not a twelve year old's diary even if all the thirty year olds treat it that way.

And then, of course, came the cataclysm at work. I try to type about it, but I backspace so many times that I usually give up and wander away for a snack. Everything I write is either a lie, a partial truth, an expression of frustration that the ignorant would invest with too much meaning, or in some cases legally actionable. Also, I have a hard time being a hypocrite even if it is a survival skill in some quarters. Some of the blog posts that I have written are the kinds of things that I, were I to find them on coworker blogs, would try to get the author fired over. Therefore, I refuse to post them.

Finally, there's a whole half of my life aside from the stupid drama with family and work, and that half is pretty awesome. I mean that in the exact sense you did when you said "Awesome!" back when you were ten. Like you can't hold back the grin, and the only way you could be happier would be if you actually got a ten speed bike for your birthday. It isn't perfect; there are tears and storms and sometimes there's fear of what the future holds. Sometimes it's up until two in the morning and then wailed out in instant messenger to someone in Seattle.

But what the hell is the point of blog if you're not going to be honest? If I won't post the angry things, and I can't post the work things, what's left? I'll tell you what's left. A fucking Christmas letter.

Some people write them pretty well, but I am not one of those people. If you got one of my Christmas cards before my fruit fly-like attention span expired and I wandered away from the stack, you got a short little note regarding your family or my general and abiding affection for you. (If you did not get a card, it's in a pile near where I keep the stamps. I'm not even going to pretend that you'll get it any time soon - I have addressed, unsent cards dating back to 1997.) What you did not get was a Christmas letter.

Holy crap, I have a great idea for a blog entry.

You Know You Are In a Strange Place When

2006-07-19T16:09:00.000-04:00

I've just arrived in San Diego for Comic Con. While I waited for my suitcase at the baggage claim, I saw a man dressed in full pirate regalia stride by. And I do mean full regalia, from his patched shirt to his deck sandals to his long, curly hair and beard topped with a pirate hat. He even carried a pirate chest up on his shoulder, a malevolent thing of black leather and metals studs. A mysterious name was scrawled in smeared ink on the lid. He strode through the area with a slight roll to his gait. He might as well have been at sea, carrying his ill-gotten gains to the ship's hold. I smelled the sea air in his wake, and smiled to be among real roleplayers once more.

A few minutes afterwards, the same pirate came back to the claim area, set down the chest, and picked up... an identical black leather, metal studded pirate chest, with a different name on it.

And you thought you had problems picking YOUR luggage out of the crowd.

We Interrupt This Bout Of Self-Pity, Obscenity, and Semantical Chicken To Bring You the News

2006-07-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

It's been an interesting week, what with learning contract law, missing Pete Best, looting my boss' office like a drunken beadcatcher from New Orleans, and so on. I decided to watch the Daily Show. After that I headed to the computer and pulled up some old friends I hadn't talked to since the weekend.

Hey, um, listen, I don't want to be a buzzkill, but World War Three appears to be kicking off.

The WaPost has some creepy pictures of Lebanon burning, while CNN has the headline "Major Escalation" on the main page with pictures of refugees fleeing their countries. The NY Times, bless her Gray heart, refers to the rising street violence in Egypt as "pressure."

Er... does this mean I don't have to learn contract law?

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 22

2006-07-13T17:17:00.000-04:00

(Heated discussion of what constitutes an "invention," followed by speculation over a particular common acquaintance, now in progress.)

Guy #3: What did [Very Self Important Person] ever invent?

Guy #4: (in funny voice) "The question mark."

Me: (Obscene tongue gesture in the shape of a question mark, combined with obscene hand gestures indicating that the curve was applied to a pair of very sensitive male bits, and the dot shoved where the sun does not shine.)

Guy #1: Oh, and then [Very Actually Important Person] says "Talk to me in SPANISH."

(General laughter, immediate recognition of the Spanish double punctuation:

¿?)

Guy #1: (in girly voice) AY DIOS MIO!

We Fear Change

2006-07-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

That started as an observation that everyone thought was a joke, on the ur-blog. Back before all you crazy kids even called it blogging. Back then it was ranting. Back before ranting was something every loser with net access and three cusswords could do. Oh, that was a long time ago.

But this is not nostaglia. I wear no rose colored glasses for that time. That was back before I knew that the net's false faces are worse than the real ones, before I understood what false intimacy was, before it all began for me online. I was a disaster waiting to happen and almost did. And that's aside from the squalor and the misery I enjoyed offline!

So I don't wish for a return to the way things used to be, back when I believed that happy endings were inevitable. They are no such thing. You earn your happy ending, and when you have one, you guard it fierce and close like a sparrow with a nest on a mailbox.

I don't wish for a return to the days between now and then. There was a lot of happiness in between, but there were signs even then. I would not go back in time to see those signs, and, in pointing out the potential disasters, cut short the laughing.

I don't even wish for the things happening now to happen any other way. All the miserable things of the past led to this now - my home, my husband, my life. Who knows what awful present tense is paving the way for some future joy?

But I fear change. I hate it while it's happening to me. It disrupts all the security on which I need to build my best days. And this year has had too fucking much. Wake me up when it's over, and call me when the band is back together.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 21

2006-06-15T14:40:00.000-04:00

(Discussion of horror movies in progress. The focus is on the sheer amount of nudity in these things, blurring the line - to a casual observer - between violence and porn.)

Me: I can see the problem. Seems like every time I pass through the living room while he's got a movie on, there's breasts.

Guy #1: But I'm drawing. I'm not actually watching, I'm listening and looking up when there's a sound.

Guy #3: The nudity draws the mass murderer to the area.

Guy #1: Titties don't make a sound like axes do.

You Know You Wanna

2006-06-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

http://www.balloonmolecules.com/Html/Galerie_vor.htm

Tastes Like Christian

2006-05-31T11:04:00.000-04:00

From the always-insightful Daily Dish: The Left Behind Game, RP Style

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 20

2006-05-27T20:43:00.000-04:00

Me: I read somewhere that the difference between art and porn is the name of the person paying the modeling fee.

(Pause)

Guy #3: Well, and whether the model is taking it up the ass.

A Window Into My Home, Part 7

2006-05-23T17:23:00.000-04:00

I took down our American flag so the mate could clean the vinyl siding. It's the sort of flag that came in a kit consisting of a huge printed flag, a bracket, three screws, two sections of pole that click together, and a gold colored plastic end cap shaped like a bald eagle in flight.

I bought it in a fit of frustration over how all the good symbols have been co-opted by religious and political thugs no more fit to run a country than is my beagle. I decided that the assholes could have Jesus and motherhood (for the time being, anyway), but I was taking back the flag and marching band music.

This sudden burst of liberal Democratic pride did not extend to a fifty dollar flag set, hence the twenty dollar aluminum pole with plastic eagle endcap was what I took down to clear the way for my industrious better half.

The flag still looked new, but alas! The endcap had not fared so well. I said to my husband, "Oh, no. Half the bird is gone."

He gave it a quick glance, and without missing a beat, he replied, "But you should feel good about it, honey - now he's left wing."

Mahna Mahna!

2006-04-20T10:56:00.000-04:00

My childhood, in link format.

I'm putting this link here so we can all check it FROM HOME. From HOME, people. Using our work bandwidth is VERY BAD and you will get YELLED AT.

Um, the four of you who don't work where I do can go crazy, though.

Take THAT, Creationist Boobs

2006-04-06T10:42:00.000-04:00

The missing link!

(You don't want to sign up for the New York Times? Sigh. Fine. It's a fish with bones in its fins, bones that are clearly the beginnings of paws. It kind of looks like a proto-crocodile. But it's absolutely, no question, still a fish.)

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 19

2006-03-28T13:54:00.000-05:00

Guy #1: You know they made a porn movie with Daleks. The story has something to do with kidnapping naked Eastern European women.

Me: A) That is so wrong. B) Why do you know this?

Guy #1: I downloaded the trailer. It was on one of my horror movie sites.

Guy #4, Me, Office Nazi: Because it's horrible?

Guy #4: Well, one of the Daleks attachments was a sucker arm.

Guy #1: EXSPERMINATE!

(General laughter)

Office Nazi: I've got to figure out how to blog this.

Guy #1: "Don't Eavesdrop On My..."

Me: That's my line! I'm not even going to try and make this entry make sense.

Guy #4: I'm going to get home, and (Chick #2) is going to ask how lunch was.

Entire group: EXSPERMINATE!

ROFL

2006-03-21T11:50:00.000-05:00

Ahahahahahahahaha!

Notes From The Wars

2006-03-11T10:59:00.000-05:00

Link: Mommy Wars

Because someone at the WaPo is bored this week, a new blog started up with the intention of starting a ginormous fight between women with paying jobs and women who stay at home. Predictably, the thread degenerated almost immediately. Towards the end, I posted something I should have saved for my blog, because the thread had grown too long. Here's my two cents:

These "wars" are what they are because no one is actually listening to each other. And the way everyone frames their points says more about their mindsets than the points themselves. For example:

"I made the biggest sacrifice" - did you ever wonder why YOU had to be the one making the sacrifice and not your husband? If you did, and it was you because you made less money, did you ever wonder why it's almost always the woman making less money?

"I never get a moment to myself as a SAHM" - did you ever wonder why that is? If taking care of your kids is a job, and no one's saying it isn't, why DON'T you have a systemized plan for time off, breaks, trips to the bathroom? Did it just not occur to you that you were entitled to same?

"My husband doesn't have to do chores because he makes the money and I keep the home" - a lovely arrangment, I'm sure, when there are only two people in the house. Kids seem to exponentially increase housekeeping needs - dirt, food, laundry - and yet the chores stay divided between the two adults. Why is that? Why does the breadwinner's time at work remain stable over time, but the number of hours required to complete a laundry cycle increases over time as the clothes get bigger and dirtier?

"Day care sucks up half my paycheck" - why is it YOUR paycheck that you're thinking of that is paying for the daycare? Men have children, too. His paycheck is also paying for daycare. Why aren't you framing the point as a percentage of family income?

"You have no room to complain because XYZ was a personal choice" - why do you assume it was a choice at all? If I stay home with a handicapped child who needs all of my resources, was that a choice? If I have a major case of PPD that miraculously seems to clear up the day I go back to my paying job, was that a choice? If you pull back far enough, getting up in the morning is a CHOICE, but I don't know if you can call it a choice when the alternatives are all horrible.

"I can do what I do because my husband helps" - have you ever flipped that around and said, "He does what he does because I help"? Sounds kind of dismissive, doesn't it? Almost trivializes the contribution?

Call it semantics if you want to, but we're just going to chase our tails until we're all using the same terms, and choosing only those that mean exactly what we're thinking.

Politically Incorrect

2006-03-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

Interesting case.

On one hand - I agree. I know a couple dudes in this spot. She said don't use birth control, it's safe, she gets pregnant, she says you don't need to pay anything, I don't want you in my life... and then boom, his wages are getting garnished even though, true to her word, she doesn't want him in her life. Or her son's.

It's really, really fucked up.

On the other hand - men CAN skip out. Women can't. If they don't believe in abortion, they have to carry the baby, give birth to the baby. And then they have to raise a baby they weren't prepared to raise OR give it up. Both (all three?) are life-altering decisions, and I've seen friends go all possible ways on this one. No matter what the choice, the scars never fade.

It's really, really fucked up.

Oh, but you know what the fundies say? Just don't have sex! Nice girls don't without a ring, don't you know! Though that's not true and never was true and never will be true no matter how many Bible-thumping assholes try to claim otherwise. Girls were virgins when they got married back when they got married at fifteen, and even then "eight month miracles" weren't terribly rare. In societies where you're not supposed to do it without the wedding ring, women suffer horribly (see also religious extremist Middle Eastern societies) and men get a free pass. It's not like getting pregnant with a ring is any guarantee the man won't leave.

It's really, really fucked up.

But what about teaching kids that both the boys AND the girls have equal responsibilities? If she says she's on the pill, wear a condom. If he says the condom hasn't been in his wallet since his dad punched him on the shoulder and handed it over five years ago, whip out the spermicidal jelly.

LEGALIZE THE FUCKING MORNING AFTER PILL AND MAKE IT SO WIDELY ACCESSIBLE THAT WE DON'T NEED TO BE RUINING EACH OTHER'S LIVES AND THE LIVES OF CHILDREN OVER BAD JUDGMENT AND POOR IMPULSE CONTROL.

I can't feel too sorry for the schlub in the court case. He should have worn a condom anyway - what about disease, for crying out loud? But an eighteen year sentence is more than crack dealers and armed robbers get. He's just an idiot.

So is she.

You Cannot Copyright An Idea

2006-03-06T14:38:00.000-05:00

I'm watching the Dan Brown case with great interest. When I started writing with an eye towards getting paid, I found myself paying attention to "intellectual property" discussions.

Some things were no brainers. I stopped getting music from Kazaa and started buying it from iTunes. I toss a few bucks in the tip jars of great writers on the internet. I don't buy strips under any circumstances.

Plagiarism is not quite as simple. Well, it is when we're talking about someone like Jayson Blair who relied on ctrl-c, ctrl-v. But what about inspiration? A news item that sparks interest? What about a short story, or a memoir? A story based on a friend's cocktail story? If a friend of mine sighs and says, "I had this great idea for a book," and then never writes that book, can I write it and keep all the profits? Even if I can, should I?

I'm still puzzling out the gray areas, but this Dan Brown case doesn't seem to me to be very gray. He took a relatively common idea, did a metric fuck ton of research, and whipped it all together into a thriller novel. A highly readable, page turner of a novel with a plot so intricate that other writers just stare in slackjawed wonder.

Even if the takeoff point for The Da Vinci Code was in fact The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, I suggest that it doesn't matter. If you look up the latter on Amazon, you'll note that one of the reviewers said it "...has all the elements of an international thriller." It seems obvious to me that it was just a matter of time before someone wrote... an international thriller... with the same plot line. There's a world of difference between a scholarly take on an interesting conspiracy theory and a gripping bit of pulp fiction, requiring totally different writing skills from their respective authors.

Finally - would this case be in court if Brown wasn't making a billion dollars from the book and the upcoming movie? A great big pile of money is always the perfect freak bait. (Warning - turn down your speakers.)

Anything else I could say on this topic is already written here, and I would hate to plagiarize and all that. Her post can be summed up as "ideas are cheap and easy, writing compelling pop fiction is hard."

We'll just have to see. For my part, it seems to me that anyone with an education and liberal grant funding could have written HBHG, and only a writer could have pulled off TDC. Your mileage may vary.

Why I, Given The Choice, Would Rather Work At Home, AKA Wishing I Were Male

2006-02-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

If I were a male, I would have needed to visit the restroom at 11:02 and been back at my desk at 11:05. In order to take care of business, I would need to touch two non-personal surfaces with my bare hand - the bathroom doorknob and the sink faucet. But as a FEMALE:

11:02 Lord, how that coffee does run through a girl.

11:03 Enter the restroom. Encounter coworker brushing her hair. Make friendly comment about said hair.

11:08 Eyeball favorite stall as things are now considerably urgent, consider just sitting down. Think about the inability to tell the difference between pee and flushing water splashback. Coworker leaves.

11:09 Retrieve paper seat cover from dispenser, located not inside the stall but outside by the sink because building management is fucking cheap. Enter stall, trying not to touch anything but the latch on the door. Carefully rip along the little inner lines. Gently lay seat cover on toilet with the inner flap hanging down into the water.

11:10 Repeat seat cover retrieval, door latch touching, tearing, and laying, as original seat cover immediately soaks up all the water on the seat.

11:11 Repeat process for the third time, since without water to adhere the cover to the seat, the tissue paper drifts into the toilet from the mighty draft of my ass coming towards it.

11:12 Sit down.

11:12 Another coworker enters and recognizes shoes. Conversation commences. Coworker is identified as someone with whom I am not close enough to explain that I cannot do my business with someone else in the room.

11:14 Coworker leaves.

11:14 Business type one commences.

11:15 Stomach cramping reminds me not to drink coffee on an empty stomach.

11:16 Coworker enters.

11:17 Stomach cramping worsens. Two more coworkers enter and begin conversation about the perils of home plumbing and leaking hot water valves. None of these people are those with whom I wish to confess my issues.

11:18 What the hell is this, the new office party spot? There are six women chattering by the goddamn sink. Leave! Go! Shoo! I'm dying over here!

11:19 My shoes are recognized again.

11:21 Well, on the bright side, it appears that I am in fact capable of doing business type two with other life forms present.

11:22 Jesus, I feel like a soft-serve machine. Resolve not to eat double helpings of curry at dinner time ever again.

11:22 The reason I have issues regarding my business with others in the room to begin with becomes apparent. Someone has moved the air freshener out of this stall. Fuck. That was why this was my favorite stall. Why else would I have a favorite stall? It's not like the decor was anything special.

11:23 Protect hand with tissue and flush toilet.

11:23 Look at stall latch and try not to think about all the other restroom users who have to root around in their personal regions during That Time Of The Month and then touch the latch.

11:24 Touch latch, leave stall and go straight to the sink. Pretend not to notice poisonous cloud trailing me.

11:25 See can of air freshener located across the room behind two of the chatty women. Realize that by grabbing it and racing back to the stall, I will be all but screaming "INDIAN FOOD AND COFFEE MAKES ME POOP!" Opt not to make a scene.

11:27 Participate in conversation hoping that the smell is all in my head.

11:28 Unknown woman enters restroom. The smell is not all in my head.

11:28 Finish washing hands, use paper towel to turn off the faucet.

11:29 Use elbow to open bathroom door in memory of the former assistant who would root around in the personal region during That Time and then leave restroom without washing hands.

I DO NOT ENJOY BEING A GIRL.

A Window Into My Home, Part 6

2006-02-23T13:16:00.000-05:00

Me: "Gah, I hate those tailights, they look like spider eyes."

Him: "Some spiders are okay."

Me: "No."

Him: "You liked Charlotte's Web."

Me: "That's different."

Him: "So what if they made some other spider cuter? Like Shelob's Web."

Me: (laughing) "Oh, no."

Him: "Instead of writing stuff in the web she'd just talk. (Switches to raspy, growly spidery voice) You're some pig, Wilbur."

Me: (dying with laughter)

Him: "When they come to slaughter you, I will take them DOWN."

Fucking Fucker

2006-02-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

From inside the computer you came and to the computer you shall return. At last the circle is complete. Polish up the jackboots. At least they're de riguer where you're going, the thirteenth century sinkhole. I hope you sweat like Satan's own nutsack this August.

I wish you really were my brother. Fucking fucker.

Dick Cheney, Mighty Hunter

2006-02-12T23:40:00.000-05:00

By now, everyone has had a wee giggle over Dick Cheney shooting someone in Texas.

As a side note, am I the only person who thought, damn, the Bush family can make ANYTHING legal in Texas?

Anyway, I was watching the Olympics, and heard NBC's carefully neutral take on the topic first. Then my neighborhood lost power, and when the power came back on, my digital cable box needed to cycle up. It defaults to channel five, which, around here, is Fox. Thus it was that I heard Fox's version of the Cheney Chuckle.

According to them, the victim approached the mighty hunter from behind just after a quail was flushed.

Only Fox News* would make it the victim's fault when a member of this administration shoots someone.

* NBC just picked up the "blame the victim" undercurrent. Yeah, between our copycat networks and the New York Times refusing to print the Danish cartoons, I'm really excited about our free and independent media, aren't you?

Olympics on the 'Quils

2006-02-10T22:24:00.000-05:00

Fact: I am horribly, miserably sick with a nasty cold.

Fact: The Olympic opening ceremony is ALWAYS a cross between the sublime and the insane.

Fact: I got two hours of sleep last night, because with insufficient Nyquil in the house, I decided to snarf some Benydryl before going to sleep.

Fact: While most people are knocked out by Benydryl, I appear to be one of those rare people who is completely WIRED by Benydryl.

So I'm dozing, fading in and out of the opening ceremony for the Games in Torino. I am used to these spectacles, so I didn't even bat an eye at the cows on wheels, or the vinyl clad rollerskaters with flames coming out of their heads.

But during the parade of nations, I was sure I was hallucinating. The music was all... stuff from my iPod. Eighties dance hits. Mongolia strutted in to "Video Killed the Radio Star." No way was this actually happening. I've had no sleep, my skull is draining into various overpriced tissues, and I'm high on cold drugs. Just a dream.

Then the announcer said, "Bob, the nations appear to be marching in to a random assortment of American pop hits from the eighties." The other one said, "Yes, Bob, and if I can only hear "Betty Davis Eyes" by the incomparable Kim Carnes, my night will be complete."

One To Enrage, One To Amuse:

2006-02-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 18

2006-02-06T13:18:00.000-05:00

Me: Fundamentalism is all the same.

Guy #2: I think we should stop buying their oil and leave them to fester in the thirteenth century sinkhole they so obviously want to be in.

Guy #1: What, you mean Texas?

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 17

2006-02-01T14:05:00.000-05:00

Me: The thing that was most awesome about her was that she had no filters. She just let her id race around out in the open. I loved that.

Guy #1: I let my id race around in the open. Why is it bad when I do it?

Me: You let your id pee on things.

Guys #1, #2, and #3: So do I.

Guy #2: My id's an outie.

Me: You people are so wrong.

What If

2006-01-31T00:14:00.000-05:00

I am not allowed to watch Law and Order: SVU right before bedtime, and have not been permitted to do so ever since I woke up Guy #1 to ask if he would stick by me were I to contract AIDS from a brutal gang rape.

He does not play the What If Game very well at all.

My iTunes shrimp net came up with Dusty Springfield (You Don't Have To Say You Love Me), that insanely popular radio single from Fastball a million years ago (The Way), the fabulous rainy day voice of Billie Holiday (As Time Goes By), a single purchased solely because the band had the name The String Cheese Incident (Take Five), and Darlene Love's Christmas, Baby Please Come Home - because I once performed the role of a doowop girl doing background on this song for a musical my freshman year of college. At the time I wore a Santa hat with a blinking white light in lieu of a puffball. I cannot actually sing. This was less of a problem than you would think.

My inability to sing led directly to me lip-syncing the Dusty number, and turning to my husband with the comment, "I could totally do a drag act."

His raised eyebrow said it all, but he managed to say, "They don't let you do that without a penis."

"If I took testosterone, though, and got deep voiced and hairy, maybe they'd think I was just really good at tucking."

"Snort."

"Well, what if something happened naturally, and my hormones got all wacky, and I ended up hairy and deep voiced anyway?"

"Then you would be raping people in prison because this totally just became an episode of SVU, which you are not allowed to watch before bedtime."

Screw The Feds!

2006-01-19T23:16:00.000-05:00

(Background, first IMed to me by Guy #2: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_hi_te/google_records)

You have a moral duty, my fellow Americans. Go to Google, right now, and type "Fuck you, Alberto Gonzales." The top link you get is a mildly amusing grumble, but the results aren't the point. The point is that when the theocratic fascists finally take over and Google turns over their records after a long and bitter court battle, you want to make that seach as popular as humanly possible.

It's your patriotic duty.

There Are Huge Numbers of Insurgents Here

2006-01-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001555.html

A Window Into My Home, Part 5

2006-01-12T10:36:00.000-05:00

I am blind. My glasses are extremely thick, which makes my contact lens prescription a special order. When I take the spectacles off in order to shower, I am usually doing so first thing in the morning. I'm not yet awake enough to stick my finger in my eye to insert a contact lens, but I'm about to get into a small space filled with water drops and steam. In other words, there is a ten minute window of time during the day where I am using no corrective devices for my poor vision.

One other thing to note, for people who are not similarly afflicted: When you can't focus your own eyes, everything appears larger with indistinct borders. An unfocused photo of street lamps at night is a good example. Big round fuzzy balls take the place of small, sharply edged ovals.

When I got into the shower this morning, a brown fuzzy golf ball attacked me. It could have been a tarantula, it could have been a scorpion, it could have been John Ashcroft for all I knew. I levitated out of the tub with a mighty and fearsome squeak. With a pounding heart I slid my glasses onto my snout and peered around the edge of the shower curtain.

There sat a camel cricket. For the breed it was pretty enormous, but we're still talking maybe gumball sized. Maybe. If you count the feelers.

(What happened to black crickets with shiny heads? They're the ones that chirp. They're adorable. Pixar is going to make a movie starring one of them someday. More importantly, they hop straight ahead like reasonable creatures, and you can see them move a little before they jump. They don't just pop into a random direction like BACKWARDS with their nasty spidery legs. They don't walk along walls and ceilings like spiders, but skip along the ground where they can be trapped in jars. I LIKE field crickets. But noooooo, they haven't been the official house bug in two decades. Now it's all horrible ugly nasty non-singing spider cricket hybrids.)

Still feeling the aftereffects of terror, I poked my head out of the bathroom and informed my mate that I had a man task for him. Since he is not deaf, and had heard the squeakthumppause that indicates a bug in the bathtub, he was already coming towards me. Of course, his keen response time meant that I nearly brained him with the door when I opened it to tell him he had a man task.

He has been on bug patrol for so many years now that, as he puts it, he has developed both techniques and strategies for each type of unacceptable home invader. Camel crickets, for example, are too wily to simply whack with a shoe. Also, even if you get a lucky shot, you still have to clean up bug guts.

I stood at a safe distance, while my hero turned on the shower to drench the insect before swooping down with a wad of toilet paper. As he dropped the dazed victim into the toilet, he said with a straight face, "First, you subdue him with the water hoses."

Hallelujah

2005-12-21T01:19:00.000-05:00

A light, flickering in the darkness.

I Wanna Love Somebody Like You

2005-12-20T11:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's hard for me to understand
But you're teaching me to be a better man

- "Somebody Like You," Keith Urban

Baby, now I know how you feel
What I don't know is how you do it

- "Mister Mom," Lonestar

You're not just time that I'm killing
I'm no longer one of those guys

"Forever and Ever, Amen," Randy Travis

I started listening to country music awhile back, totally by accident. The day the music died on WHFS (a local alt-rock station that went Spanish language), I started hitting seek on the radio as I drove down the road. I came across a great 80s station - glam rock guitar riffs, pulsating bass lines, and lyrics bordering on the unbelievably stupid and yet capable of mashing all the emotional buttons. I was really rocking out, until the DJ came on and drawled, "Y'all are listenin' to double yew emm zee kyew!"

After I recovered from the shock, well, I just left it on. What the hell. The trauma of losing WHFS had reminded me of my first aural loss, WAVA. Sweet, sweet WAVA, home of top 40 in the 1980s. It was not quite as cool as DC 101 top 40, because 101 had Howard Stern. But it was still cool, and when it went CHRISTIAN LITE ROCK I thought I'd die.

So when I found essentially my lost 80s station, playing, well, pretty much what WAVA had been playing when it went off the air, I decided to give it a try. I've become a bit of a fan.

The one thing country does very differently from pop is the ballad. It took me awhile to figure out what it was. Both have overwrought lyrics, singers about to pop a vein from All That Passion, and minor keys when someone dies in the end.

But I think I've got it now. Pop romance is a man singing about love, as he feels it. Country romance is a man singing about love... as a woman wants to hear it.

Really. Look at any love song from Lonestar. Those guys have cornered the market on what women want to hear. "Oh, honey, you look nice dressed up and all, but I love you best in sweatpants with baby spit up on you, because by golly that's our baby. I've seen Paris, but nothing beats our toy-strewn living room with Nascar collectible plates. Boy, my job seems hard, but being a mommy is a million times harder and you're my hero. Gosh, I was a real mess before you met me, and you've just cleaned me right up. I don't know WHAT I was thinking back before you changed me into the man I am today. Lord, honey, if it weren't for you I'd just about be a bum on the street, probably choking to death on my own vomit."

Maybe not that last part, but the rest I think I've nailed for you.

And NO guy actually feels that way. Oh, sure, they get waves of affection for wives and babies and their homes, but given a choice between sweats and a merry widow, I have never met a man that wouldn't go for the lacy wired thing. Guys are more comfortable in their homes, because they are creatures of habit, but preferring a rut doesn't mean they actually think that rut is the best life gets. As for being grateful that a woman has wrought a great change... snort. I can't even get Guy #1 to stop wearing tightie whities, let alone change his nature. And if I did change his nature, I promise you, he would not be grateful, he'd dump me on my ass for someone that likes him the way he really is. That in fact would be why we got married - we liked the other person AS IS, NO WARRANTY.

Show me a man that says a mom's job is harder than being a cubicle jockey, and I'll show you a man writing a country love song.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 16

2005-12-14T13:43:00.000-05:00

Guy #1: "Hey, the only thing I have extras of is goat. We have goat, horses, and an excess of boredom! BUZKASHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

"By the way, my name is Jihad. I work part time as a bartender."

(This was the final straw in a lunch conversation that went from HOI2 to religion to zoophiles to the Rat Terrier of Love in a gimp mask and bungee cord restraints to fascism to the Patriot Act to why certain countries are never invaded.)

Email Drama

2005-12-09T14:20:00.000-05:00

My laptop died a sad death today. I'm doing the happy dance because the tech team at work fished out the hard drive with all the data intact, but it'll be a few days before I see email again. I also lost all the stuff I was going to reply to today.

Thank Santa it's not all gone for good. I did much of my shopping online this year, and there are CRAPLOADS of registration numbers, tracking numbers, and purchase confirmation orders on that machine.

Is it just me, or are modern computers more prone to failure, overheating, and general instability than my piece of shit E-Machine ever was? That thing is STILL ticking, even if it smells like dogass and cigarettes whenever I turn it on thanks to the rich coat of nicotine and fur the fan developed in the four years it was on a basement floor. A basement occupied by die hard Everquest players.

Alaska - M's address is the one we had back in 1999 in Alexandria.

M - call Alaska and give him your address just in case he doesn't see this.

Ninja - use my Yahoo address. You should anyway, less chance of my spaminator crushing you and your Hotmail addy.

New Leaves

2005-12-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

How many times can you turn over a new leaf before you just turn into a tree?

Musing

2005-12-06T00:08:00.000-05:00

I was born in 1974. I played with gender neutral toys (with the exception of an extensive My Little Pony collection). I joined the first computer club my junior high school ever formed. I won a blue ribbon at the science fair. I smoked Marlboros in high school. Even with my generally girly college major, I chose a masculine, leadership emphasis. In the frat I was a champion belcher. I've always had the right to vote, been free to sue for sexual harassment, and only very rarely been made to feel that the world was not, indeed, my oyster. For that matter, I've spent what is nearly the last five years enjoying every natural advantage my gender brings to my job. In short, I am the product as well as the beneficiary of the feminist revolution.

So there I sat tonight, watching TV, cussing at Maureen Dowd for her anecdotal pile of crap masquerading as original political thought. Uh, I mean, her book. I was really working up a good head of steam when I had one of those head shaking moments.

My freshly baked apple cobbler was still warm enough to scent the room where I was sitting with my embroidery. Yeah, I'm really setting the world on fucking FIRE.

RUNNING With BLOOD

2005-11-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

"When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safety but the aisles will be running with blood."

You know, I'm a fan of gratuitous hyperbole - ask my boss! - but this is insane. Five years ago, I regularly carried sewing scissors on the plane, as well as a small screwdriver set for my glasses. The aisles did not run with blood, although I do confess to running with scissors in the terminal a time or two. This was back when I was still smoking a pack a day, so in addition to scissors, I was also usually carrying today's most dangerous piece of air travel contraband, a cheap plastic lighter. My god, I was a terrorist incident just WAITING TO HAPPEN.

Have we really come to this? Has our collective attention span grown so short that we can't even remember five measly years ago, when everyone had scissors, cigarette lighters, and tweezers in their overnight bags and no one ever died from any of the above?

And as a side note - how come, in the modern age when we're hardly allowed to carry anything useful on the plane, the "carryons" have gotten to be the size of steamer trunks?

Ratzinger Style

2005-11-29T10:51:00.000-05:00

He dumped the tailor whose company had been doing cassocks since 1792.

SEVENTEEN NINETY TWO.

It's been a crazy few months. My parents were living with me and Guy #1. We bought our house FROM the parents, and that adventure was complete only when the King of the Last Minute Surprises dumped a twelve thousand dollar surprise on me two days before closing. But the close quarters really ruined my desire to write anything, really. One does not comfortably bitch about people on a blog when the targets of one's ire are standing behind the computer; one does not try to write stories when one is interrupted every three seconds by screeching, wailing, and chaos; and one most certainly does not try to write porn when one's mommy is standing right there asking what's so funny about trains and the pulling thereof.

How You Can Tell (An Amateur's Guide to Cybersex)

2005-09-19T16:22:00.000-04:00

Male pretending to be female: Hey, hun, looking for a good time?
Actual female: Hey, hon, you busy?

Male pretending to be female: I just turned 18.
Actual female: I just turned 26.

Male pretending to be female: Can my friend join us?
Actual female: Can your friend join us?

Male pretending to be female: I'm looking for a man with a huge cock!!!
Actual female: (Doesn't give a damn what you say it is, it's VIRTUAL, she'll make up whatever she wants.)

Male pretending to be female: I'm wearing a black lace corset.
Actual female: (Pretends to be wearing anything BUT a black lace cliche.)

Male pretending to be female: I want to make you cum.
Actual female: I want you to make me come.

Male pretending to be female: That was amazing! So what's your name? Really real. *giggle*
Actual female: Joe. So don't stay in touch.

The Exact Instant I Saw The Fin Was The Instant I Was In The Air

2005-08-28T11:15:00.000-04:00

Stargate SG1 has been getting progressively harder to sit through, but out of respect for an eight year relationship, I've been trying to be patient. It takes time for new cast members to find their groove, and it takes even MORE time for writers to learn to adjust the dialogue to the new players. I survived the sixth season, and even grew grudgingly fond of Parker Lewis.

Friday night's episode was already running the ragged edge of lame, as I entertained myself during the episode by watching all the ways the crew had come up with to disguise the fact that Amanda Tapping just had a baby. (For the record - a hand truck, a box, a chair, and a table were all in turn wedged into the scene directly in front of her midsection and hips, and her costumes are all very boxy and loose. There's makeup on her neck to hide, not a wattle or anything gross, but a post-baby softness. She's getting the weight off, you can practically see what order the scenes were shot in, but it seems unfair to put that pressure on her. She just had a BABY. After seven years of keeping an unnaturally low weight for TV. Most likely thinking the damn show was cancelled. Christ, if I'd been her I'd have eaten nothing but things from the "ohs" family: Cheetos, nachos, and Doritos.)

But I am a sci-fi fan. I can tolerate anything, and learn to love it. Cast changes don't have to be the end of the world. Ben Browder is in NO WAY my TV boyfriend (the which will always be Richard Dean Anderson). But he's closer to type than poor Corin was compared to Michael, and Corin worked out okay. I resented Claudia Black a little, but I really do love her, so once I knew Amanda was eventually coming back, I got over it and thoroughly enjoyed Vala's episodes. I'm annoyed that they killed Janet, especially because I know the actress wasn't trying to leave the show a la Shanks, and the fact that they just happened to cast Shanks' WIFE as the replacement is sticking in my craw, but whatever. All the "new" people are solid actors with tons of sci-fi practice. They are all capable of spouting pseudo-scientific gobblygook with panache and sincerity.

What I cannot get over is consistently crappy, cheap, deus ex machina writing, and we've now had almost two months of it. BEAMING THE BUILDING INTO OUTER SPACE was the last straw. They should have strapped waterskis on the building before blowing it up.

Nuh UH

2005-08-26T17:20:00.000-04:00

Guy 3 says this came from the always hilarious Fark.com:

Search for "casino chips" on the Wal-Mart website, and see what the Christian fascists give you:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=416096&redirect_query=casino+chips

Not ever in ten million years will I shop at Walmart again.

EDIT: See comments section.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 15

2005-08-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

Guy #3: Sometimes I wonder if anyone will ever notice.

Guy #2: Our new Chinese overlords will notice!

Guy #3: Ah so! This group is productive.

Guy #2: This group will receive TWO bowls of rice.

Guy #3: And a piece of MEAT.

She Is Mine

2005-08-14T12:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, August 13, 2005, will live in infamy. I finally got my baby. And she is BETTER than the one who broke my heart. There is some metaphorical lesson in there that I will absorb... AFTER I get done tearing around in her.

She's a '99 Miata MX-5, Highlight Silver. She came with an automatic transmission, tan leather interior, matching vinyl boot, Bose audio, 15" alloy wheels, power doors/windows/mirrors/antenna, matching hard top for winter use, air conditioning, and even that fancy ass steering wheel that apparently cost another two hundred bucks back when she was new. 37,500 miles on her. New Dunlop tires, whatever that means.

Driving her is like flying a hovercraft, or cutting through silk with very sharp scissors. I've never driven something with such responsive steering. Oh, man, I gotta go back outside and take her out.

A Window Into My Home, Part 4

2005-08-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

Me: No, really, you're a font of good things.

Guy #1: An eight point font?

Me: Look at those shoulders. You're at least a twelve point font.

Guy #1: I could be a bold eight point font.

Me: True.

(Moment of silence.)

Guy #1 (lunges suddenly forty five degrees towards me, scaring the diet coke out of me): Or ITALICS!

A Window Into My Home, Part 3

2005-08-08T21:19:00.000-04:00

Me: (flipping through a crafting supply catalogue) *sigh*

Guy 1: Mmm?

Me: I just don't think I need to introduce a yarn craft.

Guy 1: ... a yarn craft?

Me: Yeah. What's so funny?

Guy 1: A yarn craft.

Me: You know, I've got my paper crafting, my cross stitch crafts, and now I'm considering -

Guy 1: A YARN craft.

Me: And?

Guy 1: We've got Starcraft. Warcraft. WORLD OF YARN CRAFT.

There's a Light... In the Darkness

2005-07-28T11:10:00.000-04:00

I love you, Steven Johnson.

I love you, too, Judge Phan.

Not That I'm Biased Or Anything

2005-07-21T17:21:00.000-04:00

I think those of us who actually derive our livelihoods from video games would sum up our reaction to the Rockstar brouhaha thusly:

So, a game where you can cap a prostitute or beat her to death with a pipe is okay... but having sex with her is grounds for an immediate recall? Oooookaaaaaaay...

I'm not surprised. This is the country where my uterus and any resident cell clumps are of more value than my life, after all.

A Window Into My Home, Part 2

2005-07-14T14:45:00.000-04:00

I recently purchased a "ring knitter," a Colonial-era toy used by very small children to knit endless chains of sturdy cord. The instructions have a list of things you can make. The verbatim quote:

"1. A belt.
2. A jumprope."

There is no three.

Yeah, so, I MADE a three. I knitted six lengths of cord, and tied them together in a traditional pattern to make a Colonial Plant Hanger.

I have never made a Regular Plant Hanger.

This poor abortion of a plant hanger is badly proportioned, and constructed from thirty year old blue wool. No, really, my mother in law gave me the wool. The skein had a price tag that said "Woolworth's: 29 cents." It actually had the little cent sign, but they don't even put that symbol on keyboards anymore. Being genuine 1973 wool, it's got a lot of stretch to it. Macrame is really the best choice in plant hanger design, not knitted cord.

Anyway, I presented my opus to my mate, as a hunter presents a kill to the head of the tribe. Because he is an Advanced Husband, as previously discussed, he did not mock me. He did not praise the cobalt creation, however, and I slunk away.

You can't keep a girl like me down for long, though, so after we retired for the evening, I looked over to the love of my life and said, "I'm... MACRA-MAZING."

Silence.

"How long have you been waiting to use that?"

"Oh, just a few minutes."

"Really."

"Yeah. I love my plant hanger."

Silence.

"It was MACRA-MADE in America."

Things We Said At the Hospital After He Was Rushed to the ER

2005-07-08T23:57:00.000-04:00

Upon seeing a needle coming towards him: "Is that a new needle? Because I don't share needles." (Note: This was apparently like making a bomb joke in an airport, because he suddenly had a lot more attention than he needed.)

After hearing my mate's cholesterol count, said with a straight face: "Does this mean our diet consisting entirely of Indian frozen entrees and Hot Pockets has to change?"

Largest faux pas made in the ER, in response to being asked how old my mate was: "Well, in dog years, he's dead."

While riding the gurney from triage to the treatment room: "This thing should be lowered." (No mention of what kind of rims he'd like to see.)

Biggest lie of the night, in response to being asked how many caffeinated beverages he consumed in a typical day: "Six." (Technically, not a lie. The nurse interrupted him before he could explain he drank that many CANS of diet soda a day, but that it was difficult to measure three restaurant refills in "standard" glasses at lunch and two refills in "supersize" glasses at dinner.)

Morning after description of the shaved bits of chest, where the monitors were: "I look like a cheetah in reverse."

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 14

2005-07-06T13:28:00.000-04:00

Me: My frat house had a box of porn magazines next to the toilet. I really thought they were just there to read. You know, like [Guy 1] keeps car magazines in the bathroom.

Guy 1, 2, and 3: Yeah, to masturbate over.

Guy 3: The next time I travel for business, I'm just going to buy a magazine at the airport. It seems like every time there's an event, I come back to the hotel room drunk and order a movie. Five ninety five versus twelve ninety five, it just makes more sense.

Me: Can't you just use your imagination or something?

Guy 2: I just masturbate to CNN.

Guy 1: "This is Wolf Blitzer." Oh, yeah. Ooooh, WOLF.

Guy 1, 2 and 3: UNNNGH.

The Voice of the Firefly

2005-07-05T22:06:00.000-04:00

During the fireworks on Monday night, one lonely firefly kept drifting up, up, up to the heavens, trying to get to the beautiful lights. It was almost tragic, until my husband started doing the firefly's voice.

First of all, fireflies apparently have the voices of phlegmy Jewish men from Brooklyn. Second of all, as they flash their yellow messages of love, flying towards the blue and silver sparkles, they are apparently saying, "Oh, yeah, show me that magnesium, baby. Oh, yeah, I got jungle fever. I can get that yellow anywhere, but gimme some of that blue, blue loving. How's about you and me get together and make some green."

inarticulate scream of despair

2005-07-01T15:10:00.000-04:00

WHY, SANDY, WHY?

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 13

2005-06-28T15:44:00.000-04:00

Guy 2: Where was the European office going to go?

Guy 3: One possibility was Amsterdam.

Me: Hookers, baby.

Guy 2: Fuck the hookers!

Me: (in a small voice) Well, that's usually how things go.

Guy 2: FUCK THE HOOKERS! WEED IS LEGAL!

Dumb Rednecks

2005-06-28T10:25:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, the mate and I went to his nephew's high school graduation. Three whole rows were occupied by this extended family tree, and a whole branch wasn't even there.

You know that rowdy group of people at every graduation, wedding, bar mitzvah, and cocktail bar you've ever attended? The ones yelling inappropriately, with the small child running up and down behind a row making truck noises, and whispering with all the subtlety of an ocean wave crashing ashore?

Yeah, that was our family.

At one point, the father of the graduate leaned over and told me that the young man onstage, the salutatorian, was "a giant pain in the butt." Apparently, the kid was our nephew's mortal enemy. This sounds like my brother in law was just filling in some colorful details for me, but what I have not yet mentioned is that the salutatorian's parents were sitting six inches in front of us.

This was a church school, so the ceremony was being held in the church. (That's how much we love our nephew - we risked lightening strikes to attend.) My mate and I were dressed in church clothes, a suit for him and a raspberry colored pantsuit for me. We blended in with the blessed ones, actually. It was the true believers we were sitting with that didn't blend. The graduate's maternal grandfather was wearing his finest T-shirt, advertising a specific sort of seafood dining establishment. Another uncle had pulled out the formal denims, with paint on the hems.

Since the student body was so tiny, they gave out awards for everything up to and including consistent breathing. There were certificates for the highest grade point average in each subject, as well as overall. One young lassie, most certainly saving herself for Jesus because, well, because of the usual reason, was trotting up to the stage every two seconds, and the salutatorian every three. Both were reasonably popular kids, and there was plenty of applause.

Then the nephew got the "top grades in photojournalism" award.

Pandemonium broke out. The entire family was whooping, screaming, clapping, yelling his name. His sisters tried to start the wave. Mind you, he'd TOLD us that the class was purely an excuse to nap in the middle of the day for most people, so he'd basically just received a prize for having a pulse.

Finally, the actual graduating started. Being at the ass end of the alphabet, our boy was second from last in the diploma line. That meant we'd had plenty of time to rest up for more shrieking, cheering, and hopping up and down. The kid had a million friends, too, so the place was really jumping.

Through it all, people had been staring, turning, pointing, tsking, shushing, and glaring. At the reception, for some reason, the other attendees were nervous about standing too close to our family table, lest they be mistaken for members. Clearly, we were of the lowest possible caste in this Christian brotherhood of equals in the eyes of God.

Thing is, when you're in a group of more than twenty people and you're all hugging and yelling and picking up stray kids to cuddle and taking pictures, it's difficult to notice that you're being shunned.

The conclusion is simply thus, and I never would have believed it - it is far more fun to be in a pack of dumb rednecks than to sniff at them.

Lasers!

2005-06-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

Long ago, in the time before I had dental insurance, I went to some hack in Alexandria. He found a cavity, and did the crappiest filling in the world - I could feel the seams, for heaven's sake.

Today I found out how crappy it was. My dentist of the last four years poked a hole in the filling to the cavity beneath. "Cavity?" you ask. "When you have a cavity, the dentist drills out all the decayed tooth and fills it. There is no "cavity" left under a filling."

You're right! Unless the dentist sucks and doesn't drill out all of the decayed part, in which case the tooth continues to rot under the filling! And unless it rots down to the root of the tooth, you won't know until it's either too late or a good dentist follows a hunch.

My dentist is good. My dentist did have to tell me that I'd need it redrilled and filled. I sighed and asked him if we could do it today, and he said sure. I told him to hang on, I'd tell my mate to wait for me. (Men do not willingly care for their own health. They marry mates who will make appointments and then force them to keep said appointments. Thus it was that my mate was settling in for his cleaning after mine was finished.) The dentist said, "Why? You'll be done before he is."

What? It was going to take twenty five minutes for the nasty needle of Novocaine to numb my jaw enough to work. I said so.

He cackled, and said, "You haven't seen my new toy!"

He had a LASER. A great big laser, that explodes droplets of water into atoms along with a bit of tooth. Sounds awful, right?

12:10, he finds the hole. 12:20, I'm in the chair. 12:30, he's instructing the assistant to hold the heat set instrument over my dental bondo.

1:10, I'm eating crunchy things.

No pain, so swelling, no numbness, no needles, no ANYTHING but a tooth that no longer has a crappy filling.

These are the days of miracle and wonder.

Please Remain On the Line; Your Call Is Important To Us

2005-06-17T22:49:00.000-04:00

Except no, it's not. It's not important to you at ALL.

If it was, you would have hired more than two gum snapping inbred swamp dwellers to answer your phones.

If it was, you'd have outsourced to India, where at least the staff has been trained to call me "ma'am" and sincerely wish me a pleasant day. Or evening. Once, the nice Indian lady I was chatting with admitted that she had a little plastic clock on her desk that told her what time it was in the different parts of the USA. And that when she looked up customer records, she'd figure out what time it was for the customer, JUST so she could correctly say "have a good morning" or "have a pleasant evening."

If it was, you wouldn't interrupt the music meant to soothe me every fifteen seconds to tell me how important my call was.

If it was, you'd give me a guess as to how much longer I'll be in line, or at least where in the line I happen to be.

If it was, I'd have been able to call an 800 number, instead of calling Florida about your inexplicably broken piece of shit product, no doubt assembled by the gum cracking mongoloid's brother.

If it was, I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON HOLD, LONG DISTANCE HOLD, FOR ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE BEING INFORMED THE CALL CENTER WAS CLOSED FOR THE DAY.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 12

2005-06-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

Guy 3: You should come play poker with me.

Guy 2: Yeah, you're a real high roller. Ol' "Change For a Dollar" Lastname.

Guy 3 (ignoring Guy 2) : It doesn't matter how much you're up as long as you're up, and I'm up eighty cents at the moment.

Me: Hey, that's two strippers for you.

Guy 1: I think strippers must be different here.

Guy 2: No, they're not. It's just him.

(Attention, aghast middle aged lady at the mid-range chain restaurant: Stripping is a perfectly fine artistic endeavor. You can look down your nose at strippers IF you can hang by your thigh muscles with your torso perpendicular to a vertical pole about five feet from the ground while you convince men to give you money even though they aren't allowed to touch you AND NOT ONE SECOND BEFORE.)

Teased!

2005-06-10T15:06:00.000-04:00

I ordered an iPod and some accessories on Wednesday. If I must replace my beloved player, it might as well be with the industry standard that comes with all the good toys, right?

A box arrived TODAY. Two days! How awesome! I tore into it with glee... only to find the accessories. The actual iPod is still in transit.

MAN. It feels like sex did in college.

Sigh.

2005-06-09T23:18:00.000-04:00

You know, just when I thought everyone had gotten the memo that "states' rights" was shorthand for "the right to do something really icky," or at best "the right to deny some sort of natural right to American citizens who are not straight white Christian people in Kansas," I hear it on CNN.

I Hate You Too, Technology

2005-06-08T19:41:00.000-04:00

On Monday, the office building lost power. Do you know how DARK a women's bathroom, with no windows and no emergency light, can be? Do you know how fucking Satan's nutsack whore in church SWEATY people on the top floor of a glass office building can get, when you can't open the windows or circulate air?

On Tuesday, my home machine's hard drive failed and I got the message "insert system disk and press any key." It's SAD when you pine for the blue screen of death. Previously, I have been able to repair this problem by popping the case and scientifically wiggling the power harness. Wiggling no longer does the trick, on this TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR GAMING RIG THAT IS NOT YET A YEAR OLD.

Today, a water pipe burst in the office building and flooded the data room. This destroyed the T1 lines, the phone switch boxes, and more! It is hard to be an internet relations manager when you cannot access the INTERNET. I sent my much-adored minion home to work. Calling her to dictate posts got old fast.

But since I could not read message boards or even send email, I worked on other long put off projects. And I used the other computer, now lying fallow, to add music to my MP3 collection.

Today, my beloved MP3 player froze. This has happened before. I pulled out the handy reset button tool (a paper clip) and poked it into the player. It started to reset, but instead of the "rebuilding" window, I got the "rescue" screen. Only, none of the options appeared to do anything. After an hour on hold, a nice boy in Creative's tech support broke it to me - full reformat required. I winced, and bid fare thee well to ten gigs of music ripped from my own CD collection and two gigs of, uh, yeah. Stuff. Stuff that someone no doubt owned before they uploaded it to Kazaa.

But that's okay! I turned a new leaf a few months ago (amazingly, about the same time I started writing for future publication again) and stopped stealing! I was willing to replace that music! By handing over actual money! So I hit reformat, and started chatting with the nice techie boy.

Five minutes later he asked what the player was displaying. I said "It says formatting dot dot dot." He said, "That's a thirty second process. You should have been done by now."

It's hosed. And it was a discontinued model. And it would cost as much to repair as it would to buy a 40 gig player.

I am writing this on borrowed technology to get the killing rage out of my system, and after I hit post, I am going to STOP TOUCHING THINGS THAT REQUIRE HARD DRIVES.

The Credit Union With No Name

2005-06-04T10:06:00.000-04:00

I have a savings account at a credit union. (This is like a bank with better candy in the waiting room dishes.) There are credit unions for police officers, teachers, and military men. These unions are all named things that go with the supported population. Apple for teachers, Navy Federal for sailors.

And then there's the credit union with no name, for government employees. I'm not kidding. The statements come on plain paper with "Account Statement" written on the top instead of a bank logo. The statement envelopes have a post office box as a return address, with no logo, and the box is at the post office nearest to *your* home.

My dad works for the government, along with a million other people. When I asked him what he did for a living (with an eye to getting him to come speak at my elementary school on Career Day), he told me he read newspapers. This matched with my experiences, where he brought home heaps of newspapers and ripped out occasional articles for a folder in his backpack. So I went back to school and told them all that he read newspapers. Being as I was in a class with the scions of U.S. Senators, sports legends, and people who owned things like newspapers (the public schools are really GOOD around here), no one was impressed by my dad. "My dad has a stupid job," I used to sigh.

What my dad really has is a twisted sense of humor. The bastard reads newspapers in eight different languages and does translation and analysis. At about the time I was bemoaning his lack of star power at Career Day, he was getting his picture taken at a fancy dinner with the Reagans and some kind of king. Where he was the interpreter. Jeez. I could have moved up at least two notches in monkey bar society if only I had known.

But aside from my social climbing aspirations, Dad was trying to do right by me. He set up an account at his credit union in my name with the minimum deposit of five dollars. This was so I could continue to get access to the services and the interest rates even after I turned eighteen and flew the coop.

I was not aware of this at first. But after I'd been at college (in another state) for about a month, I started getting these mysterious account statements. They were addressed to me, the return address was a P.O. box in that city, and they informed me I had five dollars and change. The amount went up by a penny every statement. I stared at these in confusion and then forgot about them.

I traveled around doing theater, and for a few summers I didn't have a fixed address to speak of. My parents were transferred overseas, so I didn't even have my parents' home as a default. But I finally landed at a fraternity house in Blacksburg, Virginia... and the statements started coming to me again. I shacked up with the asshat who turned out to be a deadbeat... and the statements followed me to his house. I moved upstate, and so did the Account Statements.

This was starting to creep me out.

The deliciousness of being stalked by a bank ended when I asked my dad about it, and he told me about the credit union. What he didn't tell me was the bank's address, and so my penny dividends continued for another six years as I grew annoyed with the deadbeat, moved to my own apartment, moved to my current address, married someone good and sweet and strong.

Finally, I asked for the secret address. My account held seven dollars and seventy four cents, and I had finally gotten bored watching the glacial growth. For more than twenty years, this account had existed. It was time to get better acquainted.

The credit union was located just down the street. Go figure.

Since the most of my money is in a budget and accounted for, I figure this "extra" account should only keep the "extra" money, so I took over all my change. I had been keeping a stockpile in the closet, with neat little rolls of coins made from the contents of the piggy bank in the laundry room. I deposited 335 dollars. More than half of that was pennies. It seemed fitting.

Go Read This Instead

2005-06-01T14:53:00.000-04:00

I'm kinda busy, but this site has lots of good stuff: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

You Go Girl

2005-05-30T01:02:00.000-04:00

Go, Danica. It was a hell of a race down to the last caution flag.

Plucked From The Lint Trap

2005-05-26T23:40:00.000-04:00

I discovered iTunes. My mate and I have spent a few entertaining evening drilling down into the catalogue and surfacing with such nuggets as "Lawyers In Love" and "All The Young Dudes." The mate, he was much, much cooler than I was in high school.

I know this, because left to my own devices I dredge up "Forever Your Girl" and "A Whole New World." I'm not ENTIRELY without coolness - of my own free will, after seeing them on SNL, I bought the System of a Down single. Of course, my inherent dorkhood kicked in and I accidently bought the "clean" version. I had to spend another dollar just to get the version with all the fucks unfettered.

But where my mate finds obscure metal bands of his childhood, I look for Metallica and wander away disappointed because SOME PEOPLE think they are too cool to be on iTunes. He claps his hands with glee and calls for the buy button when obscure German bands appear beneath his wandering mouse, and I shell out for the remastered "Kickstart My Heart." We both agree that if we want a whole album, we should buy the physical thing, but where he goes out and buys the complete works of David Bowie, I make a note to order Bat Out of Hell 2. He rocks to Rasputina, I'm dancing to Def Leppard. Hysteria, baby!

He is sticking his Tron hands into a torrent of smart and hip, and I pluck discarded radio singles from the lint trap of the eighties and nineties.

As MC Skat Kat once said, opposites attract.

The Other Side

2005-05-24T09:44:00.000-04:00

At a big exposition, I spent a week shaking hands, hugging people, and in general keeping what passes for charm with me on the uppermost side. This trade show is an annual event, and one I look forward to very much throughout the year. I'm always working hard at a job that I love, but this trade show is basically the week where everything comes together - the work, the connections I've made, everything clicks into place and I feel like I'm on top of the world.

When it ends, the participants all feel a little drained and a little hungover, so a few days of vacation are called for. Thus far, I've spent those days in total retro mode. I've cooked dinner, set up the sewing machine to hem my husband's pants, done laundry, waited for plumbers, fetched groceries, and so on. It's been about as intellectually challenging as the ant bait I put behind the trashcan. And it hasn't been so bad, playing the part of the little wifey. Actually, I've pretty much enjoyed myself.

Oh, I'm not worried that I secretly long to be a homemaker. This is only day two and I'm already slightly bored. I keep wanting to check my email, call a reporter, work on an article. I'm trying to stay on vacation, so I'm writing articles for my neighborhood newsletter and cleaning the bathroom to keep my mind off work. If cleaning the bathroom was my actual work, I'd go insane. Since it's not the focus of my identity, hemming my husband's pants makes me feel good, as if I've contributed to our partnership in a loving way.

I'd be on some kind of prescription-only Mother's Little Helper before I could sneeze if I had to fill my days with laundry. I'd learn to cook elaborate meals and make wedding gowns by hand and clean behind the fridge just to say that I excelled at something. I'd call my husband five times a day just to hear another adult's voice. No wonder there are so many stereotypes that hail from the days when women would quit their jobs when they got married.

But instead of a trip to Deeply Neurotic Land, I'm listening to the soothing hum of the sewing machine and admitting that I do have this side to my personality that enjoys arranging cheese slices into patterns on serving trays. Maybe the things that make me a closet scrapbooker and a secret hemmer of pants are the things that make me good at my professional job.

I wonder what my grandmother could have been if she hadn't gotten married.

Advertising, Part 1

2005-05-17T00:31:00.000-04:00

There’s a commercial out about coal mining and how it’s not actually destructive to the environment around the mine, hazardous to the health of the miners, and so forth. And mining is done entirely underground as opposed to blasting off entire mountaintops. Well, those things are implied. The only thing actually spelled out is that America has lots of coal, enough to last for a couple hundred years while we develop alternate technologies that might not require us to go to war with various desert nations every decade. Or something. The tag line is “Coal is attractive,” and the “miners” are all supermodels, both male and female.

The trouble is, the song accompanying the commercial is “Sixteen Tons.”

Yes. The Merle Travis song that refers to the exploitation of actual coal miners. You know, the one that says the miners can never make enough money to get away from coal, because they have to buy their groceries and supplies on credit from a store belonging to the mining company. Also, the miner singing the song is such a badass that no “high toned” women makes him walk any lines. Oh, and he wins all his fistfights.

The sad thing is, most people know the song, but they don’t think about the lyrics. The idiots that thought this one up would have made a perfectly good commercial if they’d just used the tune. Then all of us sheeple in front of the TV would have nodded, and thought, “I know this one, it’s the coal song, how apt.” Instead, we hear this doleful male voice singing about how he can’t die because he owes his soul to the company store.

Nice going, GE!

Requiem For a Dream

2005-05-15T10:47:00.000-04:00

I found her on the internet.

She was a 1999 silver Miata with all the trimmings - alloy wheels, Bose speakers, leather wrapped steering wheel, and a reconditioned ragtop. She had an automatic transmission. She only had 50K miles on her. And the dealer only wanted ten thousand dollars.

I wanted her. My own car, a charming 1994 MX-6, is sporty and fun and infinitely more practical than a two seater convertible. My car is fully paid for with no mysterious problems, and also has only 50K miles. But I still wanted the sparkling little Miata with the leather bucket seats and the CD player.

(I could keep going, but pretty much everyone authorized to read this blog already knows about my love affair with this little Miata, since I got all of you to help me rationalize the purchase.)

Friday night, as my mate watched movies in the living room, I sat down to do serious research. I researched the values, insurance, retail ranges, reliability, and everything else besides. I ran the numbers on my MX-6 to figure out what a fair trade-in value would be (though I was secretly hoping they'd refuse to take her, so I could give her to someone in need the way she was all but given to me). I even pulled a Carfax search on the Miata's VIN number. I went to sleep on Friday night, knowing I would be her third owner.

On Saturday I woke up and called the dealership, located in BFE Maryland. (That's "bum fuck Egypt" for those of you who were never fifteen.) I asked, with my heart pounding, if the silver Miata was still there. The dealer was advertising a black one, a red one, and a silver one, and I wasn't making the drive for any but the silver girl, sail on by. And the man said she WAS.

My mate and I hopped into the MX-6 after cleaning out all my stuff. The only thing in the map pocket was a folder with all my research, and the title to the MX-6. As we zipped down the highway, we planned our attack. We would not mention the tradein until a price was set. We would take turns test driving her. We would check the weatherstripping, the latches, the brakes. And we would take her home, and buy a little car cover for her to protect her from sparrow shit.

When we got to the dealer, there she was. She was a gleaming gem, her paint polished to such a degree that the blue spring sky shimmered in the gloss. Her black top was up, so I peered in the window before looking for the salesman. That was when I saw that she had the default steering wheel and a manual transmission. I looked again, and compared my printouts with her sticker. Wrong VIN. This was not my car.

I laughed, and stepped away. Sheesh, getting all starry eyed over the wrong car just because she was silver. When the salesman approached, I asked where the silver Miata with the automatic transmission was, because I was here to take a look. He did a quick walk around the lot and failed to see her. He vanished inside the dealership as my heart sank.

He returned, and said she was gone. Sold that morning. I said in shock and disbelief, "But I called!" Much later, I realized that I had called... but not specified WHICH silver Miata. But I didn't think about that as I stared at the poor salesman. I even used my angry death glare, which I'm told either freezes your blood or reminds you of an angry cockatoo.

His manager materialized, rubbing his hands together. The manager had greasy hair and a vaguely European accent. Not only had they sold MY new car, but they were assaulting me with cliches! "What can I do to make a deeeeeeeeeel for you today?"

Nothing, I told him. I'd made the drive for the silver Miata with an automatic transmission and shiny wheels. "But this black one is in much better condition!" he said in a happy voice. I glanced over at it. Three grand more, the wrong color, the wrong wheels, the wrong year, manual transmission, and no cute little spoiler. I did not want this car.

"But I liked the price on the other one," I replied, planting my feet, and settling into haggle mode.

My mate grabbed my hand. "Didn't you have your heart set on the silver one? Come on, honey, thanks for your time, no, we're not interested," he called out over his shoulder as he raced towards my car. He knows I can't resist a bargain, even if it means settling for something I don't want.

I wonder how low I could have gotten the price down on the black one.

I hope the silver girl's new parents buy her a car cover.

Cackle

2005-05-13T11:04:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the extremely funny Andrew Sullivan, I found this brilliant link skewering the metrosexual trends of the last few years: http://www.501uncomplicate.com/index.php

I admit I'm naturally on the side of people who keep the frou frou to a minimum. And I hate to rub it in that the metro rountine is about a TENTH of what most women endure if they have "real jobs" where makeup and the like is considered part of the uniform.

Still, let's make a deal here. Gentlemen, we ladies vow to embrace and adore your hairy chests and unstyled hair as soon as you embrace our faces without makeup and the size of our post-pubescent ass. Can't we find some kind of reasonable middle ground between the genders that doesn't make either side suffer? Can't we all stand united AGAINST waxing?

Though it wouldn't be so bad if we all came down in favor of underarm shaving. Some people look like they've got those little troll dolls trapped in a headlock.

Cooler Words

2005-05-11T21:57:00.000-04:00

I have held many jobs in my time, mostly bad ones, as befits a liberal arts major with a lousy attitude and no understanding of proper accessorizing. When you're overeducated, broke, and bitter, you're certain to wind up working for an hourly wage for and with complete morons. Thus, I've got a million stories, but this one definitely ranks in the top ten.

Sales for a certain conference were low, despite relentless cheerleading and snappy copywriting on my part. (Bear in mind that my bitterness here stems from not actually being one of the people paid to plan and execute conferences. I was just the hack who was responsible for hawking the event.) The actual reasons for the slow sales could mostly be laid at the feet of one incredibly dim bulb, who did not understand what customers would want in a conference, and didn't care anyway. More and more of the actual conference planning had fallen to me and a buddy of mine, until at long last she had no actual work to do. However, the pressure to improve sales was still on her delicate shoulders, and so she did the only thing she knew how to do - she tried to blame me.

"Couldn't you write something on the website?" she inquired breathlessly a few minutes into the conversation. I looked up from my desk, covered from stem to stern with paper, event plans, contest props, and checklists, all in an attempt to salvage something from this conference scheduled to occur in less than three weeks. My instinctive urge to kill was overridden by the assurances from my boss that he would NOT, in fact, bail me out of jail if I committed a felony. So I controlled myself, and responded along the lines of, "There are already a number of announcements on the website. I think more might be considered excessive. Maybe even desperate."

She flapped her hands vaguely. "Well, maybe you could use... cooler words."

COOLER. WORDS.

Cooler words? This complete waste of precious oxygen, who once criticized me and another friend for using big words (such as "panacea," mind you), who could not write her way out of a wet paper bag, whose every written phrase contained at least two misspellings and an egregious example of exclamation point abuse, who once posted her salary (considerably higher than the typical employee) to a public message board, WHO BORE THE BLAME FOR THE LOUSY SALES IN THE FIRST PLACE, was offering me advice? And her advice was that I should use "cooler words"? I'd been on edge all week, and this was the last straw. So furious that I was near tears, I repeated this insanity to my friends.

They did the only thing they could do, really. They took the punchline, embraced it, and started whacking me with it. It's practically a mantra.

I love them. I haven't had friends like that since college.

The Pet Peeves Of the Frustrated Author, Part 6

2005-05-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

One does not wait with baited breath. If your breath was baited, it would feature a wriggling worm or perhaps an elaborately tied fly.

It's BATED breath. God.

Me Versus the Sparrows, Round Two

2005-05-04T19:47:00.000-04:00

Yeah... so... last week, I watched the sparrows fly into the stove exhaust vent. Those sparrows are completely safe, since I have no intention of turning on the stove to such an extent as to REQUIRE exhausting anything. I waxed lyrical about the tiny lives of sparrows.

Tonight, I saw a sparrow fly happily into the dryer vent.

Grumbling, I fetched out my stepladder, stuck my arm in the vent, and pulled out three twigs and a wad of my own hair I'd clearly pulled off the brush and thrown away.

I was so proud of myself for yet again foiling the sparrow before eggs could be laid that I sat outside enjoying the evening. And so I happened to be sitting there while the sparrow... flew back into the dryer vent.

I put the ladder back, banged on the siding to scare her out of the vent, and stuck my hand back in there. This time, my fingers brushed the tips of some straw, but I couldn't quite get to it.

This had become a Man Task. Man Tasks are things done by the man of the house at the request of the woman of the house. Duties include but are not limited to spider removal, anything to do with the yucky crawlspace under the house, and lifting things. I was not put on this earth to carry heavy things or touch things with more than four legs. I realize this is dreadfully retro of me, but I hold up my retro end of the bargain by doing laundry. Man Tasks are sporadic, but laundry is forever.

Anyway, my mate (aka Guy 1) came outside. He pulled out a few wispy bits of grass, and he too could not quite reach the last pieces. We trooped inside, and he unfastened the dryer vent tube. The silver snake was lowered into my waiting hands, and laid across the washer and dryer.

I reached in... and I pulled out a grass plug that was two feet long. TWO FEET. TWENTY FOUR INCHES. And the worst part was the bit at the top. Feathers from cardinals, from finches, from chickadees, from sparrows. Bits of newspaper, and more of my hair. Man, I gotta stop cleaning my brushes outside. A bit of embroidery thread, and some dried morning glory vine. And cuddled into all this softness and glory were five speckled eggs. I looked at my mate.

"Are these endangered birds?" he said sternly.

Well, no. We've been together for a few years now, so I could tell that the answer to my silent plea to put the nest back was not no, but hell no. I went outside with that ridiculously huge wad of grass and feathers, and I looked at the little cluster of eggs that would not hatch.

I learned a lot this evening, of course. One, the damn birds don't give up. Two, that was not a one season nest, that was several springs of effort. Every time I knocked loose a nest in progress I must have shoved straw into the tube, and eventually enough stuck in the ridged pipe to form a platform. So much for my vigilant nest patrol. Three, I can cancel that dryer repair appointment, because the dryer seems to work JUST FINE NOW. Four, turning the dryer on high (and running it for a straight hour, cursing at its poor performance) apparently doesn't actually hurt anything living in the freaking vent. This entire incident is funny on a level that I will no doubt recognize eventually.

But they were so small and perfect, and helpless. I felt like a heel, a schmuck, and guilty of a tremendous unfairness. I killed them. I didn't want to, I didn't mean to, I wouldn't have even turned on the dryer if I'd known they were there. They're just stupid sparrows, which made it worse, because there wasn't anyone to understand my mute apology as I stood outside in the cool spring evening.

A Window Into My Home

2005-05-02T08:44:00.000-04:00

Someone out there met me and Guy 1, and the fusion of our personalities inspired them to create Craft Corner DEATHMATCH, wherein you use nothing but your wits and a glue gun to defeat THE CRAFT LADY OF STEEL. I am TOTALLY the Craft Lady of Steel. I'm putting that on a flattened pie tin and fastening it to my sewing basket with baling wire.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 11

2005-04-28T14:46:00.000-04:00

Me: I don't think Phillip Dick was all that as a writer. For me, what he had that set him apart was a set of really original ideas. Most sci-fi is a retread of the same seven plots, but he had serious originality.

Guy 2: You've got to read The Man in the High Castle. It's brilliant. It starts off as a pretty standard alternate history plot, Japan won WWII, blah blah blah, and then it goes forty degrees off to the side. It's a fascinating depiction of the melding of the two cultures, and -

Guy 3: Hentai arrived on our shores forty years earlier than it did in this timeline. Las Vegas is overrun with tentacles.

Come Home To Roost

2005-04-27T23:53:00.000-04:00

I heard it first at the crack of dawn. I was in the laundry room fishing a clean shirt out of the basket when I heard a gentle scrabbling noise, like tiny claws against metal. I froze, trying to place the sound as it echoed up and across the metal cubes. There it was again, up high in the corner. I leaned over the folding table, and listened intently, my ear tilted towards the ceiling. A soft whirring sound, like someone shuffling a deck of worn cards, echoed through the room. This time I had it, but to be certain I pulled myself onto the dryer, as silently as a ninja, and crouched there with my head near the ceiling. A tiny chirp rewarded my patience, and as I climbed off my dryer perch, I swore until the paint peeled off the wall.

Damned nesting birds in the damn dryer vent.

Oh, the spring sparrows love the dryer vent. It’s got a tiny roof over the opening to protect the little family from the elements. Warm air from the house seeps through the vent to ease the evening chill. Gentle southern breezes cool the nest during the heat of the day. Tufts of old lint that escaped the trap and got caught on the flashing near the hole make a nest lining so soft it’s like the mother bird’s breast.

And to top it all off, there’s a bird feeder and a freshly dug flower bed within fifteen feet. I might as well put out a sign saying Hotel, Free Dinner Buffet and Continental Breakfast. Early Bird Special.

The word has probably spread from generation to generation of the feathered fiends that I won’t move a nest that’s gotten past the initial pile of stick level. I just can’t do it. It seems so mean spirited. I know they’re just sparrows. But it doesn’t matter.

I know their presence means I can’t use the side door of my own house after the eggs are laid, because the parents, the little three ounce demons, will attack me to protect the nest. If you listen closely, the outraged avian screaming sounds exactly like someone shouting “For Harry, and Saint George!” They don’t care that I’m ten billion times bigger than they are. They just know the Egg Must Be Protected.

Finally, I know it means I’m going to be hanging my laundry to dry until Junior is fledged and crapping on my husband’s car, because to use my dryer would mean blasting damp heat over tiny birds. I believe in very little, but one of the little things I believe is that you are just about as valuable as the value you assign to the weak and the helpless.

All this flashed through my mind, but after the shower and the first hit of caffeine, I started to wonder. I check the vent weekly every spring, looking for tell tale twigs and bits of yarn. I may be a wimp when it comes to displacing nests and families, but I love my dryer, too, and two springs of hanging socks over shower rods was plenty. I usually catch the little creatures a few sticks into the process. And I just ran the dryer three days ago, there shouldn’t have been time for a nest to take hold, let alone a chance for Mama Sparrow to sit there chirping at the ungodly hour of my awakening.

So I went out to my car, tossed in the laptop, and then I sat there watching the vent. The sparrows sat on my gutter making conversation, carefully not looking at their nesting site. A few aimless circles were flown to distract the casual observer. After a furtive glance at my car, and a brief stop at the bird feeder, the larger sparrow picked up a long piece of dry grass and flew into the sheltered vent… next to the dryer vent.

That would be the stove exhaust vent, I thought. I guess the humans will just have to eat at restaurants until the nest is abandoned. It’ll be a sacrifice, not having to do dishes or stand over a hot stove after a long day at work, but I suppose we’ll get through it somehow.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 10

2005-04-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

(Discussion in progress about whether or not Guy 3 should mount a flatscreen TV over his bed for optimal lazy TV watching. I have taken the conversation to the gutter by suggesting that he not only mount the TV on the ceiling, but that he add a miniature video camera for that "mirror over the bed" effect found in the cheapest whorehouses and the finest hotels.)

Guy 2: No.

Me: What's wrong with the idea?

Guy 2: I don't want to think about lines of attack in the bedroom.

Me: There's a window into your marriage that I didn't need.

Guy 3: The wife has +8 fortifications.

Me: You don't have LOS on your wife's nipples.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 9

2005-04-21T13:10:00.000-04:00

Ninety nine percent of today's lunch gathering will not be immortalized here. Here's why:

Guy 3: "But I WANT a kancho with a happy ending."

Suck My Sunny Side

2005-04-20T19:32:00.000-04:00

When I finally got my first paycheck that wasn't entirely spoken for by bills, creditors, leeching exes, emergency vet bills, steam cleaners for the incident that LED to the vet bills, or one of the million other catastrophes I spent my mid-twenties lurching between, I rejoiced. And, as a proud American, I rejoiced by blowing three hundred dollars on an MP3 player. I went with a Creative player (the now-discontinued Nomad Jukebox Zen model), because that three hundred really was all the excess cash to my name. The twenty gig iPod I had been coveting with a fervor normally reserved for porn only had a Firewire port at the time. Not being a member of the Mac Cult, I would have needed to install Firewire cards on two PCs. That pushed the total to 380 smackers. I wasn't about to finance a toy, so the twenty gig Zen went home with me.

It's a great toy. I'm fond of holding its brushed aluminum case and making various annoying and inaccurate claims as to how much storage space is being waved around. I'm even fonder of making playlists for every conceivable reason. Turning 34? I'll make you a playlist! Afternoon bridal tea? I've got the soundtrack! Party? All I need to know is the average age of the attendees and the purpose of the function. Going into labor? I'll set up nine hours of songs with a good pushing beat! Nothing is worse than a frustrated DJ with access to modern technology.

But my number one favorite excuse for a playlist is a roadtrip. The last one was assembled for a two hour trip to Lancaster, PA. Packing took three minutes, but the playlist process was a happy two hours. Let's see, so four hours on the road, plus some extra time for traffic... in the mood to sing along... a happy mood, no "Traveling Soldier" drama... eh, not feeling the folk songs or the show tunes... whoa, I forgot I owned that one... voila! The perfect, happy, rocking the highway, 4.6 hour singalong playlist!

I opened the sunroof, hung my left arm out the window, and hit shuffle. Somewhere on I-83, the Red Hot Chili Peppers started to wail, and I was howling along. "Hit me you can't hurt me suck my kiss," Kiedis and I were saying to each other. "Give to me sweet sacred bliss, your mouth was made to SUCK MY KISS!" It was a full out, head snapping, chair dancing extravaganza in a 94 Mazda.

The thing is, I wasn't actually chair dancing in a 94 Mazda. I was dancing in a muddy field during the summer that I was seventeen. I am the designated driver, so I'm not high on anything but August heat and dehydration. The sun is setting at Lake Fairfax when the Peppers hit the stage, and we're all pretty worn out, but we get to our feet for one last mosh pit, one last group singalong, one last chance to wave our lighters in the air. We're just dumb, overprivileged kids from the suburbs who don't know our asses from heartbreak and desire, but we know something unpredictable is going to happen to us. College starts in two weeks, but we're not thinking about any of it, we're thinking about how we know all the words to this song and how much we rock, man, we really, really do.

THAT was the buzz that my MP3 player killed when the funky ass Flea bass cut off and the banjo cut in. "There's a dark and a troubled side of life, but there's a bright and a sunny side, tooooooo..."

Watch out for that shuffle mode, man.

A Brief Guide To Popes Named Benedict

2005-04-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

B1: Four years of poping around (575-579 AD). No one knows much about him, because that was WAY before the Internet.

B2: Two years of popehood (683-685 AD). His official title these days is "Patron Saint of Europe." A whole subcontinent! Very nice, Benedict II!

B3: Three years of being the Rock (855-858 AD). Credited with reducing the secular power over the papacy.

B4: Three years of popery (900-903 AD). After ten minutes of half-heartedly poking around the Internet, I can safely say he didn't actually do much.

B5: Less than a month of wearing the big hat (964-964 AD). Emperor Otto deposed Benedict V after less than a MONTH. How sad.

B6: Two years of Vicar of Christing (972-974 AD). Emperor Otto handpicked Benedict VI and set him up as Pope. This time, the local Romans did the deposing and killed him, to boot.

B7: Nine years as Pope (974-983 AD) - a new record! Everyone seemed to like him, and left him alone to be Pope. He returned the favor by not doing anything dramatic with other countries, other kings, or other people's wives.

B8: A whopping twelve years fishing of men (1012-1024 AD). He had some trouble getting settled at first, got run out of town a few times, but eventually settled in with a little help from a king.

B9: Twelve years, a snack break, and another year (1032-1044 AD, 1045-1046 AD). Benedict the Ninth had some major issues. A young pope (nephew to BVIII), his daddy bought him the papacy. He was apparently not a really religious type, which would be okay in pretty much anyone BUT a pope. He SOLD his office to someone for a pile of gold, and took a year off. Apparently he spent that year angling to get back in, and managed to get a second term. It ended with his excommunication.

B10: One year in the big chair (1058-1059 AD). His election involved some miscounted votes in Florida and accusations of election rigging in Ohio, and was ultimately forced to flee for his life.

B11: Eight months in charge (1303-1304 AD). Apparently three hundred years of letting the name "Benedict" take a break wasn't long enough; BXI died mysteriously after dinner one night.

B12: Eight years with the big honking ring (1334-1342 AD). One of the French popes, this one had a reputation for witch hunting. Of course, he called it "reforming."

B13: Six years of being called "Big Guy" (1724-1730 AD). Another reformist type, this one wasn't so bad. He mainly thought the cardinals should be a little less about fancy robes and spending money, a little more about the whole praying thing.

B14: Eighteen YEARS in charge (1740-1758 AD). This Big Benedict finally broke the curse of the short termers! Too bad he chased off many of the Indian and Chinese Catholics by being a stuffy pants about local tradition loopholes.

B15: Eight years of popish fun (1914-1922 AD). He was a pacifist who preached neutrality during WW1. He kept trying to arrange truces and prisoner exchanges. He also thought that foreign missions should train up local preachers ASAP (and get the white boys out of the local bars). People seemed to like him.

B16: New boy in town (elected 2005 AD). With a real name like Ratzinger and a nickname like "God's Rottweiler," well, "Benedict" is a step up.

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 8

2005-04-11T13:48:00.000-04:00

Me: "You might not like the process under a new manager. I suspect he'd be rigidly fascist."

Guy 2: "I prefer fascism to incompetence. Ze trains will run on time in ze new vorld ordeh."

HOORAY

2005-04-08T16:02:00.000-04:00

Just taking a moment from the Friday from hell to say that the only thing better than a book contract... is a book contract for your considerably more talented and hilarious writer friend! It proves that there is in fact justice in the world.

Three cheers for Guy 2!

Can Steel Be Wrapped In Flannel?

2005-04-06T10:09:00.000-04:00

Absolutely no portion of my anatomy should be made of steel. There's just no NEED for it.

Our beagle's knees are now made almost entirely from steel, which is why the usual warm weather "fitness routine" is on hold. We "work out" via a leisurely walk in which the beagle stops and sniffs every blade of grass ever assaulted by other life forms. She's trained herself to pee in six drop increments, so as to make a full bladder last. No matter how carefully she plans, she runs out before we get home. She won't admit it, and continues to stop at every rock and signpost, straining and squeezing and grunting. She will die trying to wring the last drop from her urinary tract in a frantic attempt to leave her mark on this cold and unfeeling world. Since she was raised with mostly male dogs, she does this marking in a weird half squat, half lifted leg position.

We think this posture may be related to the repeated knee injuries.

But at any rate, she's got stitches, metal plates and screws, and a plastic collar that prevents wound licking but gets her stuck under the coffee table. There will be no fitness walks for two months, maybe more.

I purchased a "fitness DVD" in a fit of self-loathing six weeks ago. It purports to turn various troublesome bits into taut hairless cables covered with lycra. I felt better about myself the next morning, and stuck the box with its steely ass photo in between "Star Trek: Season Three" and "Stargate: Season One."

This morning, as I stumbled into the kitchen with bleary eyes to give the beagle her medication and breakfast, I caught my reflection in the microwave door and found myself frozen like the victim of a Medusa. As I gazed back at my morning hair, my glasses, my plaid flannel bathrobe, and the personal bits made of something that was DEFINITELY NOT STEEL, I thought that maybe this was what the magazines meant by "letting yourself go."

So I rescued the DVD from its exile in the furthest reaches of our galaxy, and popped it in the player. After the workout, I was chock full of endorphins and good will towards man and beagle. That lasted approximately seventeen seconds, and as I dragged my quivering limbs to the bedroom, I called out to my beloved mate. (My mate, who earlier heard the Warner Brothers theme music coming from the living room, and thought, why the hell is she putting in a movie at 8:30 AM. Notice that he did not associate "his wife" with "fitness DVD.")

I said, "There is no portion of my anatomy that should be made of steel." He, being an exceptionally intelligent man and quick of wit, answered me with "Mrmph" in a very reassuring tone. As Guy 3 puts it, my mate has mastered Advanced Husband skills.

Spam, Part 4

2005-04-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

Subject line: Get Away From Aging Bakelite

Why? Why do I want to prevent myself from interacting with seventy year old phenolic resin? Did someone just discover that's what REALLY killed Andy Warhol?

Things I Said That Came Out Slightly Wrong, Part 2

2005-03-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

"Aw... does someone have forbidden nuts in his nose?"

Slightly Bitter, Part 1

2005-03-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

A relationship between attention whores ends like a Highlander movie. There can be only one.

Aunt Sophie

2005-03-29T17:18:00.000-05:00

My great-aunt Sophie was using supplemental oxygen when I was still learning to read. She and her sisters were always saying they wanted no extreme measures taken should they ever fall into a coma. They defined "extreme measures" as machine-assisted living for longer than a few months.

Her baby sister Gertrude decided, however, that Sophie must not have meant it for really real when Sophie got really sick. Ventilators, feeding tubes, and pain were Sophie's daily companions for far, far longer than a few months.

Once, in the presence of most of the family, Aunt Sophie ripped out as many tubes as she could reach, and choked out in a ruined voice, "Let me die, goddamn you, let me die."

Aunt Gertrude continued to insist that Sophie really wanted to live. And tied Sophie's arms down to prove it.

Despite many, many family witnesses (both to old discussions and recent outbursts) to the contrary. Despite HER OWN ADAMANT TESTIMONY.

By the time Aunt Sophie died, all the entire family could remember were the years of suffering, the pain, and ultimately a long coma that accomplished nothing but bedsores and brain damage.

Poor Terri's SCREWED.

So I guess I've got the right to laugh, and laugh hard at http://durrrrr.blogspot.com/.

Disney IS the Devil!

2005-03-28T17:17:00.000-05:00

Ebay: One Stop Occult Shopping!

Spam, Part 3

2005-03-26T09:48:00.000-05:00

Subject line: Young Teens – Extreme Pics Will Get U Fired

Why would they send this to my work email address? And the next question is what kind of employee would open it?

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 7

2005-03-24T13:12:00.000-05:00

Guy 2: Battle Fairies.

Guy 1: Battle Fairies?

Guy 2: Well, post-apocalyptic battle fairies.

Guy 3: Post-operative battle fairies.

Me: Post-operative post-apocalyptic battle fairies!

Guy 1: Battle Trannies! *angry rainbow flag head snap* You did NOT call me Frank!