???????

Sunday 7.

Name seven questions you would ask if you were writing an upcoming edition of the Saturday Six. Don't answer the questions: just leave the questions themselves.
Okay...uh...

1. How has your life changed since getting Internet? [If you only have Internet access at work or at the library, how has it changed the way you work or use the library?]

2. When did you get your first computer?

3. What do you think about the decor of your house/apartment/bedsit/box? Are you okay with it, and if not, what would you change?

4. Feng shui: Totally serious, totally crapola, or just another cool way to get redecorating ideas?

5. If you woke up tomorrow to find that you had permanently lost your sense of smell, how would you cope?

6. What do you do with sensitive documents [such as old credit card statements with account numbers on them]--use them as fireplace lighters, shred and recycle them, shred them and use them for hamster litter, bury them in a secret hole somewhere, or what?

7. Rhinestone shades or cheap sunglasses? [Okay, I stole that one from ZZ Top. It's still a valid question.]

That'll do 'er...

sbt/sbc

crazy...over the rainbow, I am crazy...

Saturday 6.

1. What's the craziest thing you can imagine yourself actually doing?
Killing somebody. Or, hell, as long as I'm at it, killing everybody.

2. What sport or pastime do you think someone would almost have to be crazy to attempt?
Hm...crazy is so relative. For instance, I think people that do all-over decorative scarification or physical alterations [like that tiger guy] are pretty odd--in this culture. In some cultures, it's their main method of self-decoration. We do lipo and waxing, they make scar patterns.

3. How likely would you be to do that?
Not very. I have enough scars.

4. Take the quiz: How insane are you?
"20% insane

you are completely normal"

So if you're less than 20% insane, then you've gone straight through normal and out the other side.

5. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most stupid, how stupid would you rate that quiz?
8. I almost said 7, but I added a half for the lack of punctuation and another half for the misspelling of "computer."

I would've given it a 9, but I've seen some pretty retardo quizzes. This one has too much competition to be that close to the top. After all, there are a LOT of bored 14-year-olds in the world.

6. What do you really use your computer for?
Blogging, getting news and weather, killing time, learning new things, keeping in touch with friends and family and the rest of the world, listening to and archiving music, storing images of my artwork, making digital art, watching DVD's, and reading e-books.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff. I want to participate in Shutdown Day, but I don't know if I can go the whole 24 hours. It'll be intriguing, though, for people to find out just how crazy it makes them not to have their computer on. [I have a feeling I will be using my stereo a lot. CD's and tapes...so last century, man.]

We'll see.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Why do you THINK they call it programming?

Saturday 8, boob tube edition.

1. what was your favourite TV show as a child/teen?
I had so many, I couldn't even list them all here. I was pretty partial to Transformers and Voltron, though.

2. there are a lot of specialty TV networks now: the golf channel, LOGO (gay/lesbian), G4TV (gamers). do you watch any specialty TV networks?
No.

3. the majority of my television-watching is news only. if you think about the percentages of TV you watch currently, what ranks at the highest? why?
The blank screen. Why? Because it insults my intelligence the least.

4. there are a few TV personalities that i abhor, two being bobby flay and rachael ray. i really, REALLY want to run that woman over with my car. is there a television personality that you cannot stand, and why?
I don't even know who the hell's on TV anymore. Don't care, either.

5. guilty pleasure ... for me, it's "the real housewives of orange county," when i can actually get around to watching them. what is your guilty TV pleasure?
"Star Trek" reruns.

6. HDTV: do you have it? why or why not?
No. Why not? Because TV blows, dude.

7. cable: yes or no? "how much" cable do you subscribe to, and why?
No. See 6. For what cable costs per month, I could buy--new--an entire season of Buffy or X-Files or South Park or M*A*S*H whatever other show I wanted to watch. I'd rather have that, and be able to watch it totally at my leisure, than 50 or 100 or 300 channels of aggravating, brain-pickling asswash. If I could pay by the channel, it MIGHT be a different story, provided PBS was one of the channels.

8. i love Dr. Who and wish it could go on forever (preferably with Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, phwoarrr!). which TV series would you love to last your lifetime?
None of them, since they eventually all run out of good ideas. All stories have a lifespan.

***

And I think I'm done for the day. Bedtime now.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

New car, caviar, four-star daydream...

You guessed it; this week's Saturday 6 is about money.

And no, I'm not going to buy a football team.

1. How often do you clip coupons from the newspaper or mail inserts?
Never. The bastards never have coupons for anything I buy, except maybe Folgers, and I don't go through enough coffee to give a shit whether I got fifty cents off on it. I'd gladly pay fifty cents not to have to spend half an hour going through circulars and getting increasingly angry at all the manufacturers who make things I can't use, just for one lousy coupon.

2. You buy something that contains a mail-in rebate: how likely are you to take the time to fill out and mail the application (with appropriate receipts) to actually get the rebate mailed to you?
Depends how much the rebate is. If it's a dollar or less, I don't generally bother with it.

3. How many credit cards do you have right now that have a zero balance?
First I gotta remember how many credit cards I have. Let's see, I have...five? No, six. I think. And two have balances, so I have 4 [I think] with a zero balance.

4. Take the quiz: Are you good with money?
"You're about average with money, which means you probably don't have a lot of it.
Your instincts tell you to stay out of debt and spend wisely...
But you don't always listen to your instincts!
With a little more effort, you could have a nice little nest egg. You just have to control your spending."

Yeah, you're right, I should cut back on the luxuries, and I'd have...oh...another $15 a month? And by the time I'm 67, I'd have...let's see here...2% inflation...

About 3 months' salary. W00T!!

I suppose if I drank only water and coffee, stopped buying chocolate syrup and gagged down my milk plain, walked a half-mile down the highway to work every night, bought my clothes at the thrift shop, and made my own underwear from scratch using underwires, hooks and elastic stolen from old underwear, I could save $50 or $100 a month, which would amount to roughly a year's salary. So if I'm totally miserable for the next thirty-seven years, I can live for a year after retirement. I just have to time it so I die when I'm 68. And after three and a half [more] decades of total grinding poverty, I'd probably be ready.

Ooh, I have another idea. I could stop buying that expensive Lactaid milk and buy regular milk like everybody else. Hey, it's good enough for them, right? Then my volcanic diarrhea should be good enough for them too. And I could stop buying expensive healthy food and buy the cheap-ass MSG-injected preservative-laden processed food, which will fuck up my nervous system til I'm running screaming through the streets, and then they'll lock me up and I'll be set for life [as long as I don't mind meatloaf every Thursday].

Another idea: I could cancel the cable and save $50 a month. Oh, wait, I DON'T HAVE CABLE TO START WITH. Ditto for cell phone.

Or I could save $50 a month by cancelling my Internet access, which would leave me with no access to the outside world, thus turning me into a shriveled, bitter hermit and setting me up for an early demise.

Or, let's see, what other unnecessary expenses do I have? Oh, there's car insurance. I can drive without that as long as I don't get caught. And what do I need AAA for? It's not like we ever have bad road conditions in Minnesota. It's sunny and 70 all the time here. Oh yeah, and there's rent. Why rent a secure, dry, warm apartment for $600, when for half that price I could get a roach-infested, closet-sized shithole? [I jest. The closet-sized ones are at least $400.]

I've made my point. When you make $20K a year, there ain't a lot of fat left on the budget to trim off.

I suppose I could get a second job [or, rather, a third job, since I consider art my second job]. Eventually the stress would cause me to relapse and start self-harming again, but who cares when there's money to be made?

5. What is the most expensive thing you purchased in the last week?
A Sandman graphic novel from Amazon.

6. On a scale of one to ten, with ten meaning that it was something you needed badly and urgently, how much did you really need this particular item?
Oh, about a 2. I was going to get it eventually anyway, and I was ordering something for my niece and needed to bump it up over $25 for the free shipping. But it wasn't a life-and-death item.

Well, that's enough bitterness for one day.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...