I Really Hate Blog Names

Cars and Family

2007-05-27T03:42:00.001-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. What color car do you drive?
Stalker question! Next.

2. How many cars have you had in the past of this same color?
None; this is my first car.

3. What does this particular color mean to you?
See 1.

4. Take the quiz: What color car should you drive?
It says I should drive a blue car. [Incidentally, this is also the colour that the Inner Funky Hair Colour Quiz suggests.]

5. Would you ever consider driving a car the color the quiz suggests?
Sure!

6. Do you consider yourself the most-aggressive driver on the road, the least-aggressive, or something in between?
Somewhere in between. I know I'm not the most attentive driver on the road [oops].

***

Saturday 8.

1. who's the oldest living member of your family?
No idea.

2. who's the newest?
No idea. I have cousins that poop out babies right and left. I don't keep track anymore.

3. if you could spend a two-week vacation with one family member, who would it be?
My brother W, because I never get to see him.

4. the old saying goes, "you can pick your friends, but you cannot pick your family." if you could choose one of your friends, who would you 'elect' to become a member of your family?
It's a tie between CM and BW.

5. who in your family can you just NOT stand?
There's a hole with no bottom.

6. do you have a member of the family who is currently suffering an illness? (i'm going for physical illness here, but feel free to talk about the batshit-crazy ones, too)
Actually, yeah, I have an aunt with cancer. Sadly, it doesn't look like it's gonna end well.

7. do you have a family member that you've lost contact with? who are they, and why do you not currently have contact?
I don't have contact with my brother J, because ignoring him is the only thing that keeps me from strangling him.

8. do you have any famous family members?
Nope. I have an uncle who looks exactly like a 19th-century U.S. president, though.

So that's about it for now.

...Aaand Google is encountering server errors. There seem to be a lot of that since they took over Blogger. Hm, couldn't have seen that coming!

sbt/sbc

COOOOOOOKIEEEEEEEE!!!!!111!one!! numnumnumnum

2007-05-20T03:38:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. Do you order Girl Scout cookies each year? If so, how many boxes do you buy in an average year?
No.

2. How long does it take you to finish off a box of cookies?
I'm ashamed to say.

3. What's your favorite kind of cookie to dip in milk?
I don't have one.

4. Take the quiz: What kind of cookie are you?
It says I'm a black and white cookie.

"You're often conflicted in life, and you feel pulled in two opposite directions.
When you're good, you're sweet as sugar. And when you're bad, you're wicked!"

mkay.

5. If you had to bake cookies for a party, what flavor would you bake?
Chocolate ones.

6. What's the right way to eat an Oreo? As a whole, or by licking off the filling and then eating the two wafers individually?
Depends on what kind it is. If it's the kind with the plain white filling, I scrape out the filling and throw it away because I hate it. If it's the peanut butter kind or some other flavoured filling, I eat it as a whole.

I think I got too much sun yesterday. And too much sugar. I should rest, but I'm too restless.

Eh.

sbt/sbc

A day late and a dollar short...

2007-04-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6, Reader's Choice edition. And he picked one of my questions! Boo-ya!

1. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #90 from Remo: In the event of a disaster or act of disorder, are you currently prepared to remain self-sufficient for a day, a week, or a month until measures could be taken to restore order and services?
Maybe a week, if I eat absolutely everything in the freezer and the cupboard and start using Kleenex when the TP runs out.

2. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #91 from Frida: Feng shui: Totally serious, totally crapola, or just another cool way to get redecorating ideas?
Somewhere in between the first two, and definitely the third. I think that there's energy flowing through everything, and I also believe the amount of harmony in your surroundings influences your health and happiness. However, I would question whether the cardinal orientation of your bed or your rhododendron bush or whatever really enhances or saps your energy. I also think that everybody's idea of harmony is different. I can't stand living in a place that doesn't have at least a little clutter, and I hate giant open spaces between rooms. [I actually put shelves between the living room and the kitchen because the huge expanse of open space freaks me out.] Somebody else might walk in and have a claustrophobia attack, but I'm comfy with it. So I don't think there's just one system that works for everybody.

That being said, if you just bought a new armoire and can't decide what wall to put it along, it sure can't hurt to consult a feng shui book. You never know.

3. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #92 from Call Me Betty: Do you feel comfortable being yourself in public or do you feel you have to hide certain aspects of your personality?
Well, there's public and there's public--different venues have different standards of behaviour. I wouldn't think anything of swearing out loud while at, say, a concert; but I wouldn't use the same language in church. I don't make much of an effort to control my temper in public, though, because if people think you're happy, they sometimes act a little overly friendly. If I'm not able to answer in kind, I want people to know it so they leave me alone.

4. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #93 from Wil: Name your favorite flower to appear in the Spring around you?
I don't have one, largely because I don't have a favourite flower to begin with. Also, I've lived in apartments and dorms for the last fifteen years, so if you gave me a list of flowers and asked me to identify which ones bloom in the spring, I couldn't do it at gunpoint.

5. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #94 from Cat.: From this list, are there any places you would never travel?
I don't think I could work up enough give-a-fuck to travel to any of them, frankly. The only way I'd travel to a foreign country is if I could be assured of getting food that I can eat, getting private bathroom facilities, being safe [at least roughly as safe as in the US], and not having to deal with people's goddamn smoke. If I can get those, I'll go anywhere. If I can't, I won't.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #95 from Kathy: Who is your favorite [motion picture] director?
I don't have one, nor do I care enough about movies to try to pick one. Would somebody, anybody, mind leaving a comment explaining to me why people get such a big hard-on for movies? I don't get it. It's not that I hate them or anything, and I'll sit down with a DVD from time to time and occasionally set aside a "movie day"; but I don't understand the "OMG i have 2 chg my pantees SPIDRMAN 3 is cuming out!!1 ooooomgwtfbbq!!!!11!" attitude.

Same thing with books and albums. When I hear about the new Spidey movie or Harry Potter book or Beck album, I'm happy; but I'm not gonna show up at B&N or the cineplex dressed up like Ginny Weasley or the Hobgoblin or whatever. I guess I just don't have the temperament to get seriously excited about things like that.

But this question wasn't about that anyway; it was about film directors. I can only name about 5 directors off the top of my head, and I haven't seen enough movies by any of them [with the possible exception of Tim Burton, who is T3h 1337] to rank them.

So.

Good questions overall, though; and thanks again to Patrick for using one of mine. :)

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Sunday Seven

2007-04-09T12:05:00.000-05:00

...which I'm doing late. Oh well.

Name seven of the very first things you notice about a person -- male or female -- when you meet them fir the first time.

1. Whether they're making noise.
2. Whether they're in my way.
3. Gender, facial hair, and skin colour all at the same time [i.e. facial features].
4. General body type.

Uh...now I'm having trouble. I'm not in the habit of noticing things about people, because very little about them is relevant to me unless I'm expected to have some kind of prolonged contact with them. Lemme think...

5. How they're dressed.

Uh...

6. How they talk [if they're talking].
7. If they're wearing perfume or cologne, my poor sinuses notice it right away. If they're not, it doesn't usually occur to me til later.

Hope that answers it adequately.

***

Now for the Saturday 6, which is even later.

1. Do you believe that there is some form of intelligent life on a planet other than Earth?
There has to be. Statistically, there just has to be.

2. If there was, and we were to encounter it, which do you think would do more harm to the other: the Earthlings or the Extra Terrestrials?
I'd have to know something about the extraterrestrials before I could answer that. Humans have a stellar track record for fucking up pretty much everything they get their grubby hands on, though.

3. If a close friend or family member told you that they had been kidnapped by aliens, how likely are you to believe them if they can offer no physical evidence?
Depends which friend or family member it is. Some of them I'd be willing to at least halfway believe; others, not so much.

4. Take the quiz: How likely is it that you would be abducted by Extra Terrestrials?
It said I'm 55% likely.

5. If you could fly in a spaceship to get a close look at any of the planets besides Earth, which would you choose and why?
I'm not picky; I'd welcome a chance to look at any one of them up close.

6. If you had the chance to live on a fully-developed colony on Mars, would you do so?
No. I don't think we should have colonies on Mars or anywhere else.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

2007-04-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat.

What is the most mysterious phenomenon you have ever witnessed?
I've seen some interesting psychic phenomena, but none of those can top the sheer mystery of a native English speaker, with normal intelligence, who has attended public school from kindergarten through twelfth grade and still does not know basic mechanical rules for grammar. That mystifies the hell out of me.

What is the worst thing that could happen to you?
To be disabled or declared mentally ill, and left in the care of uncaring assholes.

If you had to guess two people at work were having an affair, which two would pair up? Why? [please don't give full names]
I have no idea. I don't pay attention to that kind of thing. My "X is sleeping with Y" radar has been broken for years, and besides, I go to work to work, not to find out who's fucking whom.

Blech. I feel gross.

same gross time, same gross channel...

Smatterday

2007-04-07T08:28:00.000-05:00

Saturday 8.

1. are you a religious person?
Sorta, although not in the dogmatic sense. Most of the people I've known who would describe themselves as religious are either dismissive or outright intolerant of other people's beliefs. I go to a UU church, but I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how many UU's consider themselves religious.

2. are you a spiritual person?
I used to think so, but I'm not so sure anymore.

3. were you raised in a religious household?
Not really. We used to say grace at the table and celebrate the usual Christian holidays, but there wasn't a lot of churchgoing or Bible-reading. My mom's childhood was full of ruler-wielding nuns, and she didn't want us to have a bunch of unnecessary guilt trips just for being human, so we didn't get indoctrinated much. The Golden Rule was the only thing that really got hammered into us.

4. have you/do you/would you raise your children in a religious household?
N/A.

5. i'm turning 35 years old this year, but i'm often mistaken as being at least ten years younger. in fact, people rarely believe that my 13-yr. old is actually my daughter, and swear that she's my sister. are you mistaken for being older or younger than you truly are?
I got carded a few years ago [I was 28 at the time].

6. when my husband and i first married, he looked like he was still in high school and i was often (jokingly) accused of robbing the cradle - we're the same age. a month ago, one of my husband's aunts thought that he was my FATHER (vindication!). do you and your significant other appear to be significantly younger or older than each other?
N/A.

7. there is an agency called the american association of anti-aging medicine that is dedicated to the advancement of therapeutics related to the science of longevity medicine. would you consult such an agency or other medical office for supplements, advice, etc. to help you increase your longevity?
No.

8. OT ... what are you doing for fun this weekend?
I'm not having fun this weekend. I'm fulfilling obligations and doing chores. If I get a chance, I will spend half or all of a day in bed. I'm getting injured too easily and healing too slowly lately, so I think it's time for a rest day.

sbt/sbc

I don't, but thanks anyway

2007-04-01T01:28:00.000-05:00

Saturday 8 is looking at the third finger on your left hand [but trying not to look like it's looking].

1. are you currently married?
No, I managed to avoid making that mistake with any of the people I dated. Of all the rights women have in America, the right to live alone and not have to take anybody's orders or put up with anybody's shit [at least in my own apartment] is the one I cherish most.

2. have you been married in the past, but are currently divorced from that person?
See 1.

3. when was the last wedding you attended?
My aunt's, when I was 4.

4. have you ever been a groomsman or in a bridal party?
No. And I won't. Generally it's your friends who are your bridesmaids, right? I've seen those dresses, man. Anybody who would ask me to wear one of those fucking things is NOT my friend. Of all the rights women have in America, the right NOT to wear a dress, especially a fuckugly teal satin dress with a three-foot bow on the ass, is also among my most cherished.

5. do you support same-gender marriages? why or why not?
Sure, why should straight people have all the misery? Besides, in a gay wedding, the chances of me having to wear a fuckugly teal dress would be pretty slim. I'm having a hard time imagining gay people wanting to copy all the sexist/heteronormative symbolism with which the "traditional" American wedding is rife.

6. what was the most fun you've ever had at a wedding?
Dude. I was FOUR. I don't even remember being there.

7. what's been the worst experience you've ever had at a wedding?
See 6.

8. have you ever made a complete fool out of yourself at a wedding, due to alcohol or other influences?
See 6.

That about does 'er.

sbt/sbc

???????

2007-03-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-10T23:09:00.000-06:00

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?

2007-03-10T13:58:00.000-06:00

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...

2007-03-04T00:01:00.000-06:00

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...

This Is Your Life, Judged By Restrictive Cultural Norms

2007-02-25T01:10:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. Rating them on a scale of one to ten, which of the following aspects of your life would you think rates the highest: mind, body or spirit?
I had to take the quiz before I figured out what this question was asking for. I thought it was asking me to rate them in terms of how important I thought they were. Apparently I'm supposed to rate them on whether they suck or not.

My mind gets a, I don't know, a 7 or an 8, given my grades, my IQ score [147 tyvm], the way they were always trying to shove me into gifted class, and the enormous difficulty I have in being charitable towards mentally slow people.

My body gets about a 3 because my system is over-sensitive. It functions, but it won't accept 2/3 of the food in the store without some fucked-up reaction. I also can't take most drugs because my body reacts so bad that the side effects are nearly always worse than the thing they were Rx'd for; so if I get seriously ill, I'm pretty much hosed. If I lived in a Native American tribe or something and they didn't have modern drugs or preservative-laden food, I'd probably rate it higher. Also, my fat would come in handy in the winter. :)

My spirit gets a 5. I still have a lot of closets to clean out and a lot of shit to shovel. For some reason I'm having a hard time picking up my witchcraft books and picking up on theory. It's not that I don't believe in it anymore--well, maybe I believe somewhat less--but that it's not as directly relevant to the work I'm doing. Or maybe it should be. I'll have to look into that.

2. Rating them on a scale of one to ten, which of the following aspects of your life would you think rates the lowest: friends/family, love or finance?
Finance. I WANT MONEY DAMMIT. I only make 20K a year, so I'll give that a 2.

Friends and family get a 6 because my family is there for me but doesn't fucking listen when I ask them to stop doing something. My friends are great, but most of them live in other parts of the country, so it's kinda hard to get together.

Love life is a 7 as long as I have fresh batteries [shut up, you asked]. It would be an 8 or a 9 except our society is filled with nosy psychos who aren't happy unless everybody has a hot dog in their bun at all times, and a lot of corporations have vested interests in ramping up people's not-getting-laid anxiety for reasons I've explained elsewhere. So other than the fact that I live in a "OMG UR NOT GETTIN LAID U L0Z0R" culture, I'm doing okay. :)

3. Considering all six categories, which do you think would rank closest to the middle, a "5"?
See 1 and 2. You already asked me to rank them.

4. Take the quiz: How does your life rate?

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	5.3
Mind:	6.4
Body:	6.6
Spirit:	5
Friends/Family:	3.2
Love:	2.9
Finance:	5.9
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

5. Of the first three questions, how many of your responses match the responses of the quiz?
The only one that matches is "Spirit." "Mind" comes sorta close. I suppose I should have counted chemical sensitivities as a serious illness.

6. Which of the test's responses do you disagree the most with and why?
Love life. This is so retarded. This is exactly what I'm talking about. "OMFG THERE IZNT A P3NUS IN UR VJAYJAY!!!!1!!!!11one U P00R THING U NEED A BF RIT NOW omgomgomg"

This shit needs to stop. It needs to stop right now, before we actually have mobs going round with torches, looking everybody's bed to make sure there are at least two people in each one. Folks, I know the advertising agencies are doing a very good job of making you feel inadequate for not being in lurve every single second of your life [and they're making a LOT of money off of you in the process]; but get a grip already. If you're gonna go to the trouble of writing a quiz judging people's love lives, at least take the time to put the emphasis on whether they're content with their marital status instead of just automatically ascribing emotional states to different statuses. I've known married people who would kill to be in my position.

I need coffee.

sbt/sbc

Ugh.

2007-02-24T12:26:00.000-06:00

So Google bent me over, yanked my pants down, and switched me to "the new Blogger," which I'm guessing is just like regular Blogger only shittier, more intrusive, and closer to the oligarchical corporatocracy that Google and Ted Turner and Bill Gates [who collectively now own, I estimate, about 99.992% of everything] crave.

But at least I can still post, and it won't be nagging me anymore, whining and pleading to let it Googleize me. So it's like having a boyfriend, only cheaper and with less laundry to do.

Anyway, in an effort to feel less dirty somehow, here's the Saturday 8.

1. wine: which do you prefer ... reds or whites, or perhaps something different, like a dessert/ice wine?
The only wine I can drink that doesn't give me weird reactions is some homemade wine that somebody gave me. In any case, most wine tastes like somebody peed in grape juice. I'm sure nice wine doesn't taste like that, but I'm not gonna spend $2954743 on a bottle of wine when it's just gonna make me sicker than fuck anyway.

2. beer: as a guinness drinker, i prefer my beer to be in the "non-see thru" variety. The Husband prefers harp & bass. i'm convinced his co-workers would drink hamm's if it were served to them. what kind of beer, if any, do you prefer?
Every kind of beer I have ever drunk has tasted putrid. One of the all-time most difficult things for me to understand is how people can drink it.

3. spirits: are you a hard-liquor drinker? if so, what kind(s)? if not, why not?
No. Why? Because, as incredible as this may sound, I don't like feeling like my heart and lungs are trying to shut themselves down. I also don't like waking up the next day with uncomfortable internal swellings in the liver/gallbladder area.

"Well, you're drinking too much, then."

Really. A teaspoon is too much, in that case, because that's all it takes to make me hella sick as described above. How did that happen? Well, let's just put it this way: If you're taking Topamax, and you care even a tiny bit about ever, ever, ever wanting to drink alcohol again, stop taking it now. If you can't stop taking Topamax for some reason, clean out your liquor cabinet and give away all your booze, cos you're never gonna use the shit again.

Or you could do like I do, drink one tablespoon of all-natural homemade wine, and wake up with a furious hangover. [Yes, I had my liver tested. No, they didn't find anything wrong. I was given the choice of giving up alcohol or having exploratory surgery.] Yes, that is one tablespoon, as in 1/2 fl. oz.

And people have the balls to ask me why I don't take medication anymore.

4. my wine bar opens in a few weeks, and The Husband thinks i have too many people to invite to the grand opening. should i brown-nose and keep my bosses on the guest list, or should i forget them and just stick with my good friends (the bosses will probably overhear people talking about the opening, unofortch).
Do whatever you want. It's your wine bar.

5. when i drink a good red, i LOVE to have a rich, thick, heavy slab of parmesan to eat while enjoying my wine. when you drink alcohol (or in the past, if you are currently a non-drinker), what types of snacks or foods do you like to have while you drink ... and are their certain 'pairings' you prefer?
See 3.
6. are you going to watch the oscars this weekend? why or why not?
No. Because life is short, that's why not. I have important belly button lint to attend to.

7. i love celeb fashion, and love the snarky site "go fug yourself" even more. are you interested in any of the red carpet styles that happen at awards shows?
No.

8. so, the angels sang, the planets aligned, and my future second ex-husband is touring again with his old band, The Police. i was too young to see a Police concert but have seen every single one of Sting's concerts since he went solo. even if it involves resurrecting Jim Morrison or Bob Marley from the dead, which musical artist/group would you die to see live?
Nobody.

Somehow I don't feel any cleaner. Maybe I'll take another shower and wait for Google and whoever the hell makes Topamax [I don't even care enough to look it up] to call me up and threaten to sue over this post.

Maybe there's a support group or something I can join.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

What is the Saturday 6?

2007-02-17T20:27:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. Take the quiz: What game show host are you?
It says I'm Bill Cullen, whoever the hell that is.

2. What game show do you think you would be best at playing?
I haven't seen a game show in such a long time, I really couldn't tell you.

3. What game show do you think you would be worst at playing?
See 2.

4. Have you ever applied or auditioned as a contestant for any game show? If so, which one?
No.

5. If you had to apply or audition for a game show, which one would you most likely choose?
If I HAD to? Like, people would die if I didn't? Any one that, if I got selected, I could say, "Y'know, thanks but no thanks."

6. If you found out you had to host a game show, which one would do you know well enough that you could actually host?
None of them.

Not the greatest answers, but it's the truth.

sbt/sbc

Be Mine <3

2007-02-11T23:30:00.000-06:00

Sunday 7.

Come up with seven messages, naughty or nice (but not too naughty!), that you'd like to see printed on those heart-shaped Valentine's Day candies.
This is actually a concept that occurred to me several years ago, and I went so far as to use my CGI skills [decidedly unleet at the time] to do some graphics of them.

As you can see, there are far more than seven messages there.

Have a good week!

sbt/sbc

When the lights go down in the city...

2007-02-10T14:49:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. A friend arrives from out of town and wants to go to dinner at a nice locally-owned restaurant: where would you take her?
To a different town. The only places here that serve dinner are the bars.

2. Your friend then says he wants to learn something about the history of your city: where would you take him first?
City hall, I guess. Also, how did my friend get a sex change between question 1 and question 2?

3. Does your current hometown have any specific kind of weather threats (i.e., tornado alley, etc.) or natural disaster threats (i.e., earthquake faults, volcanic activity) that concerns you?
It gets really, really cold in the winter.

4. Take the quiz: What city shares your personality?
It says I'm Killarney, Ireland.

5. Have you ever visited this city or lived there before?
Never heard of it before in my life.

6. Based on what you know about that city, either firsthand or from others, do you think it would be a good fit for you? Do you think it would be a better fit than the city in which you now live?
I know nothing about it. If it's bigger than 10K people, I'd probably hate it.

And that's that.

sbt/sbc

Better to be poor than be a fat man in the eye of a needle...

2007-02-10T10:39:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8 weighs in.

1. are you over- or under-weight, or "just right"?
I'm an oinker. Ironically, though, a couple years ago I weighed about 10 lbs. less than I do now [210], and I felt like I was getting too thin and wasting away. My body seems pretty comfy where it is, though; if I reduce my daily calorie intake by even 300 or 400 calories, I end up getting sick all the time no matter how many vitamins I take or how much rest I get. I think that's my body's way of saying, "Stop starving me, bitch." So finally I said, "Okay, I get it, here's your extra couple hundred calories."

2. what do you consider a "healthy weight" for yourself?
Healthy in what way? I'd really like to know, especially since more research is showing that your diet and exercise habits have way more to do with your overall health than the number on the scale. Fat = unhealthy? I don't believe it anymore. Junk food diet and sedentary lifestyle = unhealthy. Also, that BMI bullshit doesn't take your frame into account. If I was 210 and looked like the Kool-Aid Man, I'd grudgingly accept the "obese" label. But I'm not. I'm 210 and look like I'm 170. I'm a 45-39-49, and while that's still a size 20, those are damn good proportions for that weight. [/shameless self-aggrandizement]

That being said, I'd like to lose some more weight for two reasons: a] the bigger your size, the smaller the selection of affordable, comfortable clothes*; and b] I really need to take the pressure off my knees, because I don't want to have knee surgery if I can avoid it. How much weight I would have to lose in order to forestall knee surgery, I don't know. I do know that every pound I've lost has made a small difference [and the few pounds I gained back have made a difference in the other direction].

3. in your past, have you struggled with weight issues?
o_O

Ya think?

Actually, I've looked back on my eating patterns, and the only time I seem to gain weight is when I eat more sugar. Eating an extra burger or pizza or putting extra butter on my popcorn doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. So it looks like Atkins was onto something. I think if I really make a commitment to keep the sugar intake down, I'll drop what I gained. Also, spring will be coming soon, and I'll be less housebound. Maybe I'll even go back to taking walks.

4. give us an example of a comfort food for you.
Everything.

5. aside from eating when hungry, are you a 'snacker' when you are bored, stressed, or emotionally upset?
All of the above; but one of my greatest pigger triggers is cold. If I'm warm, I don't have much appetite; if I'm cold, I want to eat everything I see, even if I'm stuffed. I'm also weird in that the times when I haven't eaten in 7 or 8 hours are the times when I least want to eat, and when I'm starting to feel full, I feel a strong urge to keep stuffing myself. I have no idea why.

6. on nightline last night, the host was talking about models at fashion week being on "the nicotine diet." i've seen people GAIN weight from stopping smoking, but not smoking to lose. have you ever smoked to keep thin, or known anyone who has?
No and no. I have never smoked for any reason. I've heard that doctors used to tell people to take up smoking for their weight, though. Way to go, doc. I wonder if any of them are thinking back on that now and regretting it.

7. i've never been a dessert person, and rarely eat desserts; all of my girlfriends are the same way. do you regularly eat dessert when you go out to a restaurant or eat at home?
Semi-regularly. I like to have a little something after supper unless I've already eaten a lot. If I don't have any dessert items around, I just mix myself a glass of chocolate milk.

8. if someone close to you asked your advice on the best way to lose weight, what would you tell them?
I'd tell them they need to ask somebody who doesn't weigh 210 lbs. I'm pretty confident that nobody is ever going to ask me for weight-loss advice.

And that's about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look at the vegetables in the freezer and then make some buttered popcorn.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...
__________
*Anybody that's thinking of mentioning Lane Bryant, zip it. I said AFFORDABLE. Their prices are okay, but nothing to do flips over. And unless you want to go to one of their shittily-stocked stores in which you're guaranteed not to find what you want, you have to pay out the ass, the yingyang, and every other hole on your body for shipping. The only sincere praise I have for them is that you can actually get cotton briefs--actual honest-to-Goddess BRIEFS--in colours without having to buy a white pair as part of the pack.

gotta love Minnesota....

2007-02-08T09:31:00.000-06:00

It's -11° out, with a wind chill of -24°. Makes me glad I'm indoors with good heat and some cocoa.

Booking Through Thursday.

What kind of care do you take of your books? Let's review, shall we?

1. Are you careful with the spines? Or do you crack your books open to make them lay flat?
I try to be careful with the spines. I don't always succeed, but I try.

2. Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper?
Post-it notes.

3. Do you write in your books? Ever? If you do, do you make small marks, or write in as much blank space as you can find? Pen or pencil? Highlighter? Your name on the front page?
Very rarely will I write in a book that's not a textbook. If I do, it will generally be pencil and only a word or two, as a reference or a WTF. I don't put my names in books. I know who they belong to.

4. Do you toss your books on the floor? Into bookbags? Or do you treat them tenderly, with respect?
I try to put them on shelves. However, I do have one set of dictionaries that I use as a step when I do my knee-strengthening step exercises.

5. Do you ever lay your book face-down, to save your place?
If I'm just going to the bathroom or to get something to eat, yeah.

6. Um--water? Do you bathe with your books? Hold them with wet hands? Read out in the rain? Anything of that sort?
No, I don't shower with books.

7. Are your books lined up on a bookshelf? Or crammed in any which way? Stacked on the floor?
All of the above.

8. Do you make a distinction--as regards book care--between hardcovers and paperbacks?
No.

9. And, to recap? Naturally, you love all of your books, but how, exactly? Are your books loved in the battered way of a well-loved teddy bear, or like a cherished photo album or item of clothing that's used, appreciated, but carefully cared for?
Somewhere in between the two, with certain books tending toward one extreme or the other.

10. Any additional comments?
I think I got frostbite on my face.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Pitch, Yaw, and Roll::

Onesome: Pitch-- What is your singing range? ...and do you sing at all? Laurie, you're leading off here !
I can go from C below middle C to a little over 2 C's above middle C. I don't know what that is, if that's soprano or alto or what, but it's just over 3 octaves.

Twosome: Yaw--'ll ken that one? Do you have any 'dialect words' that you use as a matter of course? "Ken", meaning "to understand" (Scottish and other derivations) in this case...
Spendy! Stuff isn't expensive up here, it's spendy!

Threesome: and Roll-- on down the road? Hey, if the roads were as icy as they've been in the Midwest and East would driving to work even be a consideration for you?
O noes, ice n cold n stuff!!!11! Dude, we don't have a choice. It's either drive to work in the ice or get fired every winter. I'm lucky to have co-workers that will swing by and give me a lift when it's -15° out and the Bitchmobile won't start.

***

And that's a wrap.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

3rd and 6

2007-02-03T23:13:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. Who's going to win the Super Bowl?
Like I said, CBS.

2. Have you been invited to any Super Bowl parties? (Or are you throwing your own?)
No.

3. If you were invited, would you go, even if you hate football?
Only if a bunch of my friends were going to be there.

4. Have you ever thrown a party focused on a television program?
No.

5. If you were given free tickets to the Super Bowl, would you attend? Why or why
not?
No. Why? Well, let's see if I can come up with three good reasons.

~I hate large, crowded, noisy places.
~I'd still have to get there, which would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time.
~I don't give a flying fuck about the Stupid Bowl.

I think that about covers it. If somebody gave me free tickets, I would scalp them. I'd enjoy the money much better than I'd enjoy paying out the anus for a plane ticket to go sit in a crowded stadium and get a panic attack from the noise and not be able to use the bathrooms because of all the people in them.

6. Do you worry about security at such an event? Would those worries prevent you from attending or in any way make you less likely to attend?
Nope. See 5. If there was a riot or a terrorist attack or something, that would be horrible; but I wouldn't worry about my own personal safety, just the safety of whoever's there. The only thing that worries me is that somebody might set off a bomb or hijack the Goodyear blimp and crash it into the stadium, and Bush will use that as an excuse to implant chips in everybody's ass or something.

sbt/sbc

Sports section

2007-02-03T11:17:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8.

1. did you participate in competitive sports as a child? if so, which one(s)?
No.

2. were there any sports that you wanted to participate in, but could/did not?
No.

3. did your high school have a 'good' football team?
We didn't have a football team.

4. did you go to high school football games? why or why not?
See 3.

5. which was the best in your high school: the football team, the cheerleaders or the band?
We didn't have a band either, so I'll have to go with the cheerleaders.

6. are you more partial to college football, NFL football, or arena football?
Hockey.

7. there is some contention among people in regard to the college bowl system vs. the NFL playoff system; steve spurrier has been very vocal about his desire for a true play-off system for college football. i'm not well-versed in this as i am an ice hockey fan, so i'm doing some research on this to form an educated opinion on the system. do you think that the college system should mirror the play-off system for the NFL?
You won't find an educated opinion about it here. They could use the rock-paper-scissors system for all I give a shit.

8. OK ... bears or colts? who's it going to be tomorrow?
Like I said: given the going rate for advertising slots during the Stupid Bowl, CBS is gonna be the real winner.

sbt/sbc

The Ol' Seven Six

2007-01-27T14:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. Take the quiz: What happened the year that you were born?

In 1976 (the year you were born)

Gerald Ford is president of the US

The US celebrates its bicentennial, marking the 200th anniversary of its independence

The Viking II sets down on Mars' Utopia Plains

Promising, "I will never lie to you," Jimmy Carter is elected president of the United States

Israeli commandos rescue hostages from Entebbe, Uganda

The Concorde begins flights from New York to Europe

George W. Bush is arrested and fined for driving under the influence of alcohol

Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is invented by Seymour Cray

Freddie Prinze Jr., Reese Witherspoon, Colin Farrell, 50 Cent, Fred Savage, and Shannon Elizabeth are born

Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

Pittsburgh Steelers win Superbowl X

Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup

Rocky is the top grossing film

Filming begins on George Lucas' Star Wars

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is published

The Eagles Their Greatest Hits compilation becomes the first album in history to be certified platinum

"Tonight's The Night" by Rod Stewart spends the most time at the top of the US chart

Charlie's Angels and The Muppet Show premiere

What Happened the Year You Were Born?

2. Of the events mentioned, which would you most liked to have witnessed in person?
Bush getting a DeeWee. I could use the laugh at his expense.

3. Of the people mentioned, who would you most like to meet in person?
I don't really care if I ever meet any of them.

4. Of the people mentioned, who would you least like to meet in person?
See 3.

5. Which of the events do you think had the most profound effect on history?
I'd say it's a tie between Carter's election and the Cray-1 [considering both the Camp David Accord and the effect that computers have come to have on our lives].

6. Which of the events do you think contributed the most to our culture?
Gotta be the filming of Star Wars.

And that does it for me. :D

sbt/sbc

Stuff

2007-01-25T07:39:00.000-06:00

Booking Through Thursday.

1. How many unread books do you have in your house, right now? (Your own books, that is--not ones that belong to other family members--and not counting things like school books, if you have them.) Clearly, an estimate will do.
Man, I dunno...300, give or take 100.

2. To the best of your recollection, what is the OLDEST unread book in your collection? How long has it been waiting?
You mean the oldest one that I haven't even cracked? That would be a 1921 edition of H. G. Wells' The Outline of History.

Or do you mean the one I've had the longest? I have a few dozen left over from when my family was given a huge load of books, back when I was about 10. I think I had all the ones I read before that.

3. Do your TBR books (that's "To Be Read," if you didn't know) haunt you, make you feel guilty that you haven't read them yet?
Sometimes, especially when I'm in the library or book-hunting on Amazon. I'm gradually assimilating the idea that I may very well die before I read every book I own.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Plaid Kittens Attack!::

Onesome: Plaid-- Yes? No? Wouldn't even consider it? Makes the outfit? Makes terrible wallpaper?
Good for kilts and sassy little Catholic-schoolgirl-style skirts. Red and black plaid can be worn as part of a Goth look. Regular plaid...uh. No. Not unless it's on a flannel shirt [and try getting a flannel shirt that's NOT plaid; they make 'em, but you gotta hunt a bit].

Twosome: Kittens-- Cutest things in the world? Creatures from another planet? Things other people have?
I love 'em. My sinuses don't. And I live in a no-pets building, so I do not have a kitty. :(

Threesome: Attack!-- of the Killer Tomatoes! Okay, what's your vote for the worst movie title of all time?
I looked up several bad movie title lists, and I...I just can't make up my mind. There are so many to choose from. Some good candidates:

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
Doctor of Doom and The Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy
Franken Hooker
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

Each one of these gave me an instant "good gods, I don't EVEN want to know" reaction. So it's a six-way tie. Come to think of it, "Six-Way Tie" would be a pretty crapalicious name for a movie, too...

Bah. Enough of this.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Honk If You Hate People Too

2007-01-21T11:38:00.000-06:00

Sunday 7.

Name seven pet peeves other drivers commit.
~Talking on the phone, unless it's a dire emergency. [I can get on my high horse now, since I've mostly broken the habit of eating while I drive. :-P ]

~Tailgating, especially at night when their lights shine right in all of your mirrors.

~Not turning their highbeams down when approaching at night.

~Passing when there's another car coming the other direction, so both you and the car in the other lane have to slow down to avoid an accident.

~Drunk driving. Thank the gods I've never known anybody killed or seriously injured by a drunk driver, but it still pisses me off because there's no excuse in the world for it.

~Parallel parking 2 or 3 feet from the curb. USE YOUR DAMN MIRRORS. I passed parallel parking on my driver's test in a huge-ass aircraft carrier of a van that I'd only driven once before; you can jolly well get your stupid monster truck just a little closer to the curb, especially if you have a whole half a block to park in.

~People who drive the wrong direction in an angled parking lot. Even if the arrows are invisible, you should be able to see the direction by which way the spaces in that lane are pointing.

I also gotta agree with Patrick about the ones he listed, too, although weaving in and out doesn't bother me too much unless they're cutting me off or being a hazard. I've been in places where it's hard to figure out what lane you need to be in, so sometimes it looks like you're weaving when you're not trying to. But other times, yeah, somebody's really just trying to get to the stoplight 3 seconds earlier.

***

blargh. Ever feel tired and cruddy, lie down and take a nap, and then wake up feeling more strung out than when you went to sleep?

Yeah.

sbt/sbc

Hooray for boobies!

2007-01-20T13:55:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. What do you generally find more offensive in a film: too much bad language or too much nudity?
pfft. That's like asking Prince whether he's more offended by too much eyeliner or too much Spandex.

I don't care for sex scenes in movies [unless I'm actually watching it FOR that], but nudity doesn't really bug me. And what is this "too much bad language" you speak of?

2. You're touring an art museum and find that it has a special exhibit promoting the beauty of the human body that features live nude models. Would you walk into that room?
Depends on how much of a prudish mood I'm in. It's totally irrational, but I'd be more embarrassed on behalf of the naked people than myself. If I were alone, I might walk past. If I was with somebody, I'd be dragging them in. Why? ~shrug~

3. What if you personally knew one of the models: would you walk into the room then?
I'd definitely go in then, if only to say hi.

4. Take the quiz: Do you have a dirty mind?
It says my mind is PG-13. It didn't ask about slashfic, though, so that kinda skewed the result.

5. You're cleaning house and you find pornography: would you be more upset if you realized that it belonged to your spouse, your child, or your parents?
I'd be pissed that they didn't share it with me. If it was my kid, I'd be more or less concerned depending on the kind of pornography. If it was your usual run-of-the-mill porn with unnaturally proportioned women being treated like objects, I'd be very worried. If it was just naked people or people having mutually satisfying sex, then I'd be less concerned. If the kid was old enough to be having sex, and I looked in their room and found how-to videos or books teaching them how to communicate their needs and satisfy their partner, I'd be elated. I've felt for a long time that sex ed should focus not just on how it's done and how to avoid disease, but also how to make it mutually enjoyable.

I think I'd be slightly weirded out by my parents having porn, though, but I think I'd get over it as long as they weren't sitting there going, "See, hon, we did this one last week..."

6. If a local referendum gave you the chance to outlaw all pornography in your state, would you want to see that pass or fail?
Fail. It wouldn't make a damn bit of difference anyway unless they either a] conducted routine searches of everybody's house and computer or b] cut off Internet access to the whole state. There has always been porn; there will always be porn. I'd personally prefer to see less of things like rape porn and other stuff that glorifies the objectification of people; but as for just pictures or videos of people fucking, I don't see what the problem is. As long as you're watching it in the privacy of your own home, I don't get why it's anybody's business.

***

Saturday 8.

1. a high-paying job (with great benefits and minimal actual effor) at krappe hours ... take it or leave it?
Take it. If the only thing that sucks about it is the hours...well, I already have a job with sucky hours, and it also has sucky pay and sucky insurance, and I come home sore as hell every day. I'd go somewhere else, but the pay sucks even worse everyplace else, and I can't afford a pay cut unless I want to default on my student loan.

2. do you have a "one that got away" in your past romantic life?
Not quite; there's one ex I wouldn't mind renewing a friendship with, though.

3. what is one job you would never take, no matter how much they paid you?
Prostitute.

4. what behaviour is completely unacceptable in someone you're dating?
Pretty much everything, since I don't date.

5. have you ever dated a co-worker? how did that work out?
No. Nononono. Frida has more sense than that. I may be a nitwit, a psycho and an only marginally reformed skank, but even I have more sense than that.

6. have you ever been sexually harrassed, witnessed someone get sexually harrassed, or had a friend be sexually harrassed in the workplace?
Yes.

7. the opposite of #3 ... aside from being paid to loaf around and relax on a beach somewhere (or your lazy activity of choice), what's your dream job?
Making art and music.

8. my new boss was totally shitty to me this week "on principle," and even snapped at me quite bitchily; my colleagues were horrified. you have the support of your colleagues, but not your boss ... you love your job - what do you do?
Go over the boss's head. Either the upper management will bring the boss in line, and s/he won't have any choice but to treat you fairly; or the boss will get back at you somehow by either finding an excuse to fire you or making your job so horrible that you have to quit for your own sanity. No matter how much you love your job, if your boss hates you, you are guaranteed to end up hating your job. The sucky boss will make sure of it, and you'll end up having to leave anyway. At least if you report the boss to his/her boss, there's a chance things will work out okay. If there's an investigation, they'll question your co-workers, and they'll back you up.

Hope it works out all right for you. I know what it's like to work with somebody who has it in for you and/or has no respect for you. It's hell.

***

And that's about it for me today.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Catching Up Without Depeche Mode

2007-01-16T08:39:00.000-06:00

Okay, maybe just a little Depeche Mode. If I can find my black eyeliner.

Saturday 8.

1. the millionaire "secret santa" has passed. do you contribute to charity?
Occasionally, yes, if I can give cash. I don't usually give to charities that I think might sell my contact info to other charities [I'm looking at you, ACLU, you bastards], but if there's a chance to give anonymously, then I will.

2. if you had a million dollars to donate to any charity or group, where would you give it?
Planned Parenthood.

3. do you think that the tax deduction benefit is worth giving?
I don't know. Depends how much you're giving, I suppose.

4. do you patronise goodwill or any other community charity store?
Um...I do go to thrift stores sometimes. Does that count?

5. do you give money to people who are begging?
If I have it, yeah.

6. many cities are starting ordinances that bar or limit charities from giving out free food/clothing to homeless people in municipal areas. do you agree or disagree with this limitation, and why?
I don't know enough about it to agree or disagree; but unless they're gonna provide jobs and housing for these people, I'd like to hear a damn good excuse why they should only get fed twice a year. I'm also glad I don't work for the ME's office for any of those cities, because I have a feeling it's gonna get busy.

7. many homeless are mentally ill and it is difficult to locate them, diagnose them, and monitor their medication/intake. do you think that the federal government does enough for the mentally-ill homeless in your country, and why?
Absolutely not. One third of the homeless in the U.S. are mentally ill. There are 4 times as many mentally ill people in prison as there are in hospitals and group homes, and a good many of them are in prison because they're homeless, jobless or both and can't get adequate treatment. It's disgusting.

8. how "giving" are you with friends? have you been burned in the past lending money/time to someone who either does not pay you back or is ungrateful/expectant of your time/money, or have you had relatively good experiences with giving/lending?
I don't lend money, unless it's an amount I can afford to lose for good. Generally I just outright give it.

***

Saturday 6.

1. If you knew you would die the following day, what would you do with your blog: edit some parts of it and leave it up for posterity, leave it as it is, or delete it?
I'd leave it.

2. Other than your own blog, what single website do you visit the most?
Man, I don't know. I go to my friends page on LJ a lot, and to CNN, and to Yahoo Mail. I'd say it's a 3-way tie between those.

3. How many different email accounts do you currently own, counting work and home?
I don't even know anymore.

4. Take the quiz: How addicted to the internet are you?
It says I'm 42% addicted.

5. Are you more likely to visit the internet the first thing in the morning or the last thing at night?
First thing at night, although if I've already gone to bed for the afternoon and can't get something out of my head [like trying to remember the name of a movie, for instance], I may get up and go look it up.

6. Who was the last person you had an email/instant message conversation with? When was the last time you saw that person in person?
I'm currently in an IM conversation with somebody I have never met in person.

***

Sunday 7.

Name seven celebrities whom you'd be happy to go a year without hearing another word about.
Pfft. Only seven? Okay.
~Tom Cruise
~George W. Bush
~Monica Lewinsky [she's suffered enough; leave the poor thing alone]
~Brangelina [does that count as 1 or 2?]
~the Pope
~Jesus
~Britney Spears
~Britney Spears' lady parts
~John Lennon [yes, he was a great man, but for gods' sake, give it a rest already]
~Justin Timberlake
~Pretty much everybody in People magazine

That's more than seven, but it's so easy to get carried away with lists like that.

***

Curious as a Cat.

If you could follow your heart and do something that would take you outside your daily existence, what would you do? How would you accomplish it? Why?
I'd travel the world in total luxury. How would I do it? If I knew that, I'd be on a private beach in Greece or something, not sitting around my apartment hiding from the -13° weather outside. Why? Because working is Teh Suxx0r, and so are MN winters.

What is your most favorite saying? What one thing (word or phrase) do you say the most?
That's easy. "Fuck."

What one job in history would you have wanted?
It'd be nice to be an assistant to Leonardo da Vinci. [Did he have assistants? He must've.] Think of all the cool stuff I'd learn. And I'd get to meet Mona Lisa in person.

***

Man, I just wanna go to bed. Think I might do just that.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Books, bulbs, and, um...broccoli or something, I don't know

2007-01-11T08:03:00.000-06:00

Booking Through Thursday.

What are you reading right now? (Well, obviously, you're reading THIS right now, perhaps I should have been more clear. What book(s) are you in the process of reading? (grin))
I have set aside Starhawk's The Spiral Dance for the time being and am currently reading Castle Kidnapped by John DeChancie and trying to stay interested in Plato's Republic.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Strange Little Bud::

Onesome: Strange-- twists and turns on the web? Do you recall how you ended up here at the Back Porch? ...just curious.
I don't remember. I think I went through The Daily Meme.

Twosome: Little-- by little we branch out and bloom. How often do you post per week? Is that more or less than six months ago?
Depends on the week; usually it's anywhere from one to ten times. That's about the same as six months ago.

Threesome: Bud-- break time is coming later this year. ...but are the bulbs in your area pushing up through the soil yet?
o_O

'kay, what kind of bulbs come up in January?

~does Google search~

Well, I'll be damned. Apparently some bulbs DO come up in the middle of winter, if it's a really warm winter, which it actually has been. Huh. In any case, I live in an apartment, so the only bulbs I ever see are screwed into light fixtures.

And that about does that.

sbt/sbc

Humped

2007-01-11T07:36:00.000-06:00

Wednesday Mind Hump.

1. What do you dream about lately (literally or otherwise)?
I dream a lot about houses and libraries [and, if I drank a lot of water before bed, bathrooms].

2. Tell us about a dream you had that you fulfilled and what you did to make that dream come true.
Well, I had a dream to overcome my fear of drowning and learn how to swim. So I signed up for a swimming class through community ed and learned to swim. :)

3. Name a few songs with "dream" in the title.
Hm...
~Aerosmith, "Dream On"
~Smashing Pumpkins, "My Daydream"
~Fleetwood Mac, "Dreams"
~Billy Joel, "River of Dreams"
~Heart, "Dreamboat Annie"
~R.E.M., "I Don't Sleep, I Dream"
~Sting, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles"
~Talking Heads, "City of Dreams"
~Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]"
~Tori Amos, "Sweet Dreams"
~Heart, "These Dreams"
~Crowded House, "Don't Dream It's Over"
~Everly Brothers, "All I Have To Do Is Dream" [or just "Dream"--I can't recall]

A few whose artists I can't remember: "Beautiful Dreamer," "Dreamin'" [Sheena Easton, maybe?], "Dream Lover," "He's A Dream" [from the Flashdance soundtrack]

Anyway, that's what I came up with from memory and from looking at my mp3 library. I could just go to a lyrics site and do a search, but that sorta takes the fun out of it.

Well, I'm out of questions; and it's a good thing, too, because that's about all the humping I have energy for.

sbt/sbc

The land of the greed and the home of the strange

2007-01-07T05:56:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. Are you hoping to lose weight, gain weight or stay the same weight by the end of 2007?
I wouldn't mind losing a couple pounds, but I'm not going to knock myself out trying to do it.

2. Now that Saddam Hussein has been executed, are you more worried or less worried about possible terror attacks?
Neither. I'm having a hard time scraping up enough give-a-fuck to get scared, frankly.

3. Who was the last performer you heard sing on television? Did you sing along?
I don't remember. Oh, wait, I do remember, it was the National Anthem at a Stanley Cup game. No, I didn't sing along. I've had to sing that damn thing so many times that if I never hear it again, it'll be too soon. They only ever sing the first verse anyway. If they'd stop singing that one and sing another one [there are only like 3000 to choose from], then I wouldn't mind.

4. Take the quiz: What is your career personality?
It says, "Your Career Personality: Quiet, Sevice-Oriented, and Practical"

5. Of the listed careers, which is the most appealing?
Well, I'm already working on the top one on the list, which is artist.

6. Of the listed careers, which is the least appealing?
I don't think I'd want to be a concierge. I'm not THAT service-oriented. I like helping people; I don't like groveling for shitty tips from rich stuck-up people.

sbt/sbc

Saturday 8 goes to the dogs...

2007-01-06T13:17:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8.

1. i have a nasty head cold. when was the last time you were sick, and what ailed you?
I had a cold not too long ago, maybe a month or two ago.

2. i left my contacts out last night by accident, and they dried out. ugh. do you wear glasses or contacts to correct your vision? if so, for how long?
I only wear them when driving someplace unfamiliar. I lucked out on my last eye exam and didn't have to have a corrective-lens notation thingy put on my new license. So I don't technically need them; but if I'm driving someplace where I need to read a lot of street signs, I try to bring them along. They pretty much only work for distances anyway; close up, they just do strange things to my depth perception and make me kinda queasy.

3. a stray dog was found wandering in our neighbourhood, which is rare. he was so thin you can see his ribs, spine, and hipbones. we took him in and are searching for the owner, although i really don't want to give him back due to his condition. what would you do if you found the owner of this dog after taking him in?
Uh, I wouldn't take him in. My place doesn't allow pets. I'd take him straight to the humane society.

4. i have two friends who are interested in taking the dog. after putting up "found dog" posters all over, how long would you wait to hear from the old owners before giving him to a new home?
Again, I'd just take him to the humane society. I'm not running a kennel.

5. i am bringing the dog into the vet on monday to rule out a weird parasitic-worm thing for his weight loss, as i don't see the owners contacting me. my husband says that i've done more than i should for this pup, but i want to make sure he's OK health-wise. would you take the dog to the vet and spend your own money, or would you take him/her to the animal shelter first?
See 3.

6. at this point in your life, if someone offered you a free young dog/cat of a breed/mix that you wanted, would you take it?
No. See 3.

7. switching gears... a 10-yr. old boy in texas asked his uncle why saddam had a noose around his neck after seeing a news feed loop on a spanish-speaking news channel. the uncle explained they were going kill him by hanging, and the boy asked if that's how you kill "bad people." the uncle answered 'yes' and the boy was found later with a bedsheet around his neck hanging from his top bunk. people are saying that he 'mimicked' the hanging; i think he killed himself purposefully. do you think his death was a suicide or an accident?
I don't think that's as important a question as why a 10-year-old kid thought that either a] nooses were fun to play with [if it was an accident]; or b] he was bad enough to be put to death. But then, as you pointed out, it IS Texas. As for the question you asked, I don't have anywhere near enough information to guess whether it was a suicide or an accident. If the kid had a history of imitating dangerous shit he saw on TV, I'd say accident. If he lived in an abusive household with people who made him feel worthless, I'd say suicide. But I don't know and I'm not going to guess.

8. a bride in austria jokingly answered "no" to the question of "do you take this man," causing the official to call off the wedding immediately. not even the sobbing pleadings of the bride could prompt the official to continue with the wedding, and the couple will have to wait 2.5 months before they can marry again. do you think this was too harsh, that the woman got what she deserved for larking about during such a serious ceremony ... or perhaps she should thank her lucky stars and run for the hills with some hot czech nationals?
I think she has a very strange and careless sense of humour, and the official doesn't have one at all. I wouldn't do something like that at a wedding, just to be on the safe side. I also think Austria must have been having a really slow news day.

***

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Curious, New Year Edition

2007-01-01T13:41:00.000-06:00

Curious as a Cat.

What one question would you ask a legitimate psychic, knowing you'd get a truthful answer?
When am I going to die? That way, I could make some plans for the rest of my life; if I knew I was only going to live to, say, 35, I wouldn't worry about getting my student loans paid off early. If I knew I was going to live to 90, I'd redouble my efforts at being healthy, so I don't have to spend so much time in a nursing home. And it'd give me a chance to get my affairs in order.

And if it turned out that knowing wasn't a good thing, well, I've lived my whole life NOT knowing, and it's sucked so far. I'd find some way to cope.

Who would you like to be deserted on an island with?
My friends. I almost said "my friends and family," but honestly, as much as I love my family, I'd probably end up strangling them [assuming they didn't strangle me first].

***

bleh...I succumbed to the temptation of taking an "evening" nap [10-noon, that's evening for me] and now I'm all sluggish and am totally not going to get to bed on time. Thank goodness I don't have to work tonight.

sbt/sbc

Saturday 6, New Year's Eve edition

2006-12-31T06:19:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. You spot a UFO, a genuine flying saucer. You decide to mention it to those close to you. Do you expect that most would believe you, or assume that you're either joking or nuts?
They'd probably believe me. That's the kind of people I hang out with. :D

2. If it had to be one or the other, would you prefer that your blog readers were all family and friends who knew you personally or folks who had never met you in person, and why?
The second. If my family all read my LJ, I'd never get another cent or another favour out of them.

3. Are you planning to do any special posts tomorrow or Monday to look back over either your best posts or the significant events of 2006?
No.

4. Take the quiz: What kind of jewel are you?
It says I'm a watermelon tourmaline.

5. Do you own a piece of jewelry with this particular jewel in it?
Dude, I've never even HEARD of it.

6. Whether you normally make them or not, suppose that you have to make one new year's resolution: what would it be?
To change only the things I feel like changing.

***

Patrick mentions at the beginning of this edition that "much of the country is under an arctic chill," and I had to go look at a national weather map to understand what he's talking about [i.e. the western half of the country and the northeast] because, uh, I'm in Minnesota and it's 43 and raining here. So if you're unfortunate enough to be in the 50% of the country that's really cold, do like he says and stay indoors. If you're in eastern Minnesota, grab your umbrella and a medium-weight jacket and take a leisurely stroll through the park.

Okay, I just got an alert: it's supposed to change from rain to snow sometime today. I hope so, because my kitchen ceiling is leaking. Leaking ceilings are a source of intense anxiety to watercolourists. Even if it's not happening in your studio, there's still the implied threat that your studio could be next. The snow and slush are gonna make for a dangerous New Year's Eve drive home, though, as if the drunk drivers didn't make it dangerous enough. I'm hoping that at least some people can scrape enough sense together to figure out to stay home if it's ugly. It's exactly the kind of night that makes me glad I'm not a cop or a sheriff's deputy.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Last Saturday 8 of the year...

2006-12-30T10:55:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8 at their new home.

1. new year's plans?
Sleep and trying to finish Count of Monte Cristo before midnight so I can claim 33 books finished for 2006. Update: Finished at 7 pm. Yay for me!

2. i don't do new year's resolutions, but i think that we all look forward to doing something differently in the new year. what will you do in 2007 that you didn't do in 2006?
Besides writing 2007 on my checks? Uhh...hopefully sell artwork.

3. in the past 24 hours, i have reconnected with 3 old friends that i've not spoken to in years. if you could reconnect with someone from your past who would it be, and why?
Two people: an old friend from junior high, to whom I was kind of an immature dick for a while, which drove her off I think [can't imagine why]; and an ex-boyfriend who I wouldn't mind having back as a friend, because he really was a lot of fun.

4. i live my life not regretting anything ... or at least try not to regret anything that i've done, and look at life as a learning experience. do you have anything that you would have not done/done differently in 2006 as you look back?
I'd probably kick up a bigger stink about the mess that's been made of my student loans.

5. going back to my ex-friends that i reconnected with, one of them REALLY let me down as she chose a guy over our friendship. she wrote to me that she would think back over these past 14 years and kick herself, and wonder what had happened to me? do you have someone that you wronged/wronged you and wonder where they are? what happened to that friendship?
Yup. See 3.

6. one of the other ex-friends is an ex-boyfriend that i had when i was 16. he cheated on me when i was 17, and then i 'got over it' and we had a cordial non-friendship. i'm married and he's married, so i don't have any problem talking with him as there is NO chance at stirring up any old flames. if you had a chance to reconnect with an ex, who would it be, and why? or would you let sleeping "dogs" lie?
See 3.

7. i'm eating to join a weight-loss study. that's right ... i'm about 10 lbs. shy of the weight goal and am actually porking out this coming week as i get free vitamins/supplements, a free registered dietician for two years, and i also get $600/mo. to participate for two years. i'm VERY tall (over 5'9"), so this is going to be difficult! i'm gaining 10 lbs. to lose my original goal of 20 lbs., which will now be 30 lbs. (hey, i want to get back into a size 6 after being a size 10 for a few years!). to gain those 10 lbs., what do you suggest that i eat? any "fun" fattening foods that i should try?
Hershey bars with peanut butter smeared on them. And lots of cheesecake.

8. i'm heading to disney today with the family and friends. what is your favourite theme park, and why?
The one I don't have to go to. Why? Because there is nothing about theme parks that I like. I don't like crowds; I get motion sickness very easily; and "fair food" [e.g. corn dogs, fried cheese curds, ice cream and so on] gives me migraines and/or explosive diarrhea. So there's not a whole lot left except midway games; and frankly, it'd be cheaper and more relaxing to just stand in my living room and throw wiffle balls at the wall, and then drive to Mallwart and buy myself a stuffed elephant.

That said, I hope you guys have a wonderful time; as long as the parks are there anyway, somebody might as well enjoy them.

***

I will now go and bask in the afterglow of the cappuccino I got at Casey's. If you're in the Midwest and feel like a good cappuccino and a donut, they have some of the best. mmm...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

change in comments

2006-12-29T13:25:00.000-06:00

After discovering some spam in the comments, I've enabled word verification. Sorry about the extra step, but hopefully it will prevent me from having to disallow anonymous comments.

I don't spam-hunt every day, so if you see spam in any of the comments, PLEASE E-MAIL ME at grey_nereid ~at~ yahoo ~dot~ com and let me know which entry you saw it in so I can delete it and take further security measures. Thanks!

sbt/sbc

Dropping the Ball

2006-12-28T15:20:00.000-06:00

Booking Through Thursday.

Any New Year's Reading Resolutions? A certain number of books you want to read in 2007? Certain genres? Something from your TBR pile? Classics to read? Authors to try? Anything at all??
I want to finish at least 25 books again next year. I'm on 32 now, and if I make it through The Count of Monte Cristo before midnight Sunday, it'll be 33. Not bad for somebody who works full-time and has about five other hobbies/quasi-careers/major interests besides.

In the coming year I'd like to tackle Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, re-read Gulliver's Travels and The Prince, and give Crime and Punishment another stab. Of course, that means I'm gonna have to read a whole bunch of children's books and trashy crime novels to balance out all that stuffy pretentious intellectualism ;) Or not. Shoot me, it's pretentious intellectual season.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Happy New Year!::

Onesome: Happy--New Year to you and yours! ...any plans for this weekend? Dick Clark? Guy Lombardo? Early to bed?
Holy nuts, is Dick Clark still alive? You know, I didn't used to believe in vampires, but now I'm not so sure...

Anywho. I will be home New Year's Eve, sleeping. I might get up before midnight to watch my computer clock change over, but probably not.

Twosome: New--year, old year. Is this the year you take up skiing? ...or knitting? ...or vacuuming every other day ? Do you have any major project you'd like to tackle? (Sure, 'resolutions' count...)
Not at the moment. I'm sure I'll get bored and come up with something.

Threesome: Year--end chores? Do the lights and decorations come down this weekend? ...or are you already "done with Christmas"?
Oh, I don't know; I might leave them up a while longer, at least until I find closet space for them [I made a couple new ones this year]. I still have a few late cards and presents to send out, so I suppose I should leave the decorations up to remind me to get on the stick and finish them up.

***

Happy New Year to everybody who's celebrating it, and Happy Monday to whoever isn't. [I'll probably end up saying that about ten more times here before next week, but whatever.]

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Happy Everything

2006-12-23T22:49:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. How many Christmas Cards did you receive from people you hadn't sent cards to, after the "mailing deadline?" Did you send a card anyway?
Deadline, schmeadline. I got a card from my parents. Why they sent it through the mail instead of just giving it to me, I'm not sure, since I see them like three times a week; but whatever. I haven't given them a card. I consider cards a stand-in for presents [if I don't have the money or don't know the person well enough], so I generally don't send cards to people I give presents to.

Ooh, shit, I did get another card from somebody, and I forgot to send her one. I'm going to go visit her soon, though, so I'll give it to her then.

2. At this point, do you weigh more or less than you did on January 1, 2006? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't know. I think I weigh about the same.

3. When the clock strikes Midnight on New Year's, will you be at home, at a party, or somewhere else?
Home. New Year's Eve is a snarling, deadly clusterfuck of drunk drivers, many of whom are not accustomed to night driving; and I value my life, so I stay home.

4. Take the quiz: What's your holiday stress level?
It said it was "moderate." It doesn't sound like it thinks it's moderate, though; check out the nagfest it laid on me. "The holidays sometimes stress you out, but mostly because they wear you down. Take it easy! You can have a fun holiday without running yourself ragged."

Duh, I can? I suppose I can, if I want to, you know, totally ignore everybody else. You run yourself ragged because you're doing nice things for people; and you do nice things for people because it helps maintain your social support network. So yeah, I could just sit on my ass and eat cookies instead of making presents and sending cards. I'd have a great holiday, but then the rest of my year would suck weenie because everybody I cared about would either forget about me totally or think I was an ingrate. I'd rather be stressed out for 2 weeks out of the year than be lonely the whole damn year.

[Maybe I should stop doing the quizzes, because I'm such a bad sport about them; but making fun of them is so entertaining...]

5. Have you ever been the designated driver at a party or outing with your friends?
No. I avoid people when they're drinking, and so should everybody else. Humans are stupid enough when they're sober.

6. Have you ever taken the keys and driven home a friend that you felt was too drunk to drive? If not, do you think you would attempt to if that situation ever arose?
See 5. If it came down to it, I'd take the keys, but only to save the other people on the road. If drunk drivers would only kill themselves, I'd be happy to sit back and watch natural selection take care of those who are too psychologically defective to plan for their own safety.

***

Saturday 8.

1. i'm HOME! it was a long, two-week trip, but i'm back Stateside. what was the last travel experience you had?
What counts as a travel experience? I pretty much just go to work, the store, and appointments.

2. i read 3 books in a week. what was the last book you completed?
It was Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Depressing, but thought-provoking.

3. i saw 6 or 7 movies in the last two weeks. what was the last movie that you watched?
It was Flags of Our Fathers. Gory, but good. Eastwood's a good director, and Spielberg added just the right touch.

4. my flight was 7.5 hours long to and from iceland. what was your last flight, and where was it to/from?
I don't answer plane questions anymore. I've only been on one plane ride, and if my readers have to hear about it one more time, they're going to de-link me.

5. i have decided to skip christmas cards this year due to the fact that i worked my 2 jobs right up until i left for iceland. did you send out christmas/hanukkah/new year's cards this year?
Yes, I did. I still have some more to send out. So they're gonna be late. Oh n0es.

6. i have been sick with a stomach bug i picked up in iceland since wednesday. what was the last illness that you had?
I have a cold right now.

7. while in iceland, Bank of America LOCKED my debit card ... twice. i'd let them know that i was travelling, but they decided to lock it anyway due to the fact that no one was smart enough to put the required code on my account. i now have to get back $100 in cellphone bills from them that was NOT necessary as i'd taken care of my responsibilities before i'd left. when was the last time you were 'screwed' by a corporation/service?
Well, the student loan consolidation people have been dicking me around for six months; does that count?

8. i am not sure what i'm doing for christmas and have no idea where i'm spending it or if i'm going to be travelling that day, etc. what are your christmas plans if you celebrate? if not, what are you doing on the 25th?
You get the prize for being the one millionth person to ask me that. I'm spending it with my parents.

***

Have a hairy Christmas and a slappy New Year, everybody. And Yule, and Kwanzaa, and Festivus, and everything else. Hell, happy everything. That way I don't have to remember the other holidays.

Be safe, and if you've been naughty this year, you better hope Santa hits your house before he runs out of coal. I'm leaving him bran muffins and Metamucil to help him along.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

2006-12-22T08:43:00.000-06:00

Booking Through Thursday.

1. Any favorite holiday books or stories that you like to read and reread this time of year? And if so, why? What makes it so special to you? Favorites from your childhood? (This is a perfectly good time of year for picture books--it's like watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Adults can "do" cartoons in December.)
WTF? Adults can do cartoons any time of year they want. I seriously doubt the Cartoon Police are going to bust into my apartment while I'm watching "Slayers" DVD's and demand to see my ID as proof that I'm under 18. Also, the most compelling argument that adults can, do, and should do cartoons: Retarded Animal Babies. [So very not safe for work. Or church, or daycare, or anyplace else, for that matter...]

ANYWAY. Books. We were on the topic of favourite holiday stories. No, I don't have any. After seeing Patrick Stewart's horrifying MST3K-worthy version of "A Christmas Carol," I really can't get excited about that story anymore. The rest of them...eh. Character goes through life-changing experience and gets holiday spirit/discovers true meaning of Christmas/&c &c. Can't I just read Sandman comics instead?

2. (Psst. You can talk about favorite movies or tv specials, too, if you want, even though they're not about reading. You know, just this once.)
I think I covered part of that in 1. I've seen the Grinch and Frosty and Rudolph and all those awful things so many times...no. No thank you. The only one I could still maybe watch without having a screaming fit would be the Grinch, and that's mainly because it's a Chuck Jones cartoon, because Jones was a genius. So no. I've been hearing the same holiday music and seeing the same holiday specials for 30 damn years, and I'm just counting my lucky stars that I didn't breed so I won't have to sit through another 15-20 years of Frosty the Goddamn Snowman.

Okay, I could sit through the Beavis and Butthead Christmas special. That was sorta chuckleworthy.

I used to say to my dad every Christmas, "Don't you want to come in and watch [insert name of holiday special here] with me?" And he'd always say no, and I couldn't understand why, because to a ten-year-old, those things RULE. Now I understand all too well.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Plenty of time::

Onesome: Plenty-- of time, take a deep breath. Overnight/Saturday delivery could work for you... So could a trip a few hundred miles away if you're into shopping on Sunday! How are you doing? Do you have it together?
Um. No.

Twosome: of-- all the states, I'm hearing the worst reports from Ohio! It has no snow! No snow, no Christmas! What's to be done? Is it looking like the normal Christmas weather there for you?
No. It's about 25 degrees above the average temp for this day and location.

Threesome: Time--Time? Good grief, the 24th is days away, and most men haven't even awakened a sense of urgency as yet . Is anyone done, finished, wrapped and resting?
I'd have to see more evidence before I'll accept the stereotype of men not shopping until the day before Christmas. And no, I am not done. I am treating Christmas like income tax returns--as long as everything's postmarked on or before the deadline, it counts as good. So I'll probably be mailing cards and presents tomorrow. If this makes me an honorary man, let me know so I can start scratching myself in public. :P

***

Happy Yule/Christmas/Festivus/Whatever, everybody...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

mmmm...

2006-12-20T07:19:00.000-06:00

...hot chocolate and memes.

Curious as a Cat.

Imagine you're in a terrible depression. What one of your current possessions would best help you endure it?
My sense of humour.

What kind of uniform would you like to wear?
None. I can't think of a single role that involves a uniform that I would do voluntarily.

***

Tuesday's Tales.

More about Old Man Winter…

* What is your favorite winter memory?
This is one of the few things I actually have a favourite of. In my senior year in high school, we had to do a paper on the Civil War. While I was working on this, we had a huge ice storm that knocked out power for something like a week and a half. Luckily, my parents had some old-time oil lamps, and they hung these on the walls for light. So I got a little extra perspective on that historical period by living in [sorta] similar conditions for a little while. I was glad when the power came back on, but in the meantime it was kinda neat to study history by the light of an antique oil lamp and cook over a kerosene heater [not the same as a wood stove, but much closer to it than an electric range].

* What do you think or feel when you walk through freshly fallen snow?
I think it's a shame that I have to walk through it and spoil it, but I might as well because somebody else will walk or drive through it anyway. And at the same time it's kinda neat.

* What are three things that you enjoy most about the winter season?
Christmas vacation, new snowfall [but only if I don't have to shovel it or drive in it], and watching natural selection at work in the form of all the nitwits who fall through the ice even though a] they've been warned it's too thin and b] anybody with a reasonable amount of experience with ice could look at the temps for the past week or two and know that it can't possibly have frozen deep enough to be safe.

* How do the cold winter weather and shorter days affect your mood or outlook on life?
I want to sleep more. And by about mid-February or so, I'm really really fucking sick of clouds. [A short note about Minnesota in February: If you counted on your fingers the number of times the sun showed itself in February, chances are you would only have to take off one mitten.] I will get a little depressed, but it's only partially the lack of light; mostly it's that you can't fucking go outside for more than 2 or 3 minutes without getting frostbite. I think that's why people snowmobile, even though it damages the environment, terrifies the wildlife, and annoys everybody in earshot--if they didn't get outside and do something, anything, they'd strangle somebody.

* Why do you look forward to the winter season?
Same reason you look forward to being caned. Oh, you don't? Well, there you go. In any case, I think I answered that pretty thoroughly in the previous question.

***

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and try to prevent Christmas from kicking my ass.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Ho ho, ho!

2006-12-16T21:48:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm not really calling anybody a ho. Yet.

Saturday 6.

1. Christmas cards must be mailed by Monday to arrive on time. Do you think you'll make the deadline?
Hell no.

2. If you had to restrict all of your Christmas shopping to one single store, which one would you choose?
Dick Blick or Michael's. That way if they didn't want art supplies, I could at least make them something.

3. If you had to restrict all of the shopping others did for your Christmas gifts to one store, which would you choose?
Dick Blick or Michael's.

4. Take the quiz: Which Jones Holiday Soda are you?
[rofl] Huh??? Somebody over at Blogthings must be REALLY bored. I hope Santy Claus brings them a latchhook kit or something.

Okay. It says I'm cranberry soda. That actually doesn't sound too bad...

I see Blogthings has switched from the "cord blood video" ad to the "who's your soul mate" ad. I followed the link, and the only way you can get your result is to have it sent to your cell phone. So if you don't have a cell phone, you don't get a soul mate, apparently. I feel sad for all the people over the last forty millennia or so that couldn't find their soul mate because cell phones hadn't been invented yet.

I thought about getting a used cell phone, not buying the plan, and just taking it along when I'm in the car so that if I get stranded on the highway or some other emergency comes up, I can at least call 911. But then I'd end up with a soul mate who only shows up when the car breaks down or the house is on fire or something.

5. You're invited to a Christmas party and are required to bring a dessert. What would you create for the occasion?
Brownies. I know people who'll sit there and fiddlyfuck around for hours making coconut snowmen and marzipan reindeer and all that. And those things are nice. But life is short. From me, you're getting brownies.

6. How many Christmas parties have you been invited to this season? How many have you attended so far?
One; zero.

***

Saturday 8.

1. what is the furthest you've ever travelled from your home?
About 1100 miles.

2. everyone has a dream vacation ... what's yours?
Being able to stay home, but having the money to go wherever I want should I decide to.

3. where you live, is there a marked difference between the amount of daylight you see in the summer and winter?
Yes.

4. what is the coldest temperature you've ever experienced?
I don't remember. I live in Minnesota, though, so I'm guessing it was pretty damn cold.

5. i am used to a minimum of 50% humidity. i'm so dry up here in reykjavik, i am scratching like i've got fleas. what's your common humidity where you live?
Too high for varnishing, I know that.

6. right now, all the news i get is about the serial killer in england. i feel so disconnected from the States. when was the last time you felt "disconnected" from home, and why did you feel that way?
What's "home"? Do you mean home state, home country, what? I'd moved about 7 times before I was eighteen, so I never had a chance to become connected to those places in the first place. I suppose I felt sorta disconnected when I moved up here, just because I had no way to get back, and after six months, maybe one person was still answering my letters. But since I hated the South with the venom of a thousand adders anyway, it wasn't too bad; mostly I was glad to get out of there.

As for feeling disconnected from my country, I've never felt very connected to it, and I've felt no connection since, oh, November 2000. If you really have to ask why, I'm just gonna cry.

7. the coffee here is all instant, even at coffee shoppes. you have to go in to a really chic shoppe and pay about $7-8USD for a good cup of non-instant coffee. would you settle for instant, or are you a coffee-worshipper who would pay that much for a good cup?
I'd settle for instant. I prefer real coffee, but I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna pay $7 for a drink of anything unless I'm either a] going to die without it or b] making $50 an hour.

Are they just unable to get fresh coffee up there, or what?

8. icelanders, though very nice once you get to talking to them, are really perfunctory. they would be considered rude in the U.S. and score REALLY low on the customer service side. they're not mean or rude or condescending, it's just that the 'niceties' we take for granted ("have a nice day" or "thank you!") are not very present here. when was the last time you experienced sub-par customer service?
Dell and the student loan people. [That sounds like a band name.]

***

ew...sinuses...and having to retype "ew" three times to get it right...

That about does it for me for blogging today, I think. Time to go hunt up some food and some Advil. And some real coffee.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

eh.

2006-12-15T07:43:00.000-06:00

Booking Through Thursday. Short and sweet this week.

Audio Books. Yes or No?
Sure, if I can ever find any in the library that don't suck, which isn't very often. I'd just buy them, but they're too expensive.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Holly Jolly Christmas::

Onesome: Holly-- Hmmm... Do you have holly where you are? Is it used for decorating? ...and if not, what types of greenery are used to show off the season? Inquiring minds and all that...
I don't really pay attention.

Twosome: Jolly-- Jolly Elf or The Grinch? How is your Christmas experience going so far?
It would be fine if it weren't for that fucking music. If I have to hear "All I Want For Christmas Is You" one more time, I'm gonna shoot a reindeer. I don't care what the marketing experts say, holiday music does NOT make me want to shop. It makes me want to burn down a mall.

Threesome: Christmas-- Hey, I miss ol' Burl Ives singing the song in this header: who does your favorite Christmas song? ...and which song is that? Yes, yes, you're allowed more than one ...
There isn't more than one. The only one I can listen to without wanting to poop in somebody's stocking is "The Christmas Song." I don't remember who does it--Nat King Cole or somebody. I can dig that one, but the rest of them, I just cannot stand, especially the Jesus ones. I fantasize about looking out my window and seeing a chorus of smiling carolers down below, and dumping boiling oil on them. But since I can't do that, I just content myself with making up dirty lyrics. So I sing along with the radio, but instead I'm singing "Fuckin' Around The Christmas Tree," "Rudolph the Red-nosed Wino," "Silver Balls," "Violent Night," "Here Comes Satan Claus" and "Drunken Fucked-up Christmas." I also sometimes sing alternate lyrics I've learned from MAD Magazine.

Check that--I also like "PMS for Christmas" from Bob & Tom's Camel Toe CD.

***

And that does that. Merry Mithras and a happy nude year.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

it's still Saturday in Hawaii...

2006-12-10T00:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8.

1. i had a holiday dinner last night, and the ambience was decidedly un-romantic. in your locality, what's the most romantic restaurant to take someone on a date?
I don't know. I don't go on dates, and I rarely eat in restaurants.

2. when was the last time you switched jobs?
Several years ago.

3. when was the last time you had a stomach bug?
It's hard to say; there are a lot of things that give me stomach problems, so pinning it down to a single source isn't easy. It's been a few years since I've had something that I definitely believed was a stomach virus.

4. what was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school?
That's like asking which drop of water in the ocean is the wettest.

5. what place in your country would you like to visit most?
Anywhere where one of my friends is. I miss them.

6. do you have a pen-colour preference, and what is it? if you don't, what colour do you NOT like to write in?
I don't like writing in yellow. I also tend to avoid weird-coloured ballpoint pens [green, orange] because usually they don't write worth a crap. If I could find a good writing pen with waterproof sepia ink, I'd be pretty happy about that.

7. when was the last time you got sloshed, hammered, piss-drunk, etc., and what was your weapon of choice to get you there?
I don't remember. It was many years ago.

8. what do you plan on doing for the rest of the day?
Making holiday presents and restraining the urge to pull this tooth out.

***

Saturday 6.

1. Do you send Christmas cards? If so, do you write any notes inside the Christmas card or include a "newsletter" about your family, or do you basically just sign your name?
I just sign my name. I never understood the point of holiday letters, unless you have kids or something, or for some other reason, something is actually HAPPENING at your house. It's pretty useless to write a newsletter when there's no news except "I bought a mattress" and "I like vanilla creamer." Nobody wants to read that shit.

2. Are you more likely to shop in a store that has returned the phrase, "Merry Christmas" to its holiday signage?
No. I sometimes still say "Merry Christmas" to people [at least, people that I think are highly likely to celebrate Christmas and not Yule, Hannukah, Festivus, &c.] just because...well, I don't know why, exactly. It sure isn't because I'm excited about Jesus. I think it's more a Minnesota Nice thing. Make the expected noises and don't kick up a fuss. I mean, there's a time and a place for kicking up a fuss, but the checkout line at the grocery store really isn't it. I really want to say "Happy Holidays," but it sounds sorta stupid to say it to the checkout clerk. It looks nice in print because of the stateliness of the H's, but it sounds vaguely pretentious coming out of somebody's mouth for some reason. So mostly I just wait for the person to say it to me, and say, "Thanks, you too."

Nobody says "Happy Yule" to me, and I haven't died from it yet, so I gave up caring about the whole issue.

Maybe I should start saying "Merry Mithras."

3. Do you buy your pets Christmas presents?
Not usually. Every time I try to buy the cat a present, it turns out to be something she doesn't really want or need anyway.

4. Take the quiz: Are you more cat or dog?
It says: "You Are: 40% Dog, 60% Cat"

5. Which have you owned more of during your life, cats or dogs?
Cats. A lot of people don't mind them, but to a noise-sensitive and smell-sensitive person, they're stinky and loud. If you bathed them enough so I could pet them without the smell sticking to me, the poor things would have skin problems. And they're noisy by nature, so you couldn't make them quiet without making them miserable and stressed. I don't think it's right to punish an animal for doing what it does naturally, but the normal amount of noise a dog makes would drive me completely around the bend.

If they managed to breed a reasonably smart, not-so-aromatic dog that felt very little urge to bark, I'd consider one. I say "reasonably smart" because I know some breeding experiments result in animals that have many great qualities but are dumber than a sack of hammers.

6. If you had to come back as one or the other, and assuming you'd belong to an owner who would treat you well, would you rather be a cat or a dog?
I don't really care. I wouldn't be self-aware enough for it to matter to me.

***

So there.

sbt/sbc

Is it Friday yet?

2006-12-07T08:03:00.000-06:00

Of course not. I couldn't get that lucky.

Booking Through Thursday.

Do you like to keep your books nearby? Do you collect them? Pile, stack, shelve, hoard them? Or do you get rid of them, send them back to the library, give them away, once you've read them?
Depends on if I think I'll read them again. Mostly I hoard them. If they're library books, I do tend to send them back, because of, y'know, the fines and stuff. I do have a stack of Isaac Asimov books that I want to donate to the used book store because gods help me, I canNOT read him without getting completely bored. I got about 100-200 pages into the Foundation trilogy and gave up. It was like C-SPAN In Space. Even the ones with the robots, which are supposed to be his best-loved works, are boring to me. I don't know if it's because nearly all the characters are male [and the female ones come off as stereotypical], or if it's just the way he tells the story; but I cannot get into it. But by the time I finally convinced my mom to stop buying me Asimov books at yard sales just because she knows I like scifi, I'd accumulated close to a dozen. And they're taking up space. And they could get me credit at a used book store. And I'm sure there's somebody out there who thinks Asimov is Teh Sh1t and would just love these ~~doorstops~~ books.

There are some books from my childhood that I parted with, not because I didn't love them, but because I wanted somebody else to enjoy them. [Now I'm wishing I'd kept some of them...I miss Little Bear and Richard Scarry...]

It'd be nice to have a three-bedroom place, just so I could have a study. I'm sure I could fill at least two and probably three whole walls of shelves with books.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Christmas is Coming::

Onesome: Christmas-- shopping: done deal? Haven't started? "Oh, man! Yeah, I need to make a list!" (I'm thinking this one may sort out by gender...)
I still have supplies to get, and then I have to finish making presents.

Twosome: is-- it time to decorate yet? ...or do you still have another week or two to go?
I've already done all the decorating I plan to do.

Threesome: Coming-- or going? ...or staying home? Are you visiting or hosting this Christmas? ...or both?
Most likely both.

***

sbt/sbc

Just a brief reminder...

2006-12-03T23:49:00.000-06:00

If you run a food company, or are responsible with coming up with recipes for a food company, and you use MSG, hydrolyzed proteins, autolyzed extracts, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, or nitrates in your products--please go kill yourself now, because you are evil incarnate. I do not care why you use them, and I do not care how much your profits would suffer should you stop using them. In fact, I do not give a caramel-coated fuck about you or any aspect of your company. All I care about is going to the store and buying food I can eat that will not make me crazy--something that is getting increasingly difficult and expensive as even the organic food companies [not the real ones, the corporate ones who barely squeak under the FDA's virtually meaningless organic rules] are putting sodium compounds in their products now, and the ones that don't charge you so goddamn much money that you could almost take the same money, buy a farm, and grow your own carrots and chickens.

Well, there's one other thing I want. I'd like to be able to take recipe and product suggestions from people who are kind enough to suggest them to me--and actually be able to eat them. I'm sick of looking like a dick because every time somebody says, "You should try _____, it's really good" I have to read the label and then come back to them and say "Thanks, sorry, but I can't, it has _____ in it."

Okay, there's ONE other tiny thing I want. If you're a nurse in a hospital, make sure the kitchen gets a copy of the patient's food restrictions. If you work in the hospital kitchen, READ THE FUCKING RESTRICTIONS YOU DIPWAD, AND FOLLOW THEM. The next bowl of MSG-laden broth I get in the hospital is gonna end up on somebody's uniform. You spent 4 years in nursing school, don't tell me you can't read a fucking soup label.

Okay, I'm done. Run along and die now.

Thank you.

Taking a break from artsy stuff...

2006-12-03T04:21:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8.

1. what is your most-used software program?
It's a tie between Firefox and Windows Media Player.

2. what is your most-used hardware device?
My poor crappy vid card gets taxed a lot.

3. is there a software or hardware device that you currently do not know how to use but would like to learn how to use?
MS Access. I never could get the hang of it.

4. so you have the choice between a hard, crunchy taco or a soft tortilla-wrapped one ... which do you prefer?
Soft tacos. The hard shells cut the inside of my mouth.

5. my father refuses soft-serve ice cream a la twistee treat (altho he has stock there, but whatever), mcdonald's, etc. do you prefer hard ice cream over soft-serve like my dad, or does it not matter as long as you have something sweet?
I like both of them equally.

6. when you have a list of tasks ahead, do you tackle them hardest to easiest or in no particular order?
Depends how energetic I am. If I'm having trouble getting motivated, I'll start with something easy to get me moving. Often I'll alternate between easy and hard tasks so I don't get bored, frustrated or tired too quickly.

7. what is the hardest thing you've ever had to tell someone?
I don't remember, but I know I have a hard time telling people I don't like them anymore.

8. today is my friend's dad's memorial service, which is being held in lieu of a funeral (at his request). it's seriously going to be hard to act merry & party, even though there is going to be a keg and BBQ, etc. i love his mom so much, it's going to be hard for me to enjoy myself due to the reason why we're all gathering today. what was the last hard situation you've had to sit/go through?
A urology exam.

My condolences to your friend.

***

Saturday 6.

1. What is the last fruit or vegetable juice you drank? How long ago did you drink it?
I don't remember. I don't like vegetable juice enough to make it from scratch, and it's damn near impossible to find a bottled version that doesn't have 5000 mg of sodium. For some reason, nearly all fruit juices make me very nauseous [except orange juice, which just gives me an acid stomach].

2. Which are more likely to have on hand: fresh fruit and vegetables or fresh juice?
Fresh fruit or veggies, usually bananas or carrots; they're about the only fresh produce I can eat without getting heartburn or some other painful gastric symptom.

3. Does a negative movie review make you less likely to see the movie? Does a positive review make you more likely to see it?
Yes.

4. Take the quiz: What gender is your brain?
It says: 73% Female, 27% Male That's odd; that's the first quiz of that type I've ever taken--and I've taken quite a few--that didn't split it evenly down the middle [or 60/40]. I'm guessing it has to do with the fact that the choices are either/or rather than scaled or put on a continuum. Either that or it's that damn Premarin. It could also be the fact that I've spent the weekend doing social or family-related activities and am firmly in a mindset that's compatible with female stereotypes. Give me the quiz again after I've been assembling and/or destroying things and you'll likely get a different answer.

5. Which line of description in the results best describes you?
I don't know, I stopped reading it after it told me I think with my heart and not my head. Not only does that not match up with my Meyers-Briggs score [another test I've taken several times, usually getting INTP; I got INFP once, just barely], it's also sorta sexist. Women think with their hearts, men with their heads? That would explain why women are underrepresented in scientific professions--er, except for the fact that the phenomenon seems far less pronounced in Europe than in the United States. It also implies that compassion is a feminine trait. It's not; it's a trait of mature people.

Of course, we love to hold on to ideas like this; any time we're having difficulty finding an excuse not to improve ourselves, we need look no further than our own undies.

6. The U.S. Mint has announced a plan to reintroduce one-dollar coins, this time with former presidents. Would you use one-dollar coins, or is paper still the way to go?
Yeah, sure. I could give a shit either way, as long as it's portable and fits in a vending machine.

What was the matter with the Sacagawea coins, by the way? You know, besides that they didn't have a white male on them. I imagine it's easier to retain one's inflated sense of entitlement when one's race, sex, and religious beliefs are represented on ALL the money instead of just some of it. I'd go for a Martin Luther King dollar coin. It doesn't have to be a president anyway; the one-dollar greenbacks issued during the Civil War had then Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase on them. [Lincoln was on the two.]

***

Back to playing archivist...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Saturday Night Memester

2006-11-26T00:50:00.000-06:00

I probably shouldn't do these before my coffee, but it's gonna be a while before my stomach settles enough to accept coffee, so.

Saturday 8.

1. so, how was thanksgiving for you this year? relaxing? fraught with tension? give us the scoop. (frederick - tell us how your week went since you're in the UK!)
It was all right.

2. did you give any of your money to Black Friday yesterday, either in-person or online? (again, frederick, sorry ... tell us if you're shopping this weekend)
No.

3. with christmas and hanukkah being a few weeks away, do you have any holiday shopping done this year yet?
No. I'm not shopping this year, except maybe cards.

4. are you taking any trips this holiday season? where to, or why not?
No. Where would I go?

5. i'm going to iceland in a few weeks where the weather is actually very temperate (30s). every time i tell someone i'm going there, i hear "iceland is green, and greenland is ice." seriously, it's getting aggravating and i feel like i'm just going to punch someone if i hear it again. what is someone (or people in general) doing/saying lately that is wearing on your last nerve?
Merry Christmas.

6. today is the florida-florida state NCAA football game. The Husband is a florida alum, and i began my undergrad career at florida state (my undergrad and graduate alma maters have "questionable" - read: embarrassing - football teams). is there a rivalry that you are particularly interested in, whether it be NFL, NBA, NHL, british footie, equestrian showjumping, tanya harding vs. nancy kerrigan ... you get me.
No.

7. my eldest child just poured 2 cups of water INTO my coffee maker, effectively giving me coloured water to drink. how important is morning coffee to you, if at all?
I don't drink coffee in the morning because it keeps me up during the day when I'm trying to sleep. Evening coffee is pretty important, though.

Get a gallon jug, put a packet of Kool-Aid and the usual amount of sugar in it, and fill it up to the top with water. Have the child taste it. This should illustrate the importance of proportions of water to beverage mix. :)

If only I could teach this to some of the ADULTS I know who make coffee~sigh~

8. did you take a "turkey nap" on thursday? (frederick ... tell us the last time you had a turkey)
No. I can't sleep when I'm really full.

***

Saturday 6.

1. Take the quiz: What was your Thanksgiving horoscope?
I'm a Cancer. It says:

You're the sign most likely to both dread and look forward to Thanksgiving.

Your signature dish: Mashed potatoes

Your signature dessert: Pecan pie

This holiday: Don't let crazy family members get you down. Maintain your tough outer shell!

Uh. Okay. Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind for next Thanksgiving.

2. Did you have either of those two dishes on your Thanksgiving table? Of the two, which would have been your choice?
I had mashed potatoes. They were all right, but I didn't cook them long enough to get the skins done. :( But I'd rather have those than a pecan pie, especially with how shit-awful my cooking has been lately. As bad as I fucked up the pumpkin pie [I could barely gag it down; everybody else thought it was great and sucked it down, the freaks], I wouldn't want to ruin a pecan pie like that. Pecans are EXPENSIVE.

3. Which single food do you blame most for your weight gain?
I don't know if I gained any weight or not. I usually wait until all the food passes through my system before I judge that.

Each pound of body fat represents 3500 unburned Calories. Folks, if you genuinely gained more than 1/2 lb. over Thanksgiving, and you don't poop it out over the next week, you might want to consider cutting back on the butter and whipped cream next year. [Or you need to get to the store NOW and get some Ex-Lax.] I know I ate too much, but hopefully my digestive system took care of it. If not...well, it served me right.

4. Take the quiz: How thankful are you?
It says I'm 60% thankful.

You are certainly a thankful person, and you tend to remember what's going well in your life.
You truly are a lucky person - be sure to appreciate how good you have it!

I like how somebody who's never met me knows how lucky I am and how good I have it based on a few questions that have nothing to do with either of those things and everything to do with how much I've adjusted my attitude to my situation.

If you can read and you have access to a computer, you're already luckier than, like, 3/4 of the world anyway, aren't you? So the only people over whom you really couldn't lord the "you should appreciate how good you have it" thing are people who are never going to see this quiz. I just thought that was mildly ironic.

5. Which are you more thankful for: your family, your friends, your career or your possessions?
Depends on the day. Some days I'm just thankful I live alone.

6. Did you do any shopping at all on "Black Friday?"
No. Black Friday has become an obscenity. In any case, I have no money, and if I get any, I'm going to throw it frantically at the student loan people since my forbearances both ran out right before Xmas. If I can't make it by hand, I ain't giving it as a present this year. I am officially Ass-Out™.

***

On that cheerful holiday note...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

2006-11-23T08:12:00.000-06:00

Thursday Threesome: Turkey Day Edition.

::Black Friday Sales::

Onesome: Black-- I saw a white Christmas tree the other day all done up in "black and white"; I was thinking an Oakland Raiders fan might like it! Do you have any color preferences for your Christmas decorations? ...or maybe a theme you've found somewhere that resonates with you?
Not really, but I'm starting to think a black tree with silver and gold decorations would really kick ass. I'm not into decorating for holidays. I might put up some lights. Or I might not. I don't know why, but there's something about Christmas lights that fills me with an overwhelming sense of despair [no, I am not joking]. Holiday decorations in general are depressing, actually. But indoor Christmas lights are the worst, especially hung up on the walls. I look at them and a giant yawning chasm of grief and sadness opens up in my heart.

Thanks for reminding me. I'll have to ask my therapist about that, because that's a really weird reaction to have to Christmas lights. [I'm still not joking.]

Twosome: Friday-- leftovers? ...or do you have plans to order a pizza in to counteract all that turkey ?
Only homemade pizza gets served at Casa de Frida. As to whether there'll be leftovers, I'm going to send most of them home with my folks. Or I'm gonna give it to homeless people, or something, anything to get it out of my house. I don't care how damn broke I am, I'm not eating turkey sandwiches for a week. I eat so much ground turkey, I really can't get excited about roast turkey. I like it okay the first time; after about the third meal of it, it just makes me gag.

Threesome: Sales-- Okay, the big question: are you going to 'attend' any of the "Black Friday" sales? ...and if you are, are you hard core serious like the 5 am "be there" crowd?
Absolutely fucking not. I did that once, and I'm never doing it again. I don't care if they're giving everything away free. Black Friday should be renamed "Give Your Car To A Greedy Self-Centered Maniac And Send Them Out To Shop Day." The people are just...it's like they're on crack. They're hellbent on getting deals, they're not looking where they're going--either on the road or in the store--and the whole thing is dangerous and stupid. No thank you.

I don't have any money anyway. I'm just gonna scan in some family photos, burn them to CD's, and give them to everybody.

And what is this I hear about plasma TV's being a hot Christmas item this year? Who are these fucking people? I tell you what, if somebody bought me a plasma TV, I'd tell them to take it right back to the store, get a refund, and donate the money to a charity. How much you wanna bet these are the same people who whine about how hard it is for middle-class folks to stay afloat?

New rule: If you can afford to give somebody a plasma TV for Christmas, you officially forfeit your right to complain about money.

The Bitch has spoken.

Toosdy

2006-11-21T08:41:00.000-06:00

Last week's Tuesday's Tales. Fortunately, they don't get stale.

1. do you have pets? if so what, if not why not
No, I don't, at least not any that live with me. The apartment I live in doesn't allow pets, so my cat lives with my folks.

2. who was/is your favorite pet?
:,( at the idea of picking favourites among living beings.

3. What is your ideal pet?
I don't know. One that doesn't sit and stare at me, I know that. My cat does that, and it drives a person crazy. It'd also have to be something I'm not allergic to, which sadly rules out cats.

I've sometimes thought it'd be neat to have a goat.

4. tell me your best memory of your pet
Which pet? I've had tons of them--cats, gerbils, hamsters, a rat, a horse, several very short-lived fish, lizards.

5. tell me your worst memory of your pet
See 4. Also...children do some cruel things to pets. I'd just as soon not think about any of that. We're all stocked up on guilt here, thx. :)

sbt/sbc

Bills, Bond, and Birth Months

2006-11-18T21:25:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. When a bill arrives in the mail, what do you do with it: pay it immediately, hold it with others and pay at once, or put it off until the last possible minute?
Depends on if I have the money to pay it yet or not. Sometimes it sits on the table until the next paycheck.

2. Which actor makes the best James Bond?
OMG I can't believe people still watch this sexist shit. Ew.

James Bond should be a woman next time. It should be Jane Bond. And she should have her choice of hot sex-object men to screw. And she should nobly decline to screw any of them because Jane Bond actually has enough brains to understand where AIDS and venereal disease come from and enough ethics not to use people for sex and then throw them away while risking compromising her job performance by getting sick. [Also, isn't it kinda dumb for a spy to be leaving huge DNA samples all over the place?] That way, the director can use the sexual tension as a plot device, assuming he bothers to have a plot.

Oh, I'm sorry, people like the scantily-clad babes who [even the ones who are purported scientists] are pretty much just there as fuck interests and examples of the stereotypical deceitful, slutty woman? GET A PORNO.

3. Of the foods you enjoy, which one are you least likely to try cooking yourself?
Bread.

4. Take the quiz: What does your birth month reveal about you?
"Thinks far with vision. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having lots of ideas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating, tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous. Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Abiding. Able to show character. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Brand conscious. Executive. Stubborn."

5. Of the results you just got, which one seems the farthest from the "real" you?
It's a tie between "loves to dress up" and "seldom shows emotions."

6. Will you see your extended family on Thanksgiving Day this year?
No. It will be just me and the folks.

Have a good Thanksgiving, everybody, if you're celebrating that. If not, have a good week.

sbt/sbc

Saturday 8, Dead People Edition

2006-11-18T10:29:00.000-06:00

Saturday 8.

1. my friend's dad refused to let him create a formal funeral for him. some people need to grieve with a such a ceremony. do you need a formal "goodbye" to properly grieve?
I don't know. I've never had somebody die that was close enough for a grieving period to be necessary. As for what some people need...well, if they need it that bad, let them hold their own. I think people should respect the wishes of the deceased whenever possible. Not that people actually do that.

2. we're getting together with a huge BBQ and lots of alcohol, which was his request, in a few weeks to memorialise him. would you prefer this to a formal ceremony?
I'd prefer everybody go away and leave me to a peaceful afterlife, but I know that's not gonna happen. They're gonna want to have a wake and all that bullshit. I don't really express a preference because a] I'm not gonna be there, so it's not like I'm directly involved; and b] nobody fucking listens to me now, so why should they when I'm dead?

3. i plan on having a mausoleum to be buried in, full of fat little marble cherubs and a nice place for my kids to come and sit & talk to me after i go. what's your final resting place going to look like?
Either an urn of some kind or just the outdoors [if whoever ends up in charge of my ashes decides to scatter them]. I can't imagine anybody needing to come talk to me when I'm dead. I'd probably be reincarnated or traveling to other planets anyway, so it's not like I'd answer.

4. my friend is out of touch with everyone, which is understandable. however, he's not even ringing up his live-in girlfriend to keep her apprised of his plans. his mother, on the other hand, is on the phone nonstop talking to everyone. when you grieve, do you shut yourself away from friends/family, or do you need them there with you to help ease the pain?
See 1.

5. the first pet i lost was a marmalade tom named herman. herman got eaten by an alligator (no, i'm serious). i remember being 5 yrs. old and my parents telling me that herman was seen getting gobbled up by an alligator. who was the first pet you lost as a child?
I don't remember. We lived in the country when I was little, so there were a lot of pets, and a lot of tragedies involving highways and stupid motorists [and/or stupid cats].

6. when i was about 9 years old, my friend and her brothers were killed in a drunk-driving accident. it was the first funeral i'd ever gone to. do you remember your first funeral?
Vaguely. I've only been to one; it was an elderly uncle. I didn't go look at the body.

7. for centuries, people have been buried in mass graves due to disease, convenience, or war crimes, etc. do you feel mass graves are ok because we're simply a mass of cells which can be broken down, or do you feel that every single person who dies deserves a solitary resting place with a marker, etc.?
I don't know that I'd say it's ok; but in the end, it's not like it matters all that much, except in relation to the deceased's wishes and the family's desire to have a place to go. However, should a person need to be exhumed, it's a hell of a lot easier to do it from a single grave than from a mass one.

If you let nature take its course instead of having yourself pickled and hermetically sealed in a box,* whether you have your own grave becomes irrelevant after a couple hundred years anyway, just because there's nothing left--unless you arrange to be buried in a peat bog or something.

8. OT question - i have a work semi-formal ceremony to go to tonight. are you the type that likes to go to company-sponsored lavish events where everyone dresses up to hit the open bar with free gourmet food, OR would you prefer something that's quiet and more reserved, like a "thank-you" lunch?
I don't mind quieter functions, as long as there's something there I can eat. If I have to dress up like I'm gonna address the UN, just to have a meal--fuck that. For the price of the formal wear, I could stay home, pig out on snacks and DVD rentals, and have a much better time than those poor sods in their monkey suits and cocktail dresses having to be polite to their boss while he breathes gin breath all over them and tries to paw them at the buffet. And you know, you'd think after all the decades of company picnics and parties, that someone would realise that alcohol and co-workers do not go together. No thanks.

So there.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...
__________
*See, this is where I seriously lose respect for Christians who think that their bodies have to be preserved for the Second Coming. You've been dead and rotting for how many centuries; how great is this really gonna be for you? Also, is God such a cheapskate that he can't give you new bodies?

12 And the Lord said, "What happened to thy bodies that I gave thee?"
13 And the people said, "They rotted, and are become earth a thousand years since."
14 And the Lord said, "Damn, dost thou not take care of anything I give thee? See if I ever give thee anything nice again."

A day late, a fistful of dollars short...

2006-11-12T06:50:00.000-06:00

My mom got a sample of some "Seattle's Best" brand coffee, so she gave it to me. [My dad is a strict Folgerite.] Frankly, if this is the best Seattle can do, I'm a little concerned.

Anyway.

sat-8 :: it's a hodgepodge this week!

1. speaking of "hodgepodge," what's a word that always sounds strange or "off" to you, even though it's an accepted and functional member of the english language?
They all sound weird if you say them enough. Try it.

2. help!!! do you ask for help if you need it, or do you simply go down in flames refusing to ask for it due to your pride (or some other psychological construct)?
Usually I ask for help; occasionally I don't because of pride, and sometimes I don't because whatever help is available is something I can't afford.

3. bills! what is the last bill you had to pay?
I don't remember, but I have a big steaming pile of them on the kitchen table right now.

4. holiday music! there are some radio stations that play holiday music nonstop from 1 december until practically new year's day. do you love holiday music, or would you rather jab a screwdriver in your ear?
I would rather jab a screwdriver in my ear. Or, alternatively, I'd like to jab one in the ears of the store owners and radio station managers that force their poor underpaid employees to listen to "Jingle Bell Rock" until they're ready to kill anybody in a red suit.

5. i have a friend that seriously, i CANNOT COMMUNICATE REQUESTS/COMMANDS WITH. he seems to have this issue with others as well. whether it be email or phone convos, if i ask him to do something for me, he doesn't understand. if he asks me a question or to do something for him, i have no idea what the hell he's talking about. do you know (or knew) someone who has a communication wall around them?
Hoo boy, do I ever. I can't talk about it here, though.

6. we were talking about logical fallacies the other day (red herring, straw man, ad hominem, etc.), and the discussion led to superstitions. what superstition are you a victim of in your life, or just follow?
I leave honey and sparkly things out for the faeries; does that count?

7. do you have any leftover hallowe'en candy in your abode right now?
I didn't buy any Halloween candy, so no.

8. a mini scavenger hunt ... go to IMDB's day search, enter your birthday in the left-hand column, and tell us what famous film/television people share your special day.
Dude, there's like 150 people on that list. And out of all those, there are only five that I recognise: Clarence Thomas, June Carter Cash, Selma Blair, Alfred Kinsey, and the Duke of Windsor. I think Selma Blair is an actress. The others have all appeared on TV, I'm sure, but they're not really TV/movie personalities. I have no idea who the hell the other 100+ people are.

***

Saturday 6.

1. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being very pleased/enthusiastic and one being very unhappy/depressed, how would you rate your feelings on Democrats taking control of Congress?
I'm fine with it. So I guess that's like a 7 [I'm assuming a 5 would be indifference]. Now, whether they're actually going to DO something with Congress or just stand around and pick their asses--as well as whether the things they do are actually useful--time will tell.

2. The Democrats have been, naturally, very critical of the Bush administration and the course the country has taken. How effectively do you believe that they can turn things around by the 2008 election?
Pfft. I'll believe it when I see it.

3. What would you rather have for breakfast: a) Ham & eggs with toast b) Grits and sausage c) Pancakes and Syrup
I guess ham and eggs with toast, but only if I have a few hours to wake up first. I have never consumed grits, nor do I want to, and I will almost never eat sausage that I did not personally pick out of the store myself and read the ingredients label. Pancakes don't stick with you, and syrup is...well, syrup is pretty much pure sugar. Great way to give yourself diabetes, but I wouldn't call it breakfast unless you really don't have anything left in the house but flour and eggs or Bisquick [which has happened to me a couple times].

4. Take the quiz: Are you too negative?
It says I'm moderate. I'm guessing that's good, since excessive pessimism is bad for your health and excessive optimism leads to things like bad stock-market gambles and botched Russian invasions. [That happened twice, actually; you'd think people would learn...]

5. How likely are you to change your view of things based on your answer?
Not likely, unless there's some pressing reason why being realistic suddenly isn't good enough anymore. Also, I'd probably go to the American Psychological Association or NIMH for personality advice before I'd go to MyYearbook. Just a personal preference.

6. You are serving as a juror in a murder trial. The defense team is claiming that a woman killed her own child while insane. As a juror, would you consider it critical information to know how soon she might be "back on the street" if found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, or would this have no bearing on your verdict?
It depends on what you mean by "back on the street." Do you mean that she would be homeless? In that case, it would have a bearing on the verdict, because as bad as the prison system is, I'd rather have her there than homeless. If, on the other hand, she has family who care about her and can help her get the help she needs, then no. I'd rather see her in prison than homeless, but if I think she's really mentally ill, I'd rather see her in a hospital or a group home than in prison. The quality of mental health care in prisons is atrocious, and a lot of people come out of prison more mentally ill than when they went in. Naturally, this makes no sense, since there's a much higher population of mentally ill folks in prison than in the general population; in fact, there are 4 times as many mentally ill in American prisons as in American mental hospitals. So you'd think that prisons would be swarming with psychiatrists, since many people who commit crimes do so because of some kind of psychiatric disorder [manic episode, depression, schizophrenia, any of a whole rainbow of personality disorders]. At least, you'd think that if you actually expected to use the term "correctional system" with a straight face. I've already written about how the correctional system does a piss-poor job of actually correcting anything, so I won't go into that again.

No, if the woman is mentally ill, she needs to be wherever it's most likely that she'll get some kind of treatment. If the child she killed was an infant, it's also possible that an unusually severe case of postpartum depression is to blame. In that case, they should also be exploring whether there are any hormonal treatments they can do, or whether she should just abstain from having kids. It's not for everybody, you know.

And that answers that.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

weekend memes

2006-11-06T06:45:00.000-06:00

Saturday 6.

1. How many trick-or-treaters did you have this year? Was that more, less, or the same as last year?
0. It was the same as last year.

2. What kind of halloween candy did you buy?
None.

3. What's the next topic you intend to blog about?
No idea.

4. Take the quiz: What is your beer personality?
I couldn't take it because all the options on all the questions were based on the assumption that you drink beer. That rendered the questions unanswerable for me, as...
a] I do not drink beer from any kind of container.
b] I do not look for anything in a beer, except to make sure that the glass I'm drinking out of doesn't contain any of it.
c] I would not go pub crawling in any city anywhere because drunks piss me off and smoke makes me sick.
d] I've had a lot of personality changes since the last time I was drunk. Also, people are terrible at assessing their own personalities even when sober; the delusions of grandeur that frequently accompany drunkenness can't possibly help.
e] For me, there are no good things about drinking beer. The taste makes me gag and even tiny amounts of alcohol make me sick.

5. Do you like the taste of beer? Have you ever tried this particular one?
I think beer tastes like barf.

As for the second part of the question, I don't even remember which brands of beer I've tried. All I know is that they all tasted awful, I drank them only to be polite, and the whole time I was desperately wishing I had a soda or an iced tea or some moose urine or ANYTHING BUT BEER.

6. Which of the following in your home is more full: your dishwasher, your washing machine, your dryer, your sink or your hamper?
My sink, since I don't have any of those other things, unless a laundry basket counts as a hamper.

Sunday 7.

Name up to seven issues important to you this election day.
Environment, uh...

Who am I kidding? I mean, really. In the end, it doesn't really matter much on the issues, because they're not gonna do anything about them anyway, and when they do, they end up fucking up everything else in the process. The real issue is, there's not enough money to go around to do everything that needs doing. So I'm just gonna vote Green wherever possible because they're the only party that I even remotely agree with. I no longer have any hope of electing anybody that's gonna actually represent me, because I disagree so vehemently with the majority on so many things that nobody that actually represented my views would have a chance in hell of winning.

Here's my breakdown on the issues. [It's long.]

Immigration: Everybody's shitting their pants over immigrants, and I couldn't care less, because most of the people that are hysterical about immigrants can't tell an illegal immigrant from a legal immigrant from somebody whose family has been here for 4 generations and just happens to be brown. Not only that, they're ignoring all the white, American-born lazyasses that are just as much of a drain on the welfare system as immigrants supposedly are--and they're ignoring all the immigrants who ARE getting an education and ARE trying to learn English and ARE collecting a paycheck instead of a government check. Additionally, most of the immigrant-related information that gets people's BVD's in a knot is third and fourth hand information that they got from their drinking buddies, who got it from their dental hygienist, who got it from her half-deaf grandma, who got it from a conversation she overheard in the checkout line at Hy-Vee. If you gave people a quiz on what benefits and perks immigrants actually get, and under what circumstances, I bet 90% of people would flunk. I would too, but at least I don't pretend I'm an expert on it.

I also won't pretend illegal immigration isn't a problem, or that there aren't people who think the US owes them a free monthly check just because we happen to have more money. And I think we do have an obligation to spread around the wealth, but we also have to fix the problems that make our own cost of living so high. But nobody gives a shit about that. They just wanna run around waving their arms and going "OMFG TEH DAM MEXICANS OMFG@!!!!!!@@!$#!!" Fine, you histrionic fuck, if you don't want 'em here, run for office and get them kicked out. Or knock them out, put them in your truck, and drive them home. Or find out which office you're supposed to report illegal immigrants to, and report them. But don't come crying to ME about it, because I do not work for the INS, I do not hold public office, and I can't do Jack W. Shit III about it. And frankly, if I was living in some of those countries, I'd be breaking a leg trying to get here too. And so would you. It's really easy to tell people "go back to your country and deal with your own problems" when you don't live there and will never have to. Just can it.

Abortion: Holy balls, where do I start? Who can you even vote for on this that's actually gonna take a stand? The Republicans don't want women to have abortions, they don't want them to have birth control, they don't want them to have sex ed. They don't want them to have sex, period, unless they're married--and then they better STAY married, because we all know that a loveless cheating hubby who brings home STD's or a violent bastard who flings his kids across the room is better than no daddy at all, right? And the Democrats just lick the majority's boots and offer them bonbons. Why? Well, remember what happened to Paul Wellstone? Yeah. Accident, my ass.

Not only that, some of the procedures they're so hot to ban are commonly used to save women's lives or to remove dead fetuses. Carry a dead baby around in your uterus for a month or two and then get back to me on partial-birth abortion. Or, if your hormones are making you severely depressed, just deal with it. Pray, maybe. Take some antidepressants for it. Oh, wait, those cause birth defects. Well, I guess you're just not supposed to get depressed. What, your birth control failed and you can't afford a kid? Too bad, so sad. Better that you [and any other kids you may have] starve, rather than murder an innocent...uh, bundle of cells with no functioning nervous system. [Oh, it has a soul? Really? I'm sorry, I didn't get the "America is a Christian theocracy" memo. Because that's, like, the only religion that believes the soul-at-conception thing.]

It's your own fault for not being celibate and refraining from sin. Unless you were married. Then if you don't spread for your husband you're inflicting emotional distress on him [because YOU should be able to be celibate, but that's just too much to ask of him]. Then children are a blessing, right, because everybody in America makes enough money to cover the $10K a year it takes to raise a child. And everybody wants a kid and has the patience and the emotional resources to raise one without damaging it. Everybody that's worth anything, anyway. Because, you know, if you're poor, it's because you're a worthless lazy bum. It can't possibly be because you get paid so little that you can't get ahead [either by working more hours or by continuing your education while you work] without driving yourself into the ground and ending up seriously ill, which will ruin you financially for the rest of your life. Nope. That never happens. And if you're mentally ill or have health problems, you're somehow supposed to magically rise above it like those people in the Reader's Digest articles that lost a leg and got lupus and still managed to raise four kids and take them to Sunday school every week or whatever.

Again, nobody gives a crap, least of all the politicians, who if they're really interested in preserving choice, will introduce legislation that will be shouted down as enabling welfare queens and baby-killers.

Education: I REALLY don't know where to start here. All I know is, I'm happy to pay taxes for schools, because education is obviously very important and the kids sitting in social studies class now are going to be the same people who take care of me when I'm in the nursing home. So I only have two issues with that:

1] If I and everybody else are paying taxes to fund schools, why is everybody leaving school so stupid? I feel like my money's being wasted. Should we be spending more? Should we be spending it differently? I really don't see how cutting music classes and diverting it to football helps any of these kids get smarter.

2] If I'm paying taxes to fund schools and state-run child assistance programs, and to pick up the budget slack caused by family tax credits, stop trying to smack me down every time I express a child-related opinion, just because I don't have kids. I'm sick of being treated like I'm a total retard in the kid department. Pushing a baby out your hoo-ha doesn't make you Jean Piaget. True, raising kids is an excellent way to learn about kids--probably the best. But BEING a kid also teaches you about them. READING about children teaches you about them. [I can hear it now: "Books aren't a substitute for experience." So Dr. Spock was basically just pissing in the wind when he wrote all those landmark child-development books. Shut up.] I WAS a kid. I went to school for 13 years with kids. I played with kids the whole time I was growing up. I continue to read about education and child development so I can understand them and understand people in general. What's more, I pay in full the taxes that YOU get credits on, I helped pay for the schools they go to and the teachers that teach them, I am helping fund your goddamn kids, so don't you DARE tell me I can't so much as have an opinion about them. And I don't have to be a parent myself to call somebody a shitty parent, any more than I have to be a pro football player to know the Vikes suck, so you can cram that too.

Gay marriage: Why does anybody care? I mean, really. What is it to you if gays get married? So maybe you think it's a sin to be gay. Since when does your religion dictate policy? And I have yet to hear a coherent, rational explanation for how exactly gay marriage destroys the institution of marriage. And even if it did, I'm supposed to care...why, exactly? If the institution of marriage is so fragile that letting Joe and Brad go down the aisle together is gonna destroy it, how much was it really worth in the first place? No, this isn't about preserving anybody's marriage. It's about the fact that allowing gay marriage takes us one step farther away from America becoming a Christian theocracy.

The economy: I don't even have an answer to that. I don't know what would work or whose policies would be better. All I know is, rich people don't need any more goddamn breaks. If they would actually invest it in ways that would help everybody--if trickle-down economics worked--I'd feel differently. But they don't spend a lot of it helping the rest of us, do they? Oh, some do; some care quite a bit. But not many care enough to forgo their giant house and expensive car for a normal house and car, and invest or give away the excess. I'd love there to be a cap on how much you can own. But as long as rich people run the government, it's never gonna happen.

Gun control: I don't own a gun, so it's not a personal issue for me. If somebody told me I could never have a gun, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep. I think letting the assault weapons ban lapse was a huge mistake, but as for allowing people to have handguns, I agree with the idea that responsible people should be allowed to have them for self-defense. The issue comes in deciding who's responsible enough, and that's where you get arguments over whether mentally ill people, minor drug offenders, or other groups should have handguns. I don't know enough about it to know. If it was something I felt strongly about, I'd make more of an effort to keep informed, but I don't, so.

Crime: This is something I do know more about, and something I probably rant about too much. It's also something about which I am in vehement disagreement with a lot of the legislature and other citizens. Without getting into a big thing about the rights of the accused or of convicts [thus sidestepping the common "They gave up their rights when they committed a crime, what bout the victims' rights?" issue]--the simple fact is, putting people in prison doesn't deter crime any better than putting them on probation. The recidivism rate is the same. Longer sentences and harsher prison conditions leave prisoners less psychologically equipped to lead a straight life once they get out. And if you're going to piss and moan about having to pay for their room and board, you better be expecting to let them out.

And that's the problem. To the American people, I have to ask: What do you want to do, shoot everybody who commits a crime? If you give them short sentences or parole and they reoffend, you bitch that they should've been locked up longer. If you give them longer sentences, then you bitch that they're getting a free ride at the taxpayer's expense. If the prisons are nice and clean and humane, you bitch that they have too many privileges that law-abiding citizens don't have. If the prisons are brutal, the inmates come out more brutal than when they went in, are more likely to reoffend, and then you bitch that they weren't rehabilitated. If they're sentenced to life without parole, you bitch that they should be executed so you don't have to pay for them. If they're sentenced to death, you bitch about how long and expensive the appeals process is. You fuckers are never happy, are you? Is there some other option that you see besides just executing everybody that's convicted, without appeal? Because that's the only other option I see. And if you do that, very few crimes will be punished at all, because nobody will want to sentence somebody to death for getting too many speeding tickets, so the cops will just look the other way.

No. What it comes down to is, you don't care what actually works. You're more interested in getting your little punishment-gasm than you are in actually reducing crime. Longer sentences don't reduce crime. The death penalty doesn't reduce crime. Greater police presence--when it DOES reduce crime in one area--just causes it to shift to other areas. You keep voting people into office who claim they're gonna be tough on crime. But the laws they pass that are supposedly tough on crime DON'T FUCKING WORK. Never mind whether it's fair to the prisoner, or whether they're getting too many privileges or not enough, or any of that. THE SHIT DOESN'T WORK. Why do you keep electing people who get up there and say, "I'm gonna pass a law that does X" when there are decades of criminology research and case studies that prove X doesn't fucking work???

You wanna reduce crime? The first thing you need to do is get over your macho idea that being tougher on criminals is the way to reduce it, and that things like probation and restorative justice are for sissies. The next thing you need to do is what you should have been doing since the first day you, as an adult voter, started bitching about the criminal justice system: educate yourself on what actually reduces crime, and only elect those officials who are willing to do what works. You want it changed, you make it happen. You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when somebody gets punished for doing something awful? Admit it. Allow yourself to have it. It's human. But DO NOT ask your elected leaders to make justice policy based on your emotions. Your emotions are important, but they're not a substitute for reason; and no matter how much you want to see so&so go to the chair, sending him there doesn't help anybody. In fact, a capital trial + execution costs several times more than a non-capital trial + life imprisonment, so you just cost yourself and the other taxpayers a shitload of unnecessary money, all so you could say "good riddance." I hope you're happy.

You're so goddamn worried where your tax dollars go in terms of crime prevention, remember this: The recidivism rates for prison and probation are similar--probation's is actually a bit lower. Prison costs SIX TO TEN TIMES what probation costs. People do sometimes commit crimes while on probation, but they do it while in prison too--not just crimes against other prisoners and guards, but against society. There are many instances of people running drug rings or other criminal enterprises from behind bars. All you need is somebody on the outside to be your liaison and preferably a guard or two who's willing to look the other way for a small fee. And probation with electronic monitoring provides almost as much surveillance as prison, without the room and board cost, and while it's more expensive than traditional probation, it's still several times cheaper than prison.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Which reminds me...

Smoking bans: Totally in favour of them. There are days when I have some sympathy for smokers, and I really would like them to have decent, well-ventilated places to smoke where they're not going to be bothering anybody. Then I smell somebody's smoke, and after one or two whiffs of it I can feel the tissues inside my head swelling up with an oncoming migraine. I know if I hang around it long enough, I will end up with a sinus infection and possibly an ear infection as well, from the mucous membrane irritation. That really puts a damper on my sympathy, and by the time I make it home and take an Imitrex [there are migraine-prevention meds, but the side effects are too much for me, and they still don't prevent the sinus infections], I hate every last puffing one of them. Which makes me feel bad, because I have friends who smoke. They know I don't mean it personally [I hope]. But man, I gotta live too. Sorry.

Environment: Again, I'm no expert on the environment, but I just gotta ask: Of all the above issues I mentioned, do you really think any of them are gonna matter if we don't have a decent planet to live on? What good is it gonna do to argue about school funding if the kids all have cancer and developmental disorders from environmental chemicals? What good is it gonna do to argue about jobs if nobody can work because they're all sick? What good is it gonna do to debate subsidies for farmers and fishermen if none of the damn land is arable anymore and there are no more fish left? Answer that and then get back to me on how important the environment is.

Man. Ask me about politics, see what ya get, right? This got a lot longer and a lot bitchier than I expected. But I stand by it because it's how I think and feel.

So.

sbt/sbc

Daylight Slavings Time

2006-10-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's that time of year again, where we get back the hour that Daylight Savings Time robbed us of in the spring. Knowing me, I'll probably waste it online.

Speaking of time, Saturday 8 asks "when's the last time."

# when was the last time you bought something for someone else, and what was it?
I bought something for my mom, but I don't remember what it was.

# when was the last time you complimented someone, and what was their reaction?
I think it was somebody at work. I tell people good job, and they just sorta walk away. I have a hard time complimenting somebody without it sounding insincere. I think it's because people very, very rarely impress me, and I have to be impressed to give a good, genuine compliment that doesn't sound hokey.

# when was the last time you had to return a purchase to the store; what was it and why?
I remember doing it, but I don't remember what it was or why. I don't keep track of things like that.

# when was the last time you had an ice cream cone?
No idea. I don't buy them ready-made, and I don't keep cones around the house because I don't eat ice cream enough to use up more than 2 or 3 cones before the rest go stale. So I might get one at my mom's house, but not often, because she likes to repackage ice cream in other containers to save space, and that tends to ruin the texture.

# i had to take The Kid to the doctor. when was the last time you had to go to the doctor's office?
A couple weeks ago; it was a urologist.

# when was the last time you were embarrased by something you did? What was it and what happened?
That happens practically every day. I went to a movie party Friday night and left my soda bottle on the table in the front hall when I left. Oopsie.

# when was the last time someone was kind to you?
Yesterday. Or earlier today, depending on what time zone you're in and whether you've changed your clocks yet.

# when was the last time you locked yourself out of your house/apartment/work? what did you do?
A couple months ago. I got somebody to let me in.

sbt/sbc

Book 'em, Danno.

2006-10-28T01:09:00.000-05:00

[Sorry if the folks at Booking Through Thursday have heard that one a million times already.]

1. Do you make notes in books as you read them?
Very rarely. I might underline a passage, but that's maybe one in 100 books, and I don't think I've ever made handwritten notes in a book except a textbook.

2. Why or why not?
I don't have any reason to.

3. If you do, do you make notes only in certain kinds of books or all of them?
See 1.

sbt/sbc

2006-10-22T00:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6. [It's still Saturday on the West Coast, so I'm not THAT late...]

1. Who is the last person who you spoke to by telephone?
The lady from the dentist's office reminding me of my cleaning Monday morning.

2. Who is the last person you spoke to online?
Probably my friend C.

3. Which of the two have you seen more in person?
I've never met C in person, and I don't know if the lady that called from the dentist's office is one of the office workers I've seen or if they farm out phone reminders to somebody else.

And what is the thing now with referring to the patient in the third person? That's the second call I've gotten where they don't ask, "Is Frida there?" but just say, "I'm calling to remind Frida of her appointment with Dr. So&So on mm/dd at hh:mm." Dammit, I'm Frida [well, not IRL, but for the purposes of relating events in this medium, I am]. Stop talking to me like I'm somebody else, or like I'm a damn voice-mail machine. It's insulting.

4. Take the quiz: How is your self-esteem?
It says I have low self-esteem 32% of the time. What it didn't do, and this was a pleasant surprise, was hand me a bunch of nagging bullshit about how I should feel better about myself, blah blah blah. I've seen quizzes where, if your self-esteem wasn't in the 90th percentile, you were admonished to love yourself for the wonderful person you are, never mind the fact that very high self-esteem is a sign of a personality disorder. [Great thing to do to a person with low self-esteem, by the way: criticise them.] But I thought some of the questions were a tad dodgy. And it's not that this quiz is that bad, either, in case Patrick was wondering. It's mostly accurate in the sort of questions it asks. I'm just in a mood to pick things apart today.

You CAN'T always depend on people to help you out when you're down. If that's how you feel, that doesn't mean you have low self-esteem, it just means everybody else you know has it hard too. I know maybe two people who could and would help me out if, for instance, I lost my job. Everybody else in my family is either on welfare or Social Security. They don't have anything to help out WITH. The co-workers I know who would be willing to help out are just as broke as I am, and so are my friends. So how much is it a self-esteem issue and how much is it a matter of simply not knowing a lot of people with free time and money?

Then there's the issue of finding it hard to concentrate. That has to do with self-esteem? It can be a symptom of depression, which can be both a cause and an effect of low self-esteem; but it's a very tenuous link between concentration and self-esteem, since there are a million things which impair concentration:
~subacute CO poisoning
~lack of sleep
~medication side effects
~vitamin deficiencies
~boredom
~low blood sugar
~noise
~stress
~ADHD
~brain damage
~PTSD [which can, but doesn't necessarily, lead to low self-esteem]

As for deserving to be loved, I think it's debatable whether anybody deserves to be loved. [In fact, I think that whether anybody deserves anything is arguable.] Is it a matter of deserving? And can you love somebody just because they deserve to have somebody love them? I can't. If I don't love 'em, I don't love 'em. The end. That's just how I feel.

Then there's the question "You fear that you will never find true love." I didn't check that one even though I suspect I may never have another romantic relationship [not that I'm falling all over myself looking for one; I have enough goddamn problems] and even though I'm pretty sure the "true love" they're talking about is a romantic relationship. I've done enough bashing of the legions of retards who think that RR's are the only "true love," so I won't go into it again, no matter how richly they merit my derision. Since my definition of love includes familial love, love between friends, animal/human love, and a great deal more besides penis/vagina love, I've already found true love, and plenty of it, thanks. So I may or may not have skewed my result there, depending on whether the quiz writer was talking about p/v love or all love.

Sorry to get on the heart-shaped soapbox there, but I think love, and its definitions and parameters, is one area where this culture is deeply warped. Don't even get me started on the media's depiction of love and what it does to people's expectations. I'll be here all day.

5. What is the longest period of time you have gone without internet service since you became a "regular user"?
I think it was the four days that I was in the hospital.

6. How much did the lack of internet availability bother you?
Not much, but I think that was due to the copious amounts of morphine I was given. Also, I had CD's, hockey games, and the fX channel, so that helped. It's the old methadone strategy--substitute one drug for another.

Time for more coffee, and maybe breakfast. I think another batch of potato pancakes may be in order.

sbt/sbc

Blursday Memes.

2006-10-20T07:14:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know these are late. This is one of the few places where I can be late and not get socked with a service charge of some kind.

Booking Through Thursday.

1. Do you read in bed? For how long? Do you fall asleep reading? Will a good book keep you up all night?
I read in bed nearly every day, either until it gets really late [usually on work days] or until I'm about to fall asleep and drop the damn thing. I can't remember the last time a book kept me awake for very long unless I really wasn't that tired.

2. Where do you keep your nighttime reading? Do you have a special table next to the bed? Are there many books there? Do you keep books there that you aren't reading (finished or unread)?
I have a bookshelf next to the bed. It has whatever books I'm reading in bed plus a couple hundred just stacked on the shelves because there isn't enough room to put them upright.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Payin' the bills::

Onesome: Payin'-- Hey, 'they' tell us fuel prices are down! What are you payin' this week for a gallon of gas?
I have no idea. Probably two-something. There's no bus service in town here or between towns, so I don't have a hell of a lot of choice except to pay whatever they charge. That makes it sort of pointless to spend a lot of time looking at the prices--it costs what it costs, and when you need gas, you need gas. Unless you like walking 35 miles each way to see a doctor.

Who are they?

Twosome: the-- heck you say! There's an election coming up here in the US; do you plan to vote? No, no need for your soapbox. ...unless you want to .
Yeah, if I can figure out where I'm supposed to vote since I moved. I generally vote by party. Green is first choice, other third parties or independent are second choice, and DFL is third choice. If there's a Republican running unopposed, I don't vote for that office. The only exceptions I made were in the last two presidential elections, where I voted DFL to try and keep Bush out. Worked great, didn't it? I might as well have voted for Cap'n Crunch. And now that an increasing number of states are using the Diebold voting machines which can be hacked by a developmentally disabled toddler with a Speak & Spell, we ALL might as well vote for Cap'n Crunch, because it won't make a hill of shit worth of difference. This is a shining example of the democracy which we work so hard to spread around the globe.

Threesome: Bills-- Which bill(s) do you absolutely dislike paying? ...and by that I mean the one you "have to-have to" but wish you didn't have to. Tuition/books? Power? The newspaper?
I hate paying all of them. The only ones I dislike less are final payments [such as the final $120 or so I have left on my mattress, which I'll pay off next month].

sbt/sbc

Dos Preguntas para Lunes

2006-10-16T11:38:00.000-05:00

"Para lunes" sounds like a euphemism for underwear, like "pantaloons" or something.

Curious as a Cat.

If you could remove one of the current Supreme Court justices based on their moral positions, whom would you choose?
Oh, hell, I don't know. Whichever one is the most conservative. I know I should pay more attention to that stuff, but I have a hard time seeing the point when I can't vote for justices, and the person who appoints them [i.e. George W. Douchebottle] doesn't listen to what I or any other citizens want anyway. Petitions, public outcry, letter campaigns...it all goes in one big monkey ear and out the other. Maybe if I was a billionaire, he'd listen. But I'm not, so there's buggerall I can do about it. So yeah, just 86 whoever leans furthest to the right.

Finish this sentence: "What I really need ____________."
Can't be bought in a store. Well, some of what I need can [a better car, for one]. But the really important things can't. Courage, for example, and perspective, and social support, and the ability to forgive. I need to unblock some of my channels to let in good stuff, and board up some other channels to keep other people's horseshit from polluting my psyche. It's happening; it just takes time. Anyway, that's what I need.

Yeah.

sbt/sbc

Taking Sinventory

2006-10-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. Take the quiz: How much sloth do you have?
It says my sloth quotient is 29%.

2. Take the quiz: How much wrath do you have?
Wrath quotient: 24%.

3. Take the quiz: How much lust do you have?
Lust quotient: 14%.

4. Take the quiz: How much envy do you have?
Envy quotient: 30%.

5. Take the quiz: How much pride do you have?
Pride quotient: 32%.

6. Of these five sins, which quiz's response seemed most different from your real personality?
Patrick, you make the heroic assumption that people know their own real personalities. ;-) I'm sure most people know themselves better than others do, but I think we all lie to ourselves at least a little about who we are. If I'm as honest with myself as I can manage to be, I'd say all the scores are pretty much spot on. I know it's somewhat different than how some people perceive me, though.

I also think it's a good sign that I managed to get a wrath score under 50% without having to lie [at least consciously]. That's a marked improvement.

sbt/sbc

Late memes.

2006-10-13T23:11:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat [about five days late].

Finish this sentence: "I have been blessed because _______________ ."
uh...I was born into circumstances that allowed me to be a freer, more self-actualised human being than is possible for most people in most periods of history.

Why is the sky blue?
Because if it was green, you wouldn't know where to stop mowing. Everybody knows that.

***

Booking Through Thursday [about two days late].

1. Do you read short stories?
Not usually. I've read some and enjoyed them, but I don't especially gravitate toward them.

2. Why or why not?
I have a backlog of literally dozens of books to read, and none of them happen to be books of short stories.

3. What do you like and dislike about short stories?
I like that the shorter format allows the writer to present ideas in a way that isn't drawn out over four hundred pages. In a novel, it's hard to walk that fine line between losing the message in the details of the story and bashing the reader over the head with it every ten pages. In a short story, you can present an idea, explore it a little, and leave the reader to ponder it, without having to build up a big story around it that might obscure the idea. The trouble with this, though, is that some stories should be expanded and told as novels, but the short story format prohibits it; so you're left with this unopened bud of a great idea, which is disappointing. Of course, some stories aren't that complicated, so they're better off as interesting short stories than as draggy, boring novels.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Moving, Madness, and Media [A Meme]

2006-09-30T23:38:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. You're arranging to move. If money were no object, would you hire movers to come in and pack your belongings as well as drive them, or would you prefer to do the packing yourself?
Um. No. See, you don't touch my stuff. Total strangers ESPECIALLY do not touch my stuff. You never touch a witch's stuff unless you know exactly what you're doing. I pack it. That way I don't have to re-bless everything [and wipe the fingerprints off] when I unpack. Other people can drive the truck, though.

2. Of the new shows that have premiered so far this season, which were you most looking forward to seeing?
None. I have no TV.

3. Did the show live up to your expectations?
See 2.

4. Take the quiz: What type of lunatic are you?
I liked this quiz. :) Fun and right on the money.

What Type of Lunatic are You?

'Fudged in the Head' PLEASE VOTE!!!
Take this quiz!

Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

5. What habit of yours would you say is the craziest?
I don't think I have any sane habits.

6. What do you own more of: VHS Tapes, CDs, DVDs or Books?
Books, by far. Last time I counted, I had about 560 books, maybe 200-300 CD's, a few dozen VHS [I don't have a VCR either, so fat lot of good they do me], and a few dozen DVD's. A great many of the books are yard-sale books, thrift-store books, or used-bookstore books; on one occasion, the landlord of one of my childhood homes gave us boxes of books when they cleaned out the garage. [This is how I got hold of The Happy Hooker, by the way.]

Aaaaaaaand that's all she wrote.

sbt/sbc

Se7en

2006-09-25T00:09:00.000-05:00

Sunday 7.

Name up to seven magazines that you either have subscribed to, currently subscribe to, or would subscribe to if money were no object.
Currently subscribing:
~Rolling Stone
~GuitarOne
~PCMagazine

Subscribed in the past:
~Entertainment [BO-ring; cancelled it]
~Spin [had to cancel due to $; would like to re-subscribe]

Want to subscribe:
~National Geographic
~Bitch

I would have said MAD, but the writing has gone downhill over the decades. Also, Don Martin is no longer with us. :( I have a pile of old MAD books from the 60's and 70's, though, so I can still get my fix if I need it. I learned more 20th-century history from MAD than I did from history class. Maybe schools should give students satire from various historical periods in addition to [or instead of] history books. Hey, that sounds like fun. If I were a history teacher, I'd do that.

sbt/sbc

Six.

2006-09-24T07:07:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. You find out that you've just gotten a new job in a different state. Which room of your home will be the most difficult to get packed and why?
Probably either the living room or the kitchen, because the living room has the computer and a lot of furniture, and the kitchen has all the food, dishes and appliances. None of it would be TOO hard to move, since I just moved a few months ago and haven't unpacked everything.

2. Which room is most likely to contain the greatest number of items that you should throw away, but haven't, yet?
The studio.

3. What is your single greatest strength and single greatest weakness if you were to enter the dating scene tomorrow?
My greatest strength would be that I know myself pretty well. My greatest weakness would be that I don't want to date in the first damn place.

4. Take the quiz: What are your dating strengths and weaknesses?
I don't identify very well with any of the sexual orientations listed, since I'm not interested enough in men to consider myself straight for purposes of dating. But they didn't list genderqueer, bisexual or asexual as options [which I thought was majorly shitty given the century we live in, but that's neither here nor there], so I picked "female heterosexual" since that was the closest. After taking the quiz, I also have to wonder whether the quiz writer was ever exposed to any religion other than Christianity.

My strengths:

1. Intelligence - 85.7%
2. Independence - 57.1%
3. Financial Situation - 53.8%
4. Spirituality - 53.8%

My weaknesses:

1. Pessimism - 83.3%
2. Temper - 62.5%
3. Appearance - 55.6%
4. Shyness - 54.2%

5. What's the biggest surprise from this quiz's findings?
I'm surprised by this whole quiz and the assumptions it makes, and not in a good way. The sad part is that it uses the same kind of thinking and assumptions that are shared by a great many people.

Intelligence is not necessarily a plus--people with really high IQ's have a hard time finding other people on their intellectual level. People SAY they want somebody intelligent, but what they really want is somebody as intelligent as THEY are. Just try having an IQ about 30 points above your date, and actually showing it. Believe me, it goes down like a nun's knickers. Independence is more likely to be a plus if you're a man, since a lot of people still expect women to be ~~simpering dishrags~~ demure and deferential. Spirituality is not necessarily a plus--what, atheists have worse relationships or something? Please. Pessimism and temper are only minuses for some people. Also, the pessimism score is based mostly on one question which was a "glass is half-full" question and did not give an option for people who think the glass is neither half full nor half empty. I said "false" so it assumed I was a pessimist. And if having a temper was bad for dating, Norwegians would be long extinct. As for appearance--boy, I don't know what to say to that. I try to be clean and decently groomed; beyond that, I just look how I look. I'm not here to impress anybody. If you don't like how I look, then at least you won't be trying to grab my tits.

Whoever wrote this has a pretty damn black & white view of people. Unfortunately, a good portion of the population has the same kind of view and the same standards as the quiz writer. So if you lived up to those standards, you'd get more dates. If everybody lived up to those standards, everybody would get more dates. And Earth would be the most boring goddamn place in the entire universe. No thanks.

6. Would you ever go out on a blind date with someone you'd met online if you'd never talked to them through any other method than email?
Not without a black belt in karate and a can of extra-strength mace. And you know what? I wouldn't even do it then, because if the person attacked me and I had to defend myself, people wouldn't be asking why that person isn't in jail; they'd be asking ME what I was thinking, going on a blind date like that with a near-total stranger when I knew full well how dangerous it was. I don't need the rape risk, and I sure the hell don't need the victim-blaming.

***

Crap. I was gonna take a shower and go check out the Unitarian church around here, but I have a headache. And if I shower now, I will have to either go with wet hair and get sick [it's 47 degrees out, and I already have a sore throat], or blow-dry it and end up looking like I stapled Brillo pads all over my head.

Gahhh...

sbt/sbc

Did you get 8?

2006-09-23T12:11:00.000-05:00

I did.

Saturday 8.

1. as you get older, are you jazzed about your birthday?
No.

2. do people usually remember your birthday?
Dude, I'm lucky if I remember my birthday.

3. an ex-coworker used to begin 3 mos. before her birthday flat-out reminding us that it was coming up. it's amazing what no self-esteem does for you. anyway, do you know anyone who pre-announces their birthdays?
No.

4. what was your best birthday? why?
File not found. Long-term memory damaged or not accessible.

5. what was your worst birthday? why?
See 4.

6. name your best birthday gift.
See 4.

7. name the best birthday gift you've gotten for someone else.
I can't think of one. I remember a few Xmas presents I gave people, but I'm drawing a blank on birthdays. Generally I just give people cards and/or money. If it's one of my parents, I go over there and we spend a day playing games and eating. That's about all I can afford.

8. as i age, i value SLEEP as a priceless commodity. i didn't get any for my birthday, however. what do you want this year for your birthday?
Whatever I can get.

sbt/sbc

More late memes

2006-09-22T14:25:00.000-05:00

Wednesday Mind Hump.

1. Are you a fan of board games?
Yes, although I rarely have somebody to play them with.

2. What's your favorite board game and why?
I don't really have one.

Yesterday was Talk Like A Pirate Day, so lets answer a few questions about that. I can't think of any more board game questions.

3. Blackbeard, Hook, Sparrow - who's your favorite pirate?
This guy. Er, fox. Whatever.

4. If you were a pirate, what would you name yourself?
um...Nobeard? [At least not if I wax...]

5. Uh oh! Someone's gotta walk the plank! Choose a celebrity you want to throw overboard (all in good fun, of course. We're not actually advocating for the tossing of celebs in the ocean).
Yayyy! Somebody get me James Blunt and some rope!

Yeah, if I threw in all the celebrities I wanted to, the sea levels would rise a foot--which is saying a lot, considering how hideously skinny so many of them are.

***

Booking Through Thursday departs from books briefly.

But, enough about books. . . what else do you read?? Magazines? Newspapers? Professional journals? Cereal boxes? Phone books? Purchase invoices? Homework? (Please be specific. There may be a test later.)
I do subscribe to a few mags--Rolling Stone, PCMag, GuitarOne, and Quality Progress. I also read the paper at work, but I don't subscribe to it because apparently nobody proofreads it. I read on the Internet constantly--blogs, news, encyclopaedia articles, product reviews, and whatever else looks interesting.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Ice Cream Social::

Onesome: Ice-- skating? Yes? No? Rinks? Ponds? No way?
No, actually; I never did learn how to use rollerblades, so I don't think I'd have an easy time with ice skating. I have balance problems.

Twosome: Cream-- soda? The work of evil scientists or a true pleasure in life ?
Diet cream soda is about the only soda I drink anymore, aside from diet ginger ale and diet root beer. It's one of the few that doesn't have either phosphoric acid or ester of wood rosin, both of which hurt my stomach.

Threesome: Social-- Are you considered to be a social person? ...or are you more likely to not be comfortable with a bunch of people around you? ...and wait a moment: how about in a classroom situation? Is that different for you?
I'm introverted, although not extraordinarily so. My Meyers-Briggs intro/extro score usually looks like this [depending on what mood I'm in when I take it]:

[I]...|..........[E]

No, I'm not comfortable with a bunch of people around. I can deal with it, and I'll sometimes attend events although I know I'm gonna hate the crowd; but I'll pretty much avoid anything with hundreds or thousands of people, like fairs and the Mall of ~~Eternal Peril~~America.

***

Well, that about does it for now.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

I want dentures.

2006-09-18T01:28:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat.

If you were to will one thing you have to your religion when you died, besides money, what would you give?
You mean, like, willing it to the CoG, or to a coven somewhere, or...? I don't know of any Wiccan organisations to which I would will anything. They make plenty of money through donations, memberships, publications and correspondence courses. I would rather give it to my family.

I am not sure ____________________ .
that I can make it to the dentist's office without ripping this fucking tooth out myself.

I'm also not sure that Blogger deserves anybody's business if they can't keep their servers running halfway decent so people can post.

blah blah blah...

Saturday in the Park

2006-09-17T02:14:00.000-05:00

Well, all right, I'm in a chair, not in the park. [It's not the 4th of July either.] Here's the Saturday 6.

1. You find out that you've just gotten a new job in a different state. Besides your spouse, who is the first person you tell?
I don't have a spouse. I'd probably call and tell my mom.

2. With the money in your pocket, wallet or purse right now, could you make change for a $20 bill? Could you make change for a $1 bill?
For the 20, yes. For the 1, no. I don't keep change in my wallet.

3. Is this ability (or lack of ability) to make change a typical reflection of how much cash and coins you regularly carry?
No. Usually I couldn't even make change for a 10. I just got paid the other day.

4. Take the quiz: What mythological character are you?
It says I'm a mermaid.

5. Are you typically the "heart breaker" or the "broken-hearted" in your relationship history?
I've been a fair amount of both, sometimes in the same relationship. I've been the dumpee more often than the dumper, though.

6. Considering your answer to #5, would you rather be the opposite?
I'd rather not be either one. That's why I don't date.

And that's a wrap.

sbt/sbc

Supplies!

2006-09-16T12:13:00.000-05:00

In spite of the fact that the entire Internet appears to be mortally constipated, here is the Saturday 8.

1. when and what was your last big surprise?
Getting a gas bill from my old place three months after I'd moved.

2. what was your biggest surprise ever?
I don't know. I can't think of any. It's only possible to be surprised when what happens is different than what you assume will happen, and I try not to assume much.

3. generally, do you like surprises? why or why not?
No. Unexpected things suck, except money. Why? I don't know. Maybe my earliest experiences with surprises were traumatic or something. Christmas presents are supposed to be a surprise, but when your family is on food stamps half the time, the stuff you really want is never what's in the boxes. You ask for a Transformer. Your parents wrap up a present that MIGHT be a Transformer and don't tell you what it is. Somewhere in your kid mind, it's still possible that it's a Transformer. So you open it up, filled with anticipation, and it's fucking socks. Surprise! Yeah, I can't imagine how anybody would learn to dislike surprises.

I'm not saying that Christmas presents or being poor or anything else ruined my life or anything like that. I'm just saying, if you're gonna give me socks instead of a Transformer, at least tell me it's socks so I don't have my hopes dashed. So in that sense, surprises have an almost sadistic aspect to them.

The other reason I hate surprises is because I always have plans for my time and money. Yeah, you have to expect that there will be unexpected changes in life. But if you're gonna do something with your life, it really helps to have some kind of a plan; and any surprise that comes up will force you to change that plan, scrap part or all of the time invested in making the plan--and in some cases, start all over from square one.

Standard response to this: "But that's how life is! That's just how it is, deal with it." Um. I know that. I am dealing with it.* I'm just saying it sucks.

4. what is the biggest or best (or even worst) surprise you've ever pulled on someone?
I don't pull surprises on people very often. Golden Rule, and so forth.

5. what was the worst surprise you've ever had?
See 2. Actually, it's probably the discovery that you can be 30, have the same health problems as somebody who's 60, and nobody in the medical community seems to give a fuck. They just treat you like you really ARE 60--like, if you have these health problems, you'll probably be dead in another 10 or 15 years anyway, so why bother? If you already have urinary incontinence and joint pain and about 50 other symptoms of being old--but you still get carded when you buy wine coolers--shouldn't that tip SOMEBODY off? Or do they just not care as long as they get their money? [Don't even get me started on how they take your money and then tell you they don't know what's wrong with you.]

6. if you could plan your "dream surprise" for yourself (yes, i *know* it wouldn't actually be a surprise then, but work with me here) or someone else, how would it go?
I'm not sure, but it would involve receiving large amounts of money. That's about the only thing you could surprise me with without majorly pissing me off.

7. have you ever ruined a surprise for someone?
Probably. I have a pretty big mouth.

8. have you ever planned a surprise that didn't work out, or had someone try to surprise you that didn't actually work?
I don't remember. I don't think so.

Memes sure go a lot faster when your long-term memory is as bad as mine.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...
__________
*I could never understand why, if you complain about something, people tell you to deal with it. As if you're not dealing with it, as if the only thing you're doing about it is complaining. You could be doing five different things about it, and just taking a five-minute break to complain and vent some frustration. Of course, that's all they see you doing at the moment; and for a lot of people, what's not right in front of them doesn't exist.

Late memes.

2006-09-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

Hump.

1. What's in your junk drawer, and how many junk drawers do you have?
I don't really have a junk drawer right now--I haven't lived here long enough.

Oh wait, yeah I do. I have a couple little mini-cabinets with junk in them. One has stamps, address labels, and other office-supply-related crap; one has toothpicks and earplugs; another one has ribbon bookmarks and crazy glue.

2. How often do you clean or rearrange your junk drawers?
Whenever I get new places to put the junk.

3. Name one celebrity whose junk drawer you'd love to go through.
I almost said Marilyn Manson, because it'd be interesting, but it might also be really frightening. He probably has human teeth and vials of animal blood and Aleister Crowley's jockstrap or something in there.

I'll have to go with Weird Al's junk drawer.

***

Bookin'.

1. Do you tend to read more books written by one gender over the other? If so, which one? Men? Or women?
After an informal and incomplete audit of my book collection, it seems to be about 60-70% men.

2. Is this a deliberate choice? Or just something that kind of happened?
I think it's due to the education gap that's existed between men and women for the last several thousand years. It's pretty hard to represent your sex in the world of literature when nobody will teach you how to read. Since I try to read a mixture of classics and newer books, that necessarily means I will read more books by men. If I only count books from the last 80 years or so, it's pretty evenly mixed.

3. And (without wanting to get too personal), is this your gender?
No.

***

The Threesome.
::Common Household Products::

Onesome: Common-- Quick and easy: the most common name you can think of! Okay, let's make it a first (given) name...
um...I know a whole busload of Julies.

Twosome: Household-- cleaners? What is your "go to" cleanser when you have to clean the place up? Are you a Lysol Junkie, an Orange Blossom Special or maybe a Bleach it to Death type? Come on, come clean !
I usually use Ad-Aware...oh, you mean clean the apartment. Mostly I use either vinegar or dish soap and hot water. For actual cleanser, I tend to go with Comet [if I need bleach] or Bon Ami.

Threesome: Products-- come and products go. What's on your list as a "wanna have" for this Fall (no, not for Christmas; we'll save that for later).
I want an MP3 player and hardware to plug it into my car stereo system--assuming it will work with my car stereo system. If not, then a new car stereo is in order. [But not a nice one. My security system basically consists of never having anything in the car worth stealing.]

***

And that's all for now. My ability to concentrate has been completely eroded by the bizarre garbage-like, spoiled-food-like smell in my apartment. I say "bizarre" because I have no fucking idea where it is coming from. It's not coming from the kitchen, as far as I can tell. It's coming from the computer area, but there is no food in this area, nor have I spilled anything, nor is there anything icky in the trash can. Used Kleenex and magazine subscription inserts do not smell like moldy Tupperware.

Jeez, I hope it's not me.

I'm off to play "Find the Smell."

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

curiouser and curiouser...

2006-09-12T07:54:00.000-05:00

...said the Cat.

Describe the moment in your life when you felt the proudest of yourself.
I don't know. I've had times in my life when I've been sorta proud of myself, but there isn't one that really sticks out from the rest.

For what magazine would you most like to be a writer?
MAD.

And don't worry, Kitty, I'm late too...

And I'm tired. good gravy am i tired.

sbt/sbc

Drunk 'n' Driving.

2006-09-10T04:45:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. How do you feel about a National ID card to replace individual state driver's licenses?
I don't like it. If it were a smaller country, I wouldn't mind. But 300 million people is a lot to keep track of. I'm also unclear on how, exactly, state driver's licenses are so desperately inferior that they need to be replaced with a national ID. How about we get our federal health care system first, and then worry about spending billions of dollars to replace something we already have, hm?

2. Where's the most embarrassing place you've ever fallen asleep?
I don't think I've ever fallen asleep in an embarrassing place. I'm pretty good about staying awake. I used to sleep in algebra class, but I wasn't embarrassed by that, or I wouldn't have been sitting in the front row every day.

3. How long does it take you, when looking at someone for the first time, to determine whether or not you are really attracted to the person?
You mean physically attracted [which, for me, doesn't count as being "really attracted"]? Right away. Attracted to them as a person? That takes longer.

4. Take the quiz: What kind of drunk are you?
I don't drink, and I couldn't see the point of taking a quiz where I would have to lie on every question, so I didn't take it.

5. When is the last time you were really drunk?
I think it was New Year's Eve 2000. I might've gotten plastered by myself a couple times after that, but I've never been in the habit of doing anything much when drinking alone. The main point of drinking, for me, had always been relaxing, and having people around really shoots my relaxation in the ass. I could've gotten shitfaced every night for a year and it wouldn't have stuck out in my mind. So New Year's is the last one that sticks out for me.

6. What caused the condition: Alcohol or something else?
Sorry to be pedantic, but you can't get drunk on anything but alcohol. You can get stoned on anything you like, but "drunk" refers specifically to booze.

That about does 'er.

sbt/sbc

Genre Bending

2006-09-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

Booking Through Thursday.

1. We asked last week about what draws you to your favorite kind/genre of book. This week, we want to know--how often do you depart from that comfort zone? If you love mysteries, do you ever read fantasy? If you primarily read cookbooks, do you ever read a good romance?
Yeah, I know, I didn't do last week's because I don't have a favourite kind of book. In the last year I've read cookbooks, mysteries, fantasy, scifi, humour, regular novels, some poetry, a play, autobiographies, other assorted nonfiction, and a couple children's books [which were re-reads of old books from my childhood that I found while unpacking]. The only genre I don't really care for is romance; but I will read a historical romance if it looks good.

2. How MUCH variety is there in your reading? Do you mostly stick to one type, with just the occasional toe-dip into a different style? Or do you generally read a variety of things, just, maybe more of your favorite style than anything else?
See 1. I go through streaks where I'll read mostly a particular kind of novel. I put off reading any of the Harry Potter novels until the fifth one, then checked out the first out of curiosity. I read all five in about 2 or 3 weeks, and by then I had to take methadone in the form of re-reads of LOTR until the sixth came out. Now I want the seventh to arrive, because I know there'll be a boxed set; then I'll get the set and have all seven in one edition.

For a while I went through a streak of reading biographies; then it was Minette Walters novels [which made me paranoid about rapists and axe murderers for a good long time]; then it was other nonfiction; right now it's Muriel Spark novels. I loved Memento Mori, but it didn't occur to me to look for other works of hers. Well, she's written dozens of novels, so I'm plowing through everything the libraries have. When I'm done with that, I'll get more through interlibrary loan. I'm also planning to catch up on some more of the pretentious intellectual stuff that I should have read in high school, like Dumas and Thoreau and Nietzsche. I bought a set of Thoreau books a while back that I never got around to, so I recently started reading Civil Disobedience, which is a very short book that came with the set. What amazes me about Thoreau is the timelessness of it; the issues he was on about back in the 1830's are still happening today, just in a different form. But then, I do tend to agree with my fellow Cancers on a lot of things.

Anywho. Speaking of reading, I should do some of that and then get to bed.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

do da humpty hump...

2006-09-06T00:29:00.000-05:00

Da Humpty Hump.

1. When is the last time you sent someone a letter in the mail?
uh...uh...Next!

2. What usually comes in your mail?
Crap, crap, bills, crap, magazines, and crap.

Did I mention crap?

3. What kind of a mailbox do you have?
A rusty one with a flag that won't stay up.

4. If you could send a package to your postal worker to show your appreciation, what would you send them?
A gift certificate for someplace that sells really, really good shoes, like Red Wing or something.

Speaking of packages, I have three people's birthdays coming up in less than 2 weeks here, and I gotta figure out what to give them and how to finance it. Eep.

sbt/sbc

yeah.

2006-09-05T23:50:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat. I've thought about these for about two days and I still can't come up with any good answers.

When have you felt the most alone?
I have no idea. I've felt alone most of my life. Sometimes it's been a good thing, sometimes it's been a bad thing. Lately I've felt horrifically alone nearly every day that I'm not at work, usually around 4 in the morning when ~~nobody else has the decency to be up and keep me company. Goddamn dayshift people. :P~~ it's really silent and it seems like the whole rest of the world is asleep or dead. I haven't had that so much since I've been getting up later on weekends. Getting up in the afternoon and having to go from afternoon to sundown all the way to sunup with nobody that you can call and talk to is a little crazy-making.

I had a shrink once tell me that my abandonment issues stemmed in large part from the times the babysitter would leave me strapped in my car seat all day when I was a baby instead of letting me out to play or changing my diaper. I couldn't tell you how true that is because I don't remember it, but it sounds plausible.

It's now or never for me to ____________________.
I don't know. Get started on an art career? I'm doing that, though.

Anyway.

sbt/sbc

something something something, christ I hate coming up with titles

2006-09-03T04:02:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6. I think their notification thingy is broken.

1. What was the last charity you donated something to? How long ago did you make your last donation?
I think it was for Hurricane Katrina, which would tell you how long ago it was.

2. Describe the worst weather event/national disaster that you experienced firsthand.
Well, we have had tornados rip through the area a few times, although none of the places I've ever lived have gotten damaged. So it's a tie between that and Bush [hey, you asked about national disasters].

3. Did the experience you just described change you in any way, (or if you've never experienced such an event firsthand, do you think it would change you significantly)?
99 times out of a hundred, when the tornado siren goes off, it doesn't mean shit. And if it's gonna get me, it's gonna get me. So I'd have to say no. As for Bush...well, I already insisted humans were irredeemably stupid, and the last two elections haven't changed that. I'm more pessimistic about us ever fixing the environment, though, because by 2008 we'll have wasted ANOTHER eight years.

4. Take the quiz: What subjects should you have studied in school?
You Should Study:

Art
Art history
Architecture
Comparative religions
Eastern religion
Education
Music
Philosophy

5. Did you actually study or major in any of the courses suggested by the quiz?
I majored in fine arts, yes.

6. What's your current screen saver? How long have you had it, and what do you like best about it?
It's a slideshow of all the comic strips I've swiped off the Internet. I like it because it's funny.

***

Now that that's done, I'm going to go tend to my migraine as best I can without medication. Then I'm going to go online and find photos of the people who design perfumes. Then I'm going to get some voodoo dolls, some rusty nails, and some gasoline...

Nah. I don't have the balls to hex anybody. I'll just continue fantasizing about throwing all perfumed products, and all wearers of perfume, into a big volcano.

They should have poetic justice laws, where for instance, if perfume gives you migraines, you should be allowed to go around with a hammer and bop somebody one every time their perfume gives you a headache. Then if you go to a store that has a nasty reeky perfume aisle and you get a headache from walking past it, you should be able to go to the manager's office and whap him upside the head til he hurts as bad as you do. And if his headache goes away before yours does, you should be allowed to bop him one again.

The very thought of that just makes me smile inside. :)

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

What price freedom/dirt is my rug/I sleep like a baby/w. the snakes & the bugs...

2006-09-02T10:57:00.000-05:00

[from the Tom Waits song "Cold Water"]

Saturday 8 takes it outside.

1. what's the worst that you've "roughed it" outdoors, whether it was camping, hiking, school-tripping, or stuck in a broken-down vehicle?
Does hiding in the garage to avoid band practice count?

2. in general, do you enjoy outdoor activities?
No. Between the weather extremes, the pollen, and the frightening frequency of escapes from the nearby sex-offender facility, I prefer to stay indoors, with climate control and a lock. When my budget can accommodate allergy testing, martial arts classes and pepper spray, I'll revisit the issue. [Actually, pepper spray isn't that expensive. I should have Ma put that on my Christmas list.]

3. what are your favourite activities to do outdoors?
Driving, walking [if the weather's decent and there's no pollen, which is hardly ever], uh...next question.

4. have you ever assembled a tent? how did that go for you?
No, I haven't.

5. have you ever visited a national forest before; if so, which one(s)?
No. I fail to see the point in going out to enjoy nature if it's just gonna be full of people.

6. have you ever been whitewater rafting before? if so, did you like it? if not, would you like to try it?
No, and no thank you. I get motion sickness very easily.

7. have you ever encounted 'wildlife,' such as a bear, moose, buffalo, deer, bobcat, cougar, wild hog, etc.? what happened?
I hit a deer with my car; does that count? It was all right, by the way; I braked in time and just ended up tapping it on the hip. It ran away into the woods. There was fur on my license plate holder, but no blood.

8. sorta outdoorsy-related: should you find yourself marooned on a deserted island full of lush landscapes, a fresh-water stream, a beautiful beach, and an amazing sunset (read: you are not in any immediate danger of dying), what one person would you 'choose' to be stranded with? they can be living, dead, celebrity, etc.
I have no idea. Is it an island where I can get away from the person and be alone? Then probably either C or B [two of my best friends].

Time to go sleep [in a bed, under a roof, behind a locked door].

sbt/sbc

be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting fruit tarts...

2006-08-31T08:16:00.000-05:00

Thursday Threesome.

::Fluffy Bunny Rabbits::

Onesome: Fluffy-- is as fluffy does! It's almost lemon meringue season at that pie shop. Do you do fluffy pies? ...or is it fruit all the way for you? (Okay, Southerners: go ahead and expound on rhubarb...)
Pies have seasons?

I don't do pies. If somebody else makes one and offers me some, I'll eat it, but I don't make them myself, and I won't as long as bakeries exist. Life's short.

Twosome: Bunny-- slippers? Yes? No? Barefoot? Shoes? What do you schlep around the house in when it's cold outside?
Actually, that would depend less on how cold it is outside than on how cold it actually is in my apartment. If it's 10 below out, but I have the heat cranked and I'm using the broiler, then no, I'm not going to wear slippers. I do have slippers that I wear when it's actually cold indoors.

Threesome: Rabbits-- Have you ever had little furry pets? What varieties? Are there any in your future?
I couldn't even name all the pets we've had--gerbils, hamsters, about five million cats, a couple dogs, a horse [that's not really little, though], a rat...I don't even remember them all. I don't want another pet. It's not that I don't like animals, it's just that I really, REALLY do not like being responsible for something that can die or feel fear. Pretty much everybody that spends much time around me ends up paranoid, and animals are no exception. They're better off somewhere else.

I don't think I'm going to answer any more questions about animals. It brings up too much guilt.

sbt/sbc

Well, I'll be blammed.

2006-08-29T08:34:00.000-05:00

You Are 44% Lady

You're part lady, part modern woman.
Etiquette is important to you, but you brush aside rules that are outdated or silly.

Are You A Lady?

Whoever wrote this quiz never heard me swear. :D Then again, maybe that's why I didn't get higher than 44%. The quiz's definition of ladyhood seems to center more around politeness and consideration than femininity [the Southern definition of ladyhood seems to consider them one and the same], and I do try to be mannerly whenever it seems useful.

So. Earl Grey tea, anyone?

sbt/sbc

Mrow?

2006-08-28T11:38:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat.

Which of your school teachers had the greatest positive influence on your character?
That's hard to say. I had some pretty good teachers. I guess the one that sticks out the most is my third-grade teacher. She was just such an incredibly nice person that from then on, when I've thought about what kind of person I wanted to be, she always comes to mind. She wasn't nice in an ostentatious way, like those people who go so far out of their way to be ingratiating that you just hope they'll go away. She was just a genuinely kind, patient person that made you feel special and loved.

Think of your best friend: what is the first thing most people would notice about that person?
Well, I have a couple best friends. They both wear a lot of black, so that's probably the first thing you'd notice. One of them is highly gifted in the mammary department, too, so that's pretty noticeable as well. Then they'd start talking, and you'd notice that they're both extremely intelligent. B is a little more intuitive/common sense [Taurus], and C is more analytical [Scorpio], but they both have fine, logical minds and big hearts, which is why they're my friends. :) They're both also very patient, which is why they're STILL my friends after all this time.

Good questions. It made me smile to think about people who brighten my life.

sbt/sbc

the stores are open, but I ain't got no money...

2006-08-28T01:07:00.000-05:00

Sunday 7.

Name seven stores no good shopping mall should be without.

~Catherine's [jeans! that fit!!]
~Hot Topic [because where else are you going to find skull earrings?]
~GNC [for herbs]
~Claire's [because I do like to look, even if I can't afford any of it]
~Bath & Body Works [yeah, I know they're overpriced, but they have so many massage-roller things...]
~Target, ShopKo, or some similar store [for the stuff you didn't want to pay twice as much for at the other stores]
~Best Buy [beepy electronic things! And unedited CD's.]
~Any one of those weird-ass stores that crops up from time to time, selling headshop paraphernalia, weird novelty lighting, obscene posters, and all the other things that young men use as dorm decoration. As long as they have Happy Bunny door signs and window clings, they're okay by me.

That's eight, but whatever.

I didn't put Barnes & Noble on my list because I have a poor person's irrational hatred of people who can afford to pay full cover price for their books. I have never seen a mall with a used book store, but dammit, that should be on the list too. I didn't list Penney's, either, because although they're a mall staple, they're a bunch of fatphobic pudyankers who can't be bothered to carry any plus-size clothing that a] fits, b] isn't hideous and c] doesn't cost more than your car. They also apparently hate women with breasts bigger than a pea, because their plus-size lingerie section is totally inexcusable. But I've gone over that so many times, and we all know it sucks, so I'll stop there. I didn't list Sears either, because Sears has been circling the bowl for so long, I'm amazed they're still in business. They suck so bad, they have their own gravity well.

So there.

sbt/sbc

Insert Clever Title Here

2006-08-26T22:11:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. Pluto has been demoted from planet to "dwarf planet." Are you willing to give up everything you've been taught all these years and begin referring to our solar system as having eight planets, or will you continue thinking about it having nine?
I think I'll always sort of think of it as a planet, but I'll eventually get used to the 8-planet solar system. It's not like we have a choice anyway. I wrote more about it here.

Good thing I put off buying a 2001-2100 ephemeris...

2. Where is the last store you visited? What was your last bill there?
It was the local grocery store. I spent about $5 [Kool-Aid and diet cream soda].

3. What new television show are you most looking forward to seeing this season?
I don't have TV, so I really don't give a rat's ass about new shows or any other shows. They could have a show called "Merv Griffin's Dwarf Zombie Hentai Survivor" and I wouldn't care. I have old "X-Files" on DVD now, so I'm happy.

4. Take the quiz: Which greek God are you? Save yourself some time and space by listing the name of the God, the description it gives you and the famous people you're like. (Don't worry about the graphical information and all the rest unless you just want to!)

Narcissus
33% Extroversion, 33% Intuition, 16% Emotiveness, 100% Perceptiveness
You are viewed by others as tasteless, thick-skinned, inflexible, self-absorbed, arrogant and oblivious. You are Narcissus. You seek out high risk jobs, and jobs that allow you to assert yourself over other people. You also really need your space. You have a strong conformist streak, but you also like to be spontaneous. You also love you. I mean, you REALLY love yourself. You think you're awesome incarnate. But, your flyboy arrogance aside, your bravado lets you accomplish things that others might not be able to.

Famous People like you: Chuck Yeager, Alan Shepard
Stay clear of: Atlas, Prometheus, Daedalus, The Oracle
Seek out: Icarus, Apollo, Hermes

Cool! I like Apollo and Hermes. And I'd have to agree, Narcissus is a pretty good match for somebody who has 4 personal blogs...

5. Of the famous people it lists like you, which is the scariest?
I had no idea who Alan Shepard was. I had to look him up. [He's an astronaut.] So between an astronaut and a fighter pilot, who's scarier? Uh, probably Yeager, since he was trained to fly over things and blow them up instead of just orbiting Earth. That's still not terribly scary, though, just cool.

6. You decide to bring candy to keep on your desk. If you could only pick one kind of candy, which would it be?
Something that tasted awful. That way I wouldn't be tempted to eat it, and anybody that tried to steal it would get a nasty surprise. Maybe some of those Everything-Flavoured Beans or whatever, from the Harry Potter books. I'd pick out all the booger-flavoured, vomit-flavoured, and Keith-Richards'-anus-flavoured ones and put them in a big, attractive dish. I'd also put some B-complex vitamins in there for variety; they taste just about as bad. That's what you get for trying to steal my candy!

Actually, I would never keep candy on my desk. I don't even keep candy in the house most of the time. Sugar is about the worst thing you can do to your immune system outside of, like, AIDS. I'm already tired a lot of the time; I don't need constant colds, yeast infections, and massive acne breakouts on top of it all. And for some reason, corn syrup makes me crazy [the bad kind of crazy].

As for sugar-free candy, the only kinds that don't taste like total shit are the kinds with Splenda or one of the sugar alcohols [sorbitol, mannitol, &c.], and those give me weird reactions like diarrhea and airway constriction. The diarrhea I can sort of live with; the airway constriction, not so much. So I just occasionally buy a Hershey bar or whatever and go without candy the rest of the time. [And that's why I'm one of those girls that eat pizza and never gain weight. ;) ]

And that's a wrap.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Planet of the Yard Apes

2006-08-26T12:27:00.000-05:00

Saturday 8.

today's saturday 8 ... a tongue-in-cheek look at babies.

1. i'm going to a baby shower today. do you like baby showers?
I've only been to one. It was all right.

2. are you a parent?
No. It's the best situation for all involved.

3. i abhor baby showers, but i must attend this one. i've been practising my "sit and smile" routine. what do you do when you are forced to attend a function you hate?
I'm never forced. I just don't go. If I do go, and it sucks, I just say something about not feeling well and needing to go home and lie down. I suppose if I HAD to go to something I hated, I'd make sure I had something else important scheduled the same day. That way, I could put in a brief appearance, apologise for my bad scheduling--silly me, forgetting this event and scheduling my physical for the same day!--and leave. Or, to make it even simpler, I could just show up, lie about having something else to do, and then go home.

One of the nice things about working nights is that nobody ever invites you to boring shit because they believe you'll be sleeping.

4. my neighbour recently had a baby with down's as she is 41 yrs. old. how old is 'too old' to have a baby?
I'm the wrong person to ask. That gets into the whole issue of childbirth as a right vs. a privilege, as well as the ethics of conceiving when there's a risk of birth defects. It's too big for me to judge. Although I will say, if you already have osteoporosis, you probably don't want to be trying to grow a whole other skeleton in your body. But again, it's not my body. And I NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN!! HAHAHAHAHAAA! That shit is totally not my problem now! Wheeeeeee!!!!

5. my friend recently had twin boys, which i think is God's way of getting back at you for all the evil you have done in your life. before i had children, i used to think having twins was a 'cool idea.' now, with fertility drugs, triplets and quadruplets are fairly common. what is your feeling on multiple-child pregnancies?
Fine with me, as long as it's not mine, and as long as they're not having more kids than they actually wanted.

6. Plan B was recently approved to go over-the-counter this week in the States. i'm thrilled beyond belief as i've had to use something similar (broken condom), BUT many people are up-in-arms about Plan B due to their beliefs on conception & life. how do you feel about morning-after contraception?
I am very much in favour of it. People who are too retarded to know the difference between birth control and abortion should not be allowed to make medical decisions for others.

7. quite a few of my friends are childless by choice and get constantly hounded by friends/family for being 'selfish'. some others are not able to conceive and one friend has adopted from China. deep-down, how do you feel about couples who choose NOT to procreate. does a part of you want to tell a close friend/family member that they're really 'missing out'?
ABSOLUTELY NOT. First of all, I don't want kids myself, so I would never tell somebody they should do it if they don't want to. Second of all, that has got to be just about the rudest thing in the world, telling somebody else what to do with not only their vagina but the next several decades of their life. If somebody's bugging you to have children, tell them to fuck off. Fuck directly off. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The worst thing you can do to a child is give birth to it because somebody else wanted you to.

8. a friend is childless by choice, and she and her husband (late 20s, early 30s) have gone into their OB/GYN and vasectomy clinics looking to be sterilised. they have actually been turned away and referred to psychiatric counselling due to this request. how do you feel in regard to the way they've been treated for their request?
I think that's crap. I also hope that couple has enough money to keep going to doctors until they find somebody who will do it. I had no trouble convincing my gyno to let me have a hysterectomy. Some doctors still have the attitude that everybody who doesn't have children will regret it--and if they don't regret it, they still actually do regret it, they're just in denial. This is total bullshit, and I was lucky enough to have a doc that didn't buy into it.

I'm going to log off, get some sleep, and thank the gods for the millionth time that my life is not controlled by a totally helpless being who watches inane cartoons all day and poops constantly. And once I'm done thanking them for not being married, I'll thank them for not having children either.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

What?? Monday AGAIN?!?

2006-08-21T07:53:00.000-05:00

Oh, all right.

Sunday 7.

Name seven things you'd like to do in the next three years.
~Find a better job.
~Get a breast reduction.
~Make some good friends who are geographically close so I can actually do things with them. [Not that talking online isn't fun too, but I can't go to the movies with somebody who lives on the East Coast. :( ]
~Find a nice, small [but not too small] house.
~Sell tons of artwork and make enough money to only have to work part-time.
~Pay off as much debt as possible.
~Make at least one road trip to see some of my friends.

***

Curious as a Cat.

What would be the most morally difficult thing you could be asked to do?
Destroy somebody's life, either by killing them, doing something very traumatic to them, ruining their reputation, or what have you. I'd have to witness them doing something really abominable before I could ruin or end their life.

If you were casting a comedy movie, what actor would you choose to be the star?
It would depend on what the script calls for.

So that does that. And I am now the proud owner of a paper shredder. Bye bye, useless balance transfer checks! The other great thing about it is that if I ever decide to start doing handmade paper again, I won't have to sit there and rip up sheet after sheet of scrap paper by hand. Just feed it through, soak it in water, schlop it into the blender and away we go. Man, I wish I had enough free time to dink with all that again.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Fish, Fowl, and Thunderstorms

2006-08-19T21:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday 6.

1. Would you prefer being a small fish in a large pond or a large fish in a small pond?
I'd prefer to be a human. If I can't, I'll go with being a large fish in a small pond.

2. If you could change one thing about the climate where you live right now, what would it be and why?
I'd have more thunderstorms. Why? Because I like thunderstorms, I'm used to thunderstorms, and this stupid global warming is causing drought after drought--hence, little rain and very few thunderstorms.

3. Do you consider yourself more or less normal than those around you?
I think I'm somewhere in the middle. There are people I work with who are way more messed up than I am, and people who are fairly normal but tolerate weirdness well. In a random cross-section of people, I would probably be on the weird side.

4. Take the quiz: Are you right or left brained?
It says I'm 40% left brained and 60% right brained. That sounds about right.

5. Consider the last meal you ate: was the primary course beef, chicken, fish or vegetables? How often is this your primary course?
None. It was ground turkey, brown rice, taco sauce, pepperjack cheese, and chopped jalapeños all mixed together with cumin. I usually make a batch of this once every few weeks.

6. Should men who belong to a religion which permits it be allowed to have more than one wife? In other words, should polygamy be legal on religious grounds?
On religious grounds? Uh. No. I know you're all tired of hearing this, but...SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Apparently it isn't getting said enough, or this wouldn't even be an issue.

Now, should polygamy be allowed on the grounds that it's between consenting adults? Only if you allow both sexes to have multiple spouses--of either gender--and only if there's legislation in place to account for the weird housing, tax and insurance situations that it would cause. It's not a big jump from the current marriage limitations to allowing gay marriage, but we'd need new tax forms if polygamy was legal. What if somebody wanted to file as "married filing as a group"? How might this affect housing if different spouses have different rooms? Do they all sleep in one room? I'm sure it could be worked out, but it'd take some time.

And maybe I'm biased because I doubt I'd ever get into a polygamous relationship. The more people you have to rely on to be faithful, the more likely you're gonna contract something. Also, I can't even handle living with one person, never mind two or more. Then if there was another wife and she got pregnant, then you'd have to live with her kid...Yeah, uh, thanks but no thanks.

Well, I was up at the crack of dusk today with a lot of stuff planned, including making homemade applesauce. So I'm gonna get on that. Ta.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Thanks, I already 8.

2006-08-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

Saturday 8 wants to know your restaurant habits.

1. i am dying to go to the restaurant el bulli, which is located in spain. it has an amazing, eclectic, nouveau menu that defies explanation. how far would you travel for a good meal?
About six feet, unless I have a lot of cash and am very tired of cooking. Then...still not very far.

2. i love greek food, and my favourite greek restaurant closes during the month of august as the family returns to greece for a vacation. i refuse to eat greek anywhere else. what restaurant in your area has your loyalty?
None. For one thing, I rarely eat out; for another thing, loyalty in money matters is overrated. Even if you hate capitalism, you're not helping anybody by eating shitty food at $7 a plate when you can get good food at $5 a plate. You're just getting screwed. So my loyalty to anybody who's offering anything for money lasts only as long as I think that what I'm getting is worth my money, not just for the dollar value, but for the size of the slice it takes out of my budget. The sole exceptions I make are for the health food store [I can get the stuff cheaper, but if she goes out of business, there's stuff I can't get anywhere else] and MallWart [I will only buy there what I can't get affordably somewhere else].

3. last night, i had a pint of guinness, which is my favourite beer. if you drink beer, what's your favourite? if not, what other beverage is your favourite to relax with?
No favourites, although I've rediscovered Earl Grey tea and have been drinking a lot of it.

4. when i am in canada, i love eating poutine. when travelling, is there a dish(es) that you like to eat when you're not at home?
Unseasoned chicken breast sandwiches, or subs. The latter is too much of a nuisance to make for one person; and the former is about the only thing I can eat at a restaurant [other than plain, unseasoned burgers].

5. a few months ago, i ate bad calamari (combined with some cherry bomb martinis), and got a horrible case of food poisoning for 24 hours. when was the last time you got food poisoning, and what made you sick?
I have no idea. I seem to remember getting sick a few years ago after eating at a restaurant, but I couldn't tell you what restaurant or what it was--probably chicken, since that's one of the few things I can eat without cooking it myself.

6. as i've gotten older, i can't eat rich foods anymore. i can still eat hot wings and guinness, but very rich chocolate cake or decadent desserts will absolutely murder my tummy. what food(s) wreak havoc on your gastro tract?
~All milk that's not treated with some kind of lactose neutralizer. [BTW: Those Lactaid pills? Crap.] For some reason, no other dairy seems to bother me; but milk gives me blinding stomach cramps and thermonuclear diarrhea.
~Anything deep-fried. Same effect as lactose.
~Anything with a lot of fiber but not much starch or fat. This includes most vegetables except potatoes, peas, corn, and carrots. It also seems to include most beans. It makes my stomach produce TONS of acid, which makes me feel like a] I'm cavernously hungry and b] rats are chewing on my guts.
~Black beans. For some reason, homemade beans all make me nauseous*, but black beans are the worst. Even canned black beans will make me sick to my stomach.
~Nearly all soda. Based on the ingredient labels I've read, it seems like anything with phosphoric acid [colas] or ester of wood rosin [most fruit-flavoured sodas] gives me an acid stomach. So my soda consumption is mostly limited to diet root beer, diet ginger ale, and diet cream soda. Hey, it still beats plain water.

7. i'm not a fan of italian food, with vietnamese food coming a close second on my "i don't wanna eat there" list. what type(s) of food do you not enjoy?
I don't know. It's more specific foods, not types of foods. Like, I'll eat Chinese, but tofu is fucking gross. [No, I'm not interested in learning how to prepare it "properly." Anything that gives me acne that bad is NOT good for me, no matter what the damn vegans say.] And I love Mexican, but only the fake Mexican stuff I make. The stuff in the stores and the restaurants is too full of sodium; and let's face it, ground beef has far too many chunks of bone and gristle in it to be anything but gross. At least the turkey people seem to be able to keep the bone-chip content in their ground products at a minimum.

8. as i mentioned before, greek food is my hands-down favourite type of cuisine. what is your favourite type/style of food?
I don't have one, partially because I'm too eclectic [read as "easily bored"] and partially because I can't eat genuine ethnic food anyway because I don't know any Greeks or Italians or Chinese people. And after 50 years of McDeath and all the other fast-food places grooming everybody's taste for MSG and artificial flavourings, I don't want to try a lot of new stuff at an ethnic or any other kind of restaurant. Gods only know what they're putting in there. I know 99% of the time, the waiters don't have a clue, and 75% of the time, the cook doesn't either. If I can't make it myself and use substitutions when necessary, I generally don't eat it.

Right now, my favourite foods are things that do not aggravate my TMJ.

Time for some more Jell-O!

same bitch time, same bitch channel...
__________
*I cannot keep silent any longer. I have seen this mentioned in too many places, and I must address it.

To all the pedantic stick-asses out there who claim that "nauseous" is not an acceptable synonym for "nauseated" and who just love to mock the protosimian stupidity of those who use the word in that way, I present you this entry from dictionary.com. Two dictionaries here, in addition to the M-W Collegiate Dictionary [Unabridged] in my living room, confirm that this is an acceptable usage. So not only are you just as anal as I am, you're wrong too, and you're using incorrect information as an excuse for your snobbery.

And to those even more insufferable pedants who insist that M-W is not a real dictionary and only the OED is an acceptable reference: What can I say? You're just dicks. It's Webster, for gods' sake. It's written by Encyclopaedia Britannica. What the hell is your problem? Put your creative writing degree away and go back to making my burger.

And yes, I'm fully aware that in throwing a fit over this, I've revealed myself to be just as much of a pedantic geek as the people I'm complaining about. Only difference is, I actually took the trouble to look it up instead of just believing everything that the other pedantic geeks told me, so I'm right and they're not. What's worse is that I'm not above snickering over them any more than they're above snickering over the people they think are wrong. Funny, that.

Midweek

2006-08-17T08:03:00.000-05:00

Booking Through Thursday.

1. Do you enjoy books that have cooking or eating scenes in them?
I guess so, although it's not really what makes or breaks a book for me.

2. Have you made or eaten anything that was inspired by a recipe or scene in a book?
Bill Clinton mentioned in his autobiography that peanut butter and carrots were his favourite snack, so I tried it. Damn, they're good--especially if you melt the peanut butter in the microwave and dip the carrots in it like a fondue.

As many Terry Pratchett books as I have read, I still do not feel inspired to try making dwarf bread. A banana daiquiri might be nice, though. Or banana anything, for that matter. That's the problem with taking estrogen; all of a sudden you want something like banana pudding, and then five minutes later you're like, "eh." About an hour before the end of my shift last night, I'd have waded through hell for a box of glazed donuts. Then it went away [the craving, not hell or the donuts]. Weird.

And "Hell or Donuts" would be a terrific band name. They could open for Cake or Death [who in turn would have to open for Eddie Izzard].

man, I'm tired...

sbt/sbc

A day late and a dollar short, again

2006-08-16T20:17:00.000-05:00

Tuesday's Tales.

What was the best part of the year so far?
Recovering from surgery and getting to sit around in my new apartment for weeks on end.

What was the worst?
Work.

What do you still have left to do?
Work more, and move towards getting my artwork ready to sell.

How are your resolutions going?
What resolutions?

What goals have you achieved so far?
I had goals? Well, I did want to move, and I did that. And I wanted a hysterectomy, and I got that. Other than that...uh...dropped out of school...haven't sold any art yet...up to my Maidenform bra in debt...'Night, folks!

My eye muscle won't stop twitching.

sbt/sbc

Sevens.

2006-08-13T23:05:00.000-05:00

Sunday 7.

Name seven things -- fads, controversies, beliefs, institutions, whatever -- that you just don't "get."
1. Christianity, especially the fundies who can't tell the difference between a belief or a fact [or don't care].

2. 9o% of what's on the radio. I mean, really. WTF? How can I have any respect for my species when they'll willingly sit there and listen to the same song 3 times in 6 hours, and not change the station? I mean, obviously the station doesn't have any respect for them. Also, why do people prefer retarded music? Why is this stuff popular, why do people call up and request stuff that's been available to buy for 40 years, why do the stations play the same thing over and over, and why do people put up with it--in fact, lap it up? I don't get it. At all.

3. Pagans who believe the whole Margaret Murray bullshit, decades after it's been disproven. They keep referring to the Burning Times as some terrible holocaust of witches, when no records have been found that indicate either such a widespread practice of witchcraft or a monumental-scale witch hunt. Look, folks, even the Nazis couldn't destroy enough evidence to prevent people from finding out about the Holocaust. Not only that, if witchcraft had been practiced that much by that many peope, it probably would've gone one of two ways: 1] they preserved the traditions in books, which is why there are no more variations of it than there are today, in which case some books would've been found; or 2] they were illiterate or, like the Druids, didn't keep books, and infinite variations would have proliferated in all the isolated pockets of Europe. If people were practicing witchcraft in large numbers for 2000 years, or even for the 1000-1500 years until the persecution started, it would have evolved at least as much as Christianity has in that time, and probably more because of the lack of sacred texts. You can point back to the Druids or the Native American medicine men and say they had unbroken traditions, but you have no way of knowing how much those traditions changed as they were passed down.

There's no purpose for this story now except to promote anti-Christian bigotry, and the fundies do a good job of that all on their own without our having to cling to persecution fables like little hate-stuffed teddy bears.

4. Chain e-mails and e-mail petitions. I don't understand why anybody believes in these things, unless they totally have no idea how e-mail works. I just now had to send somebody a rude e-mail about this because the times I asked nicely [I clearly recall asking at least once, and I'm pretty sure I asked 2 or 3 times], they didn't listen. It was a friend, too, which is why I gave them more than one chance instead of banning their e-mail address right away.

5. Anybody who still believes there were WMD's in Iraq. The less evidence there is to support it, the more people believe in it. Is it really that much easier to fool yourself into believing something than it is to deal with disillusionment? I mean, I have some goofy beliefs myself, but at least I'm honest about the fact that they might not be true; and I try to be prepared for the possibility that they may be conclusively disproven. Not only that, there's a difference between believing in ghosts [which are very hard to detect even under good conditions] and believing in giant hoards of biological weapons [which, without exception, have a tangible, reliably detectable existence in the physical universe].

6. The big hype over celebrity weddings, breakups, and reproduction. If I actually cared about any of these celebrities, I might feel different. It is sorta interesting to hear when your favourite actor or musician or whatever gets married or has a kid. For me, though, that always ends up relating back to their work, which is what made me a fan in the first place. Either it gets me wondering if their next album is going to contain references to it, or it helps explain recent works. Beck's Sea Change makes a little more sense if you know he'd just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, and the Smashing Pumpkins' Adore makes tons more sense if you know about Melvoin's OD, Jimmy's expulsion from the band, and Billy's divorce and his mom's death. Frida Kahlo's artwork takes on additional meaning when you know about her accident and all her surgeries and back braces and incisions that wouldn't heal and so on. So I'm interested in their personal lives to the extent that it gives me a deeper appreciation of the work they put out. Other than that, it's none of my business. So I don't understand people who pound out one message board post after another on Bennifer, or the magazines having 2 and 3 issues in a row whose cover stories are devoted to the Brangelina love triangle and the kid. Very seldom have I understood a movie better by knowing anything about the actors.

7. Mimes.

Well, that took long enough. Between that, breakfast, a lengthy online conversation, and the penning of a suitably nasty e-mail to the aforementioned e-petitioning f[r]iend, I've managed to squander about 3 hours. And I have a stomachache from eating too much. That's anger, sloth, and gluttony, so that averages about one deadly sin per hour. So if I watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, drool over Daniel Radcliffe, get jealous of Emma Watson for getting to star in a movie with him, grumble over all the money they have that I don't, and then brag about it all--I'll have all seven in one day!

Although I could never be as efficient as this. [It took an hour to find that. More sloth!]

sbt/sbc

Ahhh, breakfast at midnight.

2006-08-13T00:13:00.000-05:00

Coffee, hot buttered cornbread, and the Saturday 6.

1. Has your blog received more comments, less comments, or about the same number of comments this summer?
The same.

2. What do you think best explains your answer from the last question?
I have about the same number of readers. The only people I can think of that do significantly more websurfing and blogreading during the summer would be people that have the summer off, i.e. kids and teens. The blog of a 30-year-old who alternately acts like she's 5 and 65 probably doesn't get a lot of kid or teen traffic.

3. With the latest terror alert about liquid bombs on airplanes, are you any less likely to schedule a flight somewhere?
Not to any degree that matters.

4. Take the quiz: What color flower are you?
I'm a blue flower.

5. What was the last occasion in which you sent someone flowers?
I've never had occasion to send somebody flowers. I've bought little grocery-store bouquets for my mom a couple times [shut up, it was all I could afford], but I've never called a floral place and had something delivered. Flower-wise, pretty much everybody in my life falls into 3 categories:
~People who I don't know well enough for flowers to be appropriate [e.g. coworkers, doctor]
~People who grow their own flowers [e.g. Mom, B]
~People who have allergies or who I suspect have allergies [e.g. me, both brothers, several other friends]
Also, somehow I feel a little bit silly paying to the tune of $15-30 for something that grows in the ground, in the same way I feel silly buying bottled water when I already have access to clean water for free. So if I do buy flowers, it'll be something like long-stemmed roses or something that I'd never get otherwise because nobody I know grows them. Once in a great while I'll buy a bouquet for myself, but I have to keep them someplace where the pollen isn't gonna spread all over. Roses and daffodils generally don't bother me unless I'm right next to them. I love lilacs, but they sure don't like me.

Dammit, now I want an herb garden.

6. A hypothetical science question: A couple has a young child that they love very much. He has a rare genetic disorder that will be fatal unless doctors can use embryonic stem cells, and the only way to get them is for his parents to donate eggs and sperm so that a lab can create another embryo. Should the parents and the doctors be allowed to create an embryo to save the child's life?
In my opinion, if they want to, yes. [My position in a nutshell: If it doesn't have brain waves or other evidence of higher brain function, it's not human life. That is how they determine clinical death, and I think it's only logical that they should use the same criteria for the beginning of life as for the end.] But I'm not the president, so my opinion doesn't count for much except at election time--and sometimes not even then.

ugh. I don't know if it's West Nile, or a summer cold, or the fact that I work all week in a hot, humid, non-air-conditioned environment; but I just slept 9 hours, got up and had 3 cups of coffee, and I'm still bushed. Maybe I have what my doctor likes to call "that shit that's going around." Or maybe it's the fact that I had major surgery 2 months ago, and I've been going pell-mell with work, unpacking, and painting ever since they let me out of bed and my feet hit the floor. :P Silly Frida, instant recovery is for kids.

Time to go do dishes and try to wake up.

sbt/sbc

Fly! Be [so totally not] free!

2006-08-12T12:27:00.000-05:00

Saturday 8.

1. do you think that denying women the hand lotion or liquid eyeliner in their purses is a good thing given the recent terrorist threat? why or why not?
I really don't know. I'm not sure what women have to do with it, either, since I thought they were disallowing liquids for all passengers. [Maybe it's that women aren't likely to participate in terrorist plots? I can't imagine members of a fanatical--and, among other things, misogynistic--sect would use very many women in their attacks, except maybe for the surprise element or something.]

Frankly, all I know about it is this: It doesn't matter what you ban, it doesn't matter how many cavity searches you do. If somebody wants to hijack or blow up a plane, they're gonna find a way to do it, even if it means having suicide bombers board planes carrying surgically implanted remote-controlled explosives. The only way to get rid of airline terrorism is to shut down all the airlines forever.

2. will the new restrictions alter your view on flying? why or why not?
Yeah, they will, actually. Because of the rude and invasive searches, my chances of flying were about .00002%. Now they're .00001%.

3. i'm flying home from cali the day before the 5-year anniversary of september 11th. are you going to be worried for me, or do you think that this anniversary has no bearing on any possible attacks?
Not any more or less worried than I'd be on any other day. Frankly, if I were a terrorist, I wouldn't plan anything on the anniversary of a famous attack, because it'd be too obvious. I'm surprised they were stupid enough to try another airline attack. Maybe they read the thing about the guy smuggling box cutters.

4. on september 11th, i was getting ready to fly home to the East Coast from denver, colorado. the attacks entailed a 30-hour drive across 11 states to get home. where were you & what were you doing on september 11th?
I was at home, totally not watching TV. I didn't find out about it til I came into work that night.

5. i'm a good flier. i usually fly 5-6x per year for either business or vacation, and i'm usually not airsick or nervous. are you a good flier or a nervous flier, or do you fly at all?
I don't fly.

6. on my last flight for vacation, i missed my domestic flight and had to fly into toronto. i almost got deported at immigration at the airport because i didn't have my passport (i didn't need it for a domestic flight so it was at home). have you ever had an issue with customs and/or immigration?
I have never been out of the country, so no.

7. on my last flight for business, i had four screeners summoned to look at my carry-ons. they thought something had gone awry in my luggage. what was humiliating was that one of my bags had an 8"x10" publicity flyer of a gay male french porn star named francois sagat - signed, no less - in all his ... ahem ... 'glory.' my best friend, a gay male, had gotten me the flyer signed as a joke. of course, my bags were removed and searched, but luckily the bag with the publicity flyer was not. i almost fainted from embarrassment. what humiliating experience have you had travelling?
I can't think of anything. I left my glasses in a rest area once, but I wouldn't classify that as humiliating so much as very frustrating and ultimately expensive.

8. i'm going to try and upgrade at the airline to business class coming home the red-eye for my next flight. have you ever flown first-class or business class, and is it worth the money to upgrade? why or why not?
No, I haven't, and I have no idea.

Of course, I have the luxury of not having to worry about terrorists, since I don't fly, I don't use public transportation, and I live in an area that's very unlikely ever to be hit [unless somebody starts a fanatical religious sect that believes cows and soybeans are evil]. So for everybody that's at a significant risk, I feel for you. Hopefully we can all find some way to not worry about it more than we have to, since we can't do anything about it anyway except maybe join the CIA or expose ourselves to radiation and hope we develop some useful super powers as a result.

So I'm gonna go stand in front of the microwave with the door open for a while. Ciao.

sbt/sbc

must...wake...up...

2006-08-10T20:03:00.000-05:00

Must also remember not to hit "enter"after typing the entry title. That has to be the stupidest shortcut in all of blogdom, and it seems to be more or less universal. I want to know whose brilliant idea that was.

Anyway.

Wednesday Mind Hump.

1. Do you use email much?
Every day.

2. When did you start using email?
Probably around 1999, 2000.

3. How many email addresses do you have?
uh...you know, I'm not sure anymore. I have 2 that I use regularly, and a couple more that I've more or less abandoned.

4. If you could send an email to your favorite actor or musician, who would it be and what would you say to them?
I really don't have a favourite actor or musician, and I'm sure they all get so much e-mail that mine would either not be read at all, or would just be glanced at. It'd be nice to give a "hi" to, for instance, Tori Amos, but she probably pays somebody to read her fan e-mail; and hopefully she has enough sense when reading her personal e-mail to delete most of the stuff from people she doesn't know. On the other hand, if I had her kind of money, I might open the stuff just out of curiosity. If it had a virus or spyware, I could buy a new computer and pay somebody to set it up.

Thursday Threesome.

::Disc Golf Season::
Onesome: Disc--overy channel madness: did you catch the Mythbusters show with the bit about the Mentos and Diet Coke (episode 57)? Have you tried it at home yet? What am I talking about? Psst: it's a fun project with the kids...
I don't have TV or kids. I do, however, have carpets; and I don't have a yard. So as much fun as it sounds, I think I'll give it a miss.

Twosome: Golf-- Do you play? Do you watch? Do you care? Even the Opens? Just wondering...
No, no, no, and no. Remember what George Carlin said about golf? That's about how I feel about it. If there were fights and body checks, I might change my mind. Or not.

Threesome: Season----ing salt? What spices do you routinely use when you're cooking up a little something for yourself? A little tarragon? Cinnamon? White pepper? What perks up a meal for you?
Generally I use an organic seasoning blend, Mrs. Dash, Italian seasoning, or whatever individual spices seem like they'd fit. I do not own any white pepper; I have never come across a situation where black pepper wasn't good enough. I have cinnamon, but I only use it about once a year; and then I usually use sticks, because it's a helluva mess trying to strain ground cinnamon out of your herbal tea. I own tarragon too, but it has such a malevolent funk to it that I don't use it unless it's specifically called for in a recipe. [Same goes for fennel. Ew.]

Booking Through Thursday.

1. Do you plan ahead for your reading? Work off of a to-be-read pile? A reading list? Or do you wing it, choose whatever you're in the mood for?
I try to finish what I'm reading before I start something new. Of course, that never works, so I'm in the middle of about seven or eight books right now. I see something interesting, I start reading it, and then I rotate that with the other books I haven't finished until I finish one. I've been trying to get the pile down to 2 or 3, but it's never worked.

2. If you do plan ahead, how far ahead? Do you have two or three books waiting in queue? Or are you backed up by dozens of volumes waiting their turn?
See 1.

3. If you do not plan ahead . . . well, never? What about if you're reading a series? Or someone gives you a book for a present?
I have books people have given me that have sat unopened for years. They know I have 560 other books, so if they were expecting me to drop everything and read THEIR book right away, they're nuts. The only series I really read is Harry Potter, and the only plans I have regarding that revolve around waiting for #7 to come out and buying a boxed set of all 7 [you know they'll have one] since I only own #6 and took the rest out of the library. Knowing me, I'm sure I'll sit down and read it as soon as I get home.

Now I must work.

sbt/sbc

Meow.

2006-08-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

Curious as a Cat.

What is humankind's most negative enduring characteristic?
That's difficult to answer simply. I want to say "aggression," but that answer is pitifully incomplete to the point of being misleading. To call aggression a negative characteristic connotes, to many people, that it is not also a positive characteristic. I think that every trait humans have evolved for a reason. While aggression has probably done the most damage, I think it also made our survival possible, so it's hard to call it a negative trait when in fact it's a neutral one. [Don't even get me started on the Seven Deadly Sins.]

Which of your friends do you think was the cutest baby? Why did you pick that person?
Me. Why did I pick me? Because I have never seen baby pictures of any of my friends. [To my friends: This is not a cue for you to send me pictures. Thanks anyway. I'll just imagine you as you are now, in a big diaper with a rattle. That's much more amusing. :P ]

I sleep now.

sbt/sbc

trying to wake up...

2006-08-07T00:14:00.000-05:00

...and I'm not sure this will improve my mood, given the subject matter; but if it doesn't, at the very least, it should tell me what to ask the therapist about next.

Why the mood? Well, for once, there's an actual explanation: I dreamed I was living in a NY high-rise and suddenly we were strafed with nuclear warheads. Then I dreamed I met a cool guy with totally wild hair, fell in love with him, and then the fucker left me. Then I woke up to find that my screensaver never kicked in [not that that'll damage the screen, it's just one of the thousand tiny ways that Windows sucks] and checked my e-mail to find a message [as yet unread, until I finish my coffee] from somebody I did not want to talk to because my first impression of them gave me the creeps.

So for better or for worse, here we go.

Saturday 8.

1. are you currently in love?
No. I have a crush or two going, but no actual love, and that's how it should be. If I do fall in love with any of these people, I'm so hosed, because they're all married.

2. do you have a "one that got away?" tell us about him/her. if not, describe your last awesome partner.
I sort of have one that got away, in the sense that there were a couple that I scared off or rashly broke up with, that would've made good friends.

3. recently, a florida couple got stranded on their first date (read about it here). although it's not terribly romantic, it's sweet that they've decided that even after being stranded for 6 hours they're willing to go on a second date! what's your favourite romantic story? (this can be a movie, book, poem, story of long-lost love from a friend or relative, etc.) tell us about it.
One of the few romantic stories that doesn't make me want to grab a barf bucket is the one about my parents, who dated in high school, broke up, married other people, and finally got back together for good.

4. what's the hardest thing you've had to deal with in a relationship?
Usually the breakup.

5. when it comes to lovers, are you the 'jealous type'?
I used to be. I'm sure I still am, although hopefully not to the degree that I was as an insecure, emotionally unstable 20-year-old.

6. do you believe in 'love at first sight,' or do you think it's a chemical/biological lustful response?
I think it's more like a crush at first sight, unless you're so goddamn psychic that you can divine a person's personality by looking at them once. I really don't want to talk to anybody for whom love doesn't hinge in some way upon personality.

7. do you believe that a person has a 'one true love,' the person that he/she was destined to be with forever?
Absolutely not. I think that as people live, die and are reincarnated, they meet a lot of people with whom they develop spiritual kinships, and they may meet one or more of those people again in a subsequent life. Or they may go a whole life without bumping into one, which is what I seem to be doing [and what I've been told numerous times, through divination, would happen, which is one reason I don't bother getting into romantic relationships anymore].

8. love gone wrong - what's the worst romantic 'horror story' you've ever heard, maybe from your friends or family, or something that's happened to you?
Well, let's see, would you like the story of my brother's ex-wife, who abused their kids, cheated on him with teenage boys, ruined him financially, and won't leave their family alone? Or how about my dad's previous marriage to a woman who beat him. Or maybe my mom's previous marriage to a guy who terrorized her for nine years because she was trying to be a good little Catholic and stay with her husband; until finally she escaped, upon which he broke through two locked doors and tried to strangle her. Then there's my friend E, who moved to Washington with a guy I thought was the bee's knees, until it turned out he was an abuser. Oh yeah, then there's my half-sister, who met a wonderful man online and had a lovely whirlwind relationship with him culminating in marriage...until he started beating the shit out of her. Then there's my other friend B, who dropped entirely off the face of the earth [to the point that I worried she might be dead] during a relationship with a thoroughly scary and controlling person who eventually came after her with a gun. And don't even get me started on my own experiences with stalkers, sexual assault, and mentally ill boyfriends--although I can take some consolation in the fact that none of those resulted in my being physically beaten.

Remind me, now, why I don't date again?

Not to shove all the horrors of my life in everybody's face or anything, but I think I have a pretty compelling argument there. No thanks, man. I may be a shriveled-up old maid, but I'm a BREATHING shriveled-up old maid.

And for those who say, "But not all relationships are like that! There are good people out there, you just have to find them!" I have an exercise for you. Buy a bushel of apples, some of which have worms, and some of which don't. Keep eating until you find one without worms or until you throw up, whichever comes first. If that doesn't get the point across, I really can't help you.

I need more coffee.

...

Okay, back.

***

Saturday 6.

1. How many different time zones have you lived in? Which one would you most like to live in?
Two. I don't have any time zone preference, really, as long as it has at least 24 hours per day.

2. What is the current setting of your home's thermostat? Do you adjust it up or down based on the time of day, or leave it at one setting at all times?
I don't use the thermostat in the summer because I don't have central air. I currently have it turned all the way off so the heat doesn't kick in at the same time as the air.

3. Go to your bedroom closet (or the closet in which you keep the majority of your clothes. Take a quick glance: what color do you see the most of? Is this color your favorite color? If not, why do you have more of it than your favorite color?
Black, with green coming a close second. I don't have a favourite colour.

4. Take the quiz: What kind of house are you?
It says "Single Family with Yard. All that's missing is 2.5 kids and a dog. You're happy and normal. Good for you!" Um. What? I sure spend a lot of time in the therapist's office for somebody who's "happy and normal." [She works for the county and is salaried, so I doubt she'd keep asking me to come back if I didn't need to.] And although I think children and dogs are sort of cute--when they're being quiet, anyway--I wouldn't go so far as to say that a lack of them equates to them being "missing" from my life. They can come over, I can give them treats, and then they can go home. Or, even better, I can go to THEIR house and pass out treats, and then I don't have to clean the carpets or replace broken valuables.

I think it's funny that out of all these quizzes, there've only been one or two whose answer described me with any accuracy whatsoever. If these people had written the ASVAB, I'd probably be working in marketing right now. [I'd probably also be making four times my current salary, so maybe I shouldn't laugh so hard.]

5. Imagine your dream house: how many stories would your ultimate home have?
Probably two or three, unless it had an elevator. Then a castle would be nice.

6. Ripped from the Headlines: An underage teenager decides he does not want to undergo a particularly rough regimen of chemotherapy to treat his cancer. With his parents' blessing, he decides to pursue an alternate treatment to be supervised by a clinic that is outside of the country. Should a court intervene and force the teen to undergo the "traditional" treatment? How much does the prognosis for successful treatment with the chemotherapy affect your judgment?
Under the current laws as I understand them, yes, the court has a duty to intervene. Does that mean the current laws are right? That's an entirely different matter. Also, is the person in question a "teenager" in the sense of being 13 or of being 17? The chemo prognosis means little to me, frankly [see below], but the person's age does. If he's close to the age of majority, I think they should leave him alone. If he's 13 or 14, I'd be less comfortable with him making his own decision. Since his parents agree with his decision, I'd be very uncomfortable with the court forcing him to undergo chemo. Of course, he could get the chemo, survive, and look back 20 years later and go, "Man, I'm glad they made me do that." Or he could get the chemo and die anyway, in which case they've just crapped all over the kid's dignity and his parents' rights to raise him as they see fit, all for nothing.

Would I like to see him get chemo, purely in terms of the survival rate? Yeah, but it's not my life. The question is to what extent his life is his own, his parents', or the parens patrie responsibility of the court.

***

Sunday 7.

Name seven cities you'd like to live in that you have not already lived in before.
Okay.

~Palm, Pennsylvania
~Celestine, Indiana
~Kongsvinger, Norway
~Norberg, Sweden
~Elgin, Scotland
~Verdun, France
~Gründau, Germany

Why did I pick these? First of all, they're all small and they're all within decent driving distance of large cities. In some of these countries, I wouldn't even have to drive; European countries generally have a public transportation system that should make the U.S. deeply ashamed of itself. Not that I like public transportation, but if I needed something that I could only get in the big city, or if I had to see a specialist, I could get on a train and go there. Here, if I want to see a doctor in Minneapolis or go to Magus Books or something, I have to get in my car and try to navigate a labyrinth of suburbs, poorly marked freeway exits, and road construction--all without collision insurance, which I can't afford. Not only that, all these places have medium-sized cities nearby, so if I didn't want to choose between driving in a giant city and going on public transportation, I could still go someplace that had most or all of what I wanted.

I picked Palm because it's in a beautiful area and close to some of the places I've lived before. I picked Celestine because most of the people I care about live in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, or Tennessee, and Celestine is about a day's drive from all of them--or a short drive to Louisville and a short train or plane ride from all of them. As for the places in Europe, I know I swore on a stack I'd never go to Europe; but when you come down to it, a small town is a small town. It can't be that much more crowded in a small town there than in a small town here. Also, public bathrooms in Europe are a lot more private than the ones here [which shocked me; I thought it was the other way round], so travelling and shopping would be much more comfortable. The only problem is, I'd have to learn the language first, which would take a couple years.

So there.

So now, after 2 1/2 hours of this, I'm finally awake. Time to go do dishes! Wheeee!

sbt/sbc

OMFG memes!!!3!

2006-08-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

And again.

Friday Fiver. I like the Cyndi Lauper reference in this week's.

1. When is the last time your phone rang in the middle of the night?
In the middle of THE night, like when it's dark out? I can't remember. In the middle of MY night, which is everybody else's day? The day before yesterday.

2. Who makes you yell?
All humans, nearly all computer programs, and anything, no matter what it is, that is in my way. [This is probably the worst cardinal sin in the Fridaverse: Being In My Way.]

3. What do you do for fun?
I've answered this so many times in so many memes that I'm not doing it again. Sorry.

4. What hours do you work/go to school?
I work at night.

5. Who is number one in your life?
Sadly, probably me. Sounds selfish, and it probably is, but nobody's going to take care of me except me; and with the health problems I have, that takes up a sizable portion of my time and resources. So if I want to continue eating and not being homeless, I kind of have to make myself a priority.

***

The Alternative Friday Five.

1. Do you like summer in general? Why or why not?
No. It's hot and it's full of mosquitoes. I do like the thunderstorms, but because of global warming [pauses to stab a voodoo doll of an oil executive and stuff it in the blender], the whole Midwest is one big long drought after another, so we hardly get those anymore.

2. Are you liking this summer (or, for those of you in the southern hemisphere, did you like this past summer)? Why or why not?
Well, it beats last summer. I have better air conditioning now, and I don't live smack dab in the middle of the part of town where all the summer festivals and classic car shows are held. Also, thanks to some diligent clearance shopping, I now also have plenty of shorts, so I don't have to choose between sweltering and chopping up my good jeans to make cutoffs. [It's not the shorts' fault that I'm having trouble fitting into some of them now...ahem...]

3. What were summers like for you as a child? Did you enjoy them?
They were fun, although when we lived down south, I spent a lot of time sitting in front of a fan doing little or nothing because of the lack of air conditioning. Luckily, reading and jigsaw puzzles don't require much physical activity, so I kept busy. When we lived out east, the summers were cooler, and my friends and I could run around and play outside more.

4. Which summer was your favourite? Which summer was your least favourite? Why?
Oh, hell, I don't know. See, my brain doesn't work that way. My long-term memory is like a big box of mostly undated photographs that can only be identified by the age of the photo paper and the clothes and apparent age of the people appearing in them. So I couldn't tell you one summer from the next unless something really remarkable happened. Most of the time I couldn't even tell you what season of the year a particular memory comes from. I can say that the summer that sucked the worst was probably the one where I had mono the whole summer. [I will not bore you with the mono story again.]

5. Have you had summer jobs? Which were your favourite and least favourite? Why?
I only had two, and they were both work-study jobs at college. They both sucked.

And that about does it for memes, for now.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

OMFG memes!!!2!

2006-08-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

Yes. More late memes.

Curious as a Cat.

Let's say you unexpectedly find yourself in Hell after you die. Think about everyone you've known in your life; which one person is the least likely to surprise you by being in Hell with you?
Uh, that would depend very heavily on the criteria for getting into hell. Are you talking about the Christian hell? Well, there's this one lady at work who I think is Christian, and she does nice things for people all the time, so probably her. Pretty much everybody else I know would be there with me, because I tend to associate mostly with other pagans and atheists. Most religions that have hell as part of their cosmology state that you're going there if you don't belong to their religion, so like I said, it would depend on the circumstances. Luckily, witches don't believe in hell, unless it's the hell of being cornered at a party by a group of Borg-again Christians attempting one of their gangbang conversions. Then there's always the hell of having to explain to people for the seven millionth time that you don't worship Satan, don't even believe in Satan, don't do animal sacrifices, don't hate Jesus [although it's really hard not to hate people who use Jesus as an excuse to suck], and are really just boring human beings like anybody else.

[Update: I just realised I totally read that question wrong and thought it meant "who are you least likely to see in hell?" Oops. Eh, I don't feel like changing it.]

What brings you good luck?
Boy, if I ever find out, I'm gonna grab all of it that I can get my hands on.

***

Thursday Threesome.

::Time to Fill::

Onesome:Time-- wasters in your life... Just a brief jump onto your soapbox: What is the biggest bother you have in this department? I mean, something you can post without incurring familial or job related problems ...
The biggest one? Oh, it's so hard to choose. Going to the bathroom is way up on the list. So are cooking, doing dishes, and housecleaning. And then there's the big one: Work.

Twosome: to-- beat the heat! It seems like it's all sort of hot all over the Northern Hemisphere this Summer! What are you doing to handle the heat? ...and for those Down Under? Well, your turn may come in just a few months; do you have any plans for then?
I'm staying indoors with the air conditioning. If I can't be in air conditioning, I drink tons of cold beverages. I avoid places that have no air conditioning and no convenient bathrooms.

Threesome: Fill-- your cup with a cold something! What are you drinking this summer to keep cool? ...and if you're a tea drinker: is it "ice tea" or "iced tea"? Just curious...
Water, mostly, if I really need to keep cool. The only place I go where it's not air-conditioned is work, and the fridge space is limited, so I don't bring a lot of other beverages because it's not worth listening to everybody else screech about how there's no room for their stuff. And it's "iced tea." "Ice tea" would be tea made from ice, which would be, uh, water.

***

Friday Five.

1. How much time do you spend on the Internet daily?
I have no idea.

2. What are your favorite 3 websites?
That changes from week to week.

3. Do you eat at your computer?
I don't eat anywhere else, except sometimes in bed.

4. Pick one and why - Reading the news online or in a newspaper?
Well, if you're gonna twist my arm and make me pick, reading the news online. Why? Because you can actually GET to the news. However, if you want more than one comic strip on a page, you really have to read the paper.

5. How many people are on your instant messenger buddy list?
Which messenger program? I use Yahoo, MSN and Trillian. On Yahoo, there are 2 on my acquaintances list, 8 on my friends list, and 1 on my missing & presumed dead list. I have 1 on MSN, because MSN sucks even bigger lion weenie than Yahoo does, so I never use it except through Trillian. Trillian has its own problems because their emoticon system does not match Yahoo's, or anybody else's that I'm aware of, so talking to somebody on Yahoo becomes very frustrating if you use a lot of emotes.

More to come...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

OMFG memes!!!1!

2006-08-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm gonna try this in Blogger for a change. Originally I did memes on my old blog, then moved them to LJ when there got to be so many that they were crowding out the other posts. Then I moved exclusively to LJ, and the same thing happened there. So either I'll do them all here, or split them between LJ and here. We'll see.

First, Monday's A Bitch.

1. Whose was the last wedding you attended?
My aunt's.

2. Do you enjoy attending weddings, or do they bore you to tears?
I don't know; I don't remember my aunt's wedding. I was only four.

3. Would you prefer your wedding to be a lavish event with hundreds of guests, or a casual one with good friends and family? (or if you're already married, what was yours like?)
Well, if I'm lucky, there won't be a "my wedding" at all; but if I end up having no other choice, I would prefer it be done in private. Friends and family can go pound sand, and so can the public. Justice of the peace and witnesses only.

4. Have you ever been part of the wedding party?
No. And thank goodness. Dresses make me feel like a transvestite. Which would be fine if I had the slightest interest in being a transvestite, but I don't.

5. Does marriage in general make you feel goopey and warm inside, or skeptical?
Some of both. I get irritated when somebody asks me when I'm gonna find a man and settle down. First of all, they're assuming I even WANT a man, and secondly, they're assuming that only married people can be settled. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be irritated, because, you know, who I have sex with and under what circumstances is everybody's business.

Okay, I'll stop being bitchy. Most people never ask, and one nice thing about Minnesota Nice™ is that it appears to prohibit being nosy about that kind of thing. MN has historically been one of the bigger pro-gay states [up til recently, that is, when Massachussetts made us look like a bunch of Neanderthals--and rightly so]. So I can imagine people here stopped assuming anything about gender or marriage preference--or at least stopped asking.

***

Next up, Tuesday's Tales. Thanks to you guys for adding me to the players list! :)

1. What is the earliest memory you have as a child? Think far back.
I think it was my bladder surgery when I was three. I remember lying on my back and seeing lights over my head. [Glad ya asked, huh?]

2. What is a special memory you have about someone? It could be a grandparent, family friend - not including your parents - that you knew as a child. What do you recall about them that makes the memory special?
I don't remember anything much that could be classified as special. We didn't have any family friends, really, and pretty much everybody in the family lived about a thousand miles away. I remember once when my grandma visited us, I invented the term "gramma rays" to describe her seemingly supernatural ability to tell what you were up to--and let it be known that she knew what you were up to--even when she was three rooms away with her back turned to you, reading a book. You could fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you could never fool her. The Gramma Rays see all. [Later, I found out the reason for her vigilance when Dad started telling me all the insanely reckless things he and his brother would do as kids. Anybody would develop Gramma Rays from raising those two.]

3. What was a favorite game you played as a child?
Among other things, I used to play a LOT of Crazy 8. I played it to the point where everybody else in the family was sick of it. But it was the only thing I could win a majority of the time.

4. What was a memorable trip that you can recall being a little kid and what did you do that makes you think about it even now?
I remember being four or five and going to the Parthenon in Nashville with my family. It's a replica of the one in Greece, so it has a lot of columns and an enormous staircase which, to a preschooler, looks like it goes up for miles and miles. I made it all the way up, but once I got inside, I got a nosebleed and had to sit down. I think I remember a uniformed security guard helping us out. I don't know why it sticks out, but the two most vivid parts of it are the humongous stairs and the nosebleed.

***

Booking Through Thursday.

1. Do your reading habits change for the summer months?
Not that I can think of. I do pretty much all my reading indoors regardless of the time of year. I used to read outside sometimes, when I could find some place to go that wasn't full of people, mosquitoes or seagull poop. Sadly, there are few places like that now, unless you own your own forest. My work schedule makes it worse, as I work 3d shift; not only is it very difficult to read outdoors at 3 in the morning, it also looks suspicious to the police.

2. If so, how?
See 1.

Back soon for more...

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Oh, all right...

2006-04-19T17:06:00.000-05:00

I might post something here occasionally. It might end up being a great place to gripe about work.

2006-04-19T17:01:00.000-05:00

Yay, now I can post comments on other people's blogs that only admit you if you're another Blogger member! I have 3 blogs already, so I'm probably not going to write anything in here. Move along, nothing to see...