first of all, what would happen if you had a little camera in your mouth? now you know. (via Christine)
and it would seem that the cam is live, at this writing, over there at tampa bay party cam. one never knows what one might see there, in the hot tub at Robyn's birthday extravaganza.
so. i had this craving, for a song whose name escaped me. google being the amazing thing google always is, a few lyrical snippets and i had the lyrics to 'analog kid'. and then i needed the song. well. it's not that easy ferreting out unprotected /index mp3 directories for rush songs, there are just so many. but during my googling, i realized i own the cd. it's on different stages, which i have ... around here somewhere. my cds are quite disorganized, being i generally tend to go digging for them when i'm a-drinkin', and that's never an organized time for me. so i found CD1 and CD3 of the set. and guess what? argh. no CD2.
gave it some time, regrouped, revisited the CD piles, and viola! i'm now listening to this song (and i'm not even drunk).
big saturday night on the internet. it's kinda lonely here, one might picture tumbleweeds blowing along the wires. what, is it some kinda holiday weekend thingy?
oh, it's just the alternator. but it may as well have had the engine fall out on the freeway. sure it can be fixed, but right now it really seems best to let it go -- other signs include judgements from lying weasel roommates who legally now can take my money, though they have no moral right whatsoever (if there is a feeling quite like standing there in court while a person lies and lies and lies and is believed and there's nothing you can do, well, i don't know what it is). anyway there's that, and enough old uninsured medical bills, and other little things that went bad here and there, that it makes sense to consider the cleansing effect of a bankruptcy. now this bankruptcy could have excluded the car, and it would have been good for my future efforts to re-establish my credit, if i hung on to the monstrous piece of crap. but. if i hang onto the car and it continues in this steady decline towards the junkyard, then i'd be stuck with no way out of that.
i have till january to think this over. to seek legal aid advice and consider everything. and to probably go ahead and give it its stupid freakin' alternator, just as a concilatory gesture to keep the peace before our eventual parting of the ways.
cars. can't live with 'em, can't drive them over cliffs and not get in major trouble with the insurance company. plus it's probably littering.
is there anything better than a big bowl-o-leftovers for breakfast (if something eaten at 10 minutes to noon can be considered breakfast.) (of course it can!)
flashback to the night before: the four of us girls decide to go on a field trip. you know, to a football field. the one in the catholic high school across the fence is left open conveniently for this purpose. the cat followed us. we sat and drank beer and smoked cloves and giggled.
later, the house looked like this. i don't know why i'm admitting this to you (and yes we've had a change of girl personnel in this picture, we had quite the ongoing celebratory thingy):
watching the muppets christmas special, which is a modern, puppet-populated movie paying homage to 'it's a wonderful life', among others -- in which david arquette, a cubicle-type angel, dares to go straight to the supreme being (played by whoopi goldberg, who lives in a paradise where the shrubs give coffee) to present the case of kermit, who's being foreclosed on by the very evil bank manager's widow (joan cusack, brilliant). there is a pause in the presentation of the case, during which god/whoopi is unconvinced. he urges her to watch some more, at which point she says 'you're just lucky spongebob isn't on'.
it's on right now. all-star cast, funny as hell, and muppets. highly recommended.
so last night, my parents called on or about the second hour of post-nap beer drinking. this was right after the long, sometimes funny, sometimes crying in the bathroom, soul-baring airing of issues that had taken up the previous two hours, i was alone while the rest of the bunch was on a mission to pick up edie, who had to go to work during the evening's festivities -- and i was in a rather philosophical mood.
talk turns to the cousins, cousin jody to be exact. jody's girlfriend's mom has cancer. we commiserate on the tragedy, and then i am moved to say, somewhat pointedly, "so we are finally admitting we know jody is gay"? (i know that when my parents use the word girlfriend, it is synonymous with 'pal' or 'buddy') "well, we don't talk about it". um. we don't? jody has been in a loving relationship with a wonderful woman for, oh, a good decade or so. they've bought a house together. but we don't acknowledge the wonder that is a great relationship? could we not say 'parnter', and speak of it joyfully?
so i attempted to bring a little perspective into the lives of chronically repressed lapsed presbyterians (right up there on the boring scale with geolicism, the worship of rocks). i do love my parents very much. i wish i lived closer so we could hang out and i could perhaps try to bring them gently but firmly into this century, if only because it makes for a much happier life if you can appreciate all the differences, instead of "not talking about it".
* * *
it's raining lightly, and thundering wonderfully. it's a lovely evening and there's still a weekend coming! life is good.
for awhile i thought it was going to be just us three. had to ask the daughter-person three times. the first time, she complained that all the tables in the house have computers on them, and people have to eat sitting around the house. i had to think about that -- but in general every family eating situation we've been to recently, has involved tables being used for food service and people eating around the house. excuse denied. asked her again, and she said, "i don't know. i might just sit around the house by myself". teenagers. i can say that because she will be one for another three weeks or so.
called her this morning and that mood had lifted, and so we get to have not just one daughter, but two! edie is not mine specifically, but i've known her long enough that she's like an extra daughter to me.
and we'll stop on the way here to pick up green beans for that green bean casserole -- how could we have forgotten that? and other goodies, because she wants to make stuff.
i'll be posting pictures as the day goes on.
it's eight thrity and i've already done dishes. chris is at the grocery store, because he forgot onions and celery and whipped cream and stuff. gosh i'm awfully thankful grocery stores stay open a bit on thanksgiving day, even though i feel bad to be among the reasons they feel they should do that.
the thing in my life i'm most thankful for is my kids, who are just the most amazing people. and for chris, who's a really good father, and chris's family, for being understanding and supportive - these are the cornerstones of my life, which is good.
i'm thankful to have so many good friends, who are mainly blogger friends, and for the internet, without which i would be still wondering how it is exactly that you meet good people that you'd like to be friends with.
i'm thankful for my job, which involves playing with the internet, and working with some really nice clients, in an atmosphere of great geekery. i am thankful for geekery in general.
i am thankful for music and books and yes, even the TV -- i am thankful for spongebob and nickelodeon in general, and for the fact i don't have to be that much of a grownup if i don't want to. i am thankful for my cute little lived-in house in the suburbs, and for ventura in general.
i'm thankful for google and movable type and linux and mozilla and telocity enhanced DSL. i'm thankful for haircolor and stretch denim and bubble baths and eyebrow pencil and fragrant lotions.
i'm thankful. i'm thankful for a lot more than this. i'm also a little distracted, and i have a bit of a sad story this morning, and i'm putting it in more, so if you don't want to be made sad, you don't have to.
add rum, and it gets a lot more interesting. i'll give you a for-instance, and only this one, 'cause the rest ... oh nevermind.
conversation turns to the male/female dynamic. male claims that 'i'm just a man thing', more argument follows. sample of dialogue:
he: well excuse me for having a penis
(later) he: my penis doesn't understand
she: well my vagina doesn't understand. she's confused.
should be noted that at several other points during the conversation, people turned to me and said, 'you're gonna blog this. you have to.' i wish i had a better memory but you have to understand i was laughing pretty hard at the time.
you had to be here.
ok, no, it's better just to show pictures:
how could i forget alice's restaurant? i was on my way to pick up the daughter persons, and got to hear the whole thing. a true thanksgiving day tradition (see more for more on that)
Women are more likely than men to have sex with an intern at work, according to a Playboy magazine poll that also found that two-thirds of female respondents had slept with a co-worker. two thirds? what?! well, i never! ok, well, maybe i have. but it was a long time ago, and it was ... lots of fun to do nasty things on the desks of people we didn't like. damn that was a gleeful feeling.
so. ever do the deed in the office?
so there was all this thumping outside. fine. like i should go look. so i took a quiz, via veshka:
You have a Shitty Attitude! Go figure.
You're an asswipe. It's that simple.
You're whiney, annoying, and tiresome.
One day, someone's gonna smack you.
Take the What the Hell Kinda Attitude is That? Quiz at aka cooties
i honestly don't care what's thumping outside. i don't.
as Joanie asked, and as others have inspired, i made a list.
and. and.
for the first time in i can't remember how long, the linux box crashed. crashed hard. i was almost done.
i shall re-make the list tomorrow, when i feel less like kicking my computer in the 'nads, k?
other than that, you should just go read his his site. regularly.
which is rather typical of the crazy playful little word-association games that my brain engages in on occasion. but anyway. so then i thought, well meatloaf is a loaf of meat, but what is a nog of egg? enter google. Eggnog literally means eggs inside a small cup. It is used as a toast to ones health. Nog is an old English dialect word (from East Anglia) of obscure origins that was used to describe a kind of strong beer (hence noggin). It is first recorded in the seventeenth century. Eggnog, however, is first mentioned in the early nineteenth century but seems to have been popular on both sides of the Atlantic at that time. An alternative British name was egg flip.
yes, we have a little eggnog to go with our traditional feast (on the simple side: turkey, gravy, stuffing, smashed taters (yukon gold!) and beer). no brandy for the eggnog, 'cause that to my mind ruins the sweet thick creamy taste of it. and yes, i buy the 'gourmet' storebought eggnog, i've tasted homemade and it seemed, well, too eggy. which may go against the spirit of the beverage, but oh well. i know what i like.
trust me, this is much nicer than the post about how since Aaron hasn't been bringing us news of staggeringly annoying acts of punditry for the past couple days, i went visited a few of those places today. not advisable. 'bout killed me. don't know how he does it. and i'm not going to tell you what i read or where i read it because ... eggnog. eggnog. *breathe* and i'll leave you with some blissfully written words from Jason, who says, You can call me a dreamer all you want. I'll call myself a realist. And I'll say it with a straight face and mean it.
and i wish you peace.
if this is the kind of thing we can expect from the new homeland security department, we're all fucking doomed, ok? Because media broadcasts may spread news too slowly in emergencies, a group of U.S. security experts recommended on Monday that Americans carry government-issued beepers for alerts of pending nuclear attack, biological threat or tornado. imagine with me for a moment here -- take everyone within a certain radius of some sort of terror scare. have their cell phones and beepers start beeping 'alert'. what happens next? can the general public be expected to behave in an orderly fashion? please proceed calmly towards the exits, no shoving, women and children first?
the problem with any sort of alarm system, is the fact that panic can cause so much damage all by itself. and a false alarm could be quite deadly. so let's say they only send alerts after the act had already been committed. and this would help -- how? a bunch of terror beepers beeping -- and then what?
the fact that 'security experts' are making asinine recommendations like this is scarier than the terror itself. the culture of fear is a fascinating, albeit disturbing, thing to watch.
i just adored my car when i bought it, chiefly because it replaced a $300 mitsubishi microtruck with an oil leak, a bad clutch, a rickety front end, no upholstery whatsoever, and almost no light lenses to speak of. and dents. lots of dents. among other problems. rust. a chronically leaky but huge front tire that was worth more than the whole vehicle, so i just had to keep putting air in it. the truck sucked. and not well. the buick felt like a real car, it felt wonderful the first day i bought it and it rained, and i didn't feel like i was going to go skittering off the road if i exceeded 50mph. oh try driving like that in southern california! they don't slow down in the rain, and you're clinging to the steering wheel in terror while people weave and zoom around your small rattletrap deathmobile, feeling for all the world like you were gonna die.
and now. and now. dang buick needs some sort of major tune-up, it stopped starting briefly the other night and intermittently now flashes the battery light, it groans deep in the front end when you back up, and needs about a dozen other little things it can't have right now, because it came from ugly duckling with crippling payments. a normal person with normal credit would have a shiny newish lexus for these payments. me? a 7 year old buick.
and this is how my mind works: i hope something happens. something non-lethal, not my fault, and sufficient to cause someone else's insurance to get me into another vehicle. i don't have a normal mind that thinks, oh, i should budget and cut back and get the car all fixed up and struggle through the next year (which is how long i have till i can trade the shuddering piece of buick in). i just want to make it go away. and maybe a little pain and suffering settlement to ... see? i have to stop thinking like this. it's sick. i keep thinking the next time an asshole almost creams me, i won't get out of the way, but i can't seem to overcome my collision avoidance mechanism long enough to get a little whiplash and some pain meds and a check. ok, and i know that's crazy. i do. it's extremely crazy. it is.
i hate cars. i mean i love them, i adore a nice car and by nice i'm not even that picky, but then they turn on me like this. and this makes me crazy.
if i have any motivation to do anything at all this morning, it's probably on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'.
i dunno, i had to work that in somewhere, it pops into my mind on occasion, so there.
i was poking around the internet this morning, and ran across hanne's groovy holiday gift guide for 2002, and wanted to share that with you.
so, yesterday when we were waiting for the girls to get ready for brunch, i sat talking with my friend, who's quite a bit older than i am, for a frame of reference. she was complaining that her new glasses made her look old, like her mother. at which point, my son pipes up "those glasses make you look like a teenager!"
so it gets to me, every sunday, the house pr0n section of the LA Times Magazine. the airy rooms, the killer retro pieces lovingly arranged so everywhere you look, is like art. yeah. and i look around this jumbled clutter of mismatched furniture and crap - i have so much crap. i have no organizational skills and the nagging feeling if i throw anything away, i'll regret it at some later date, so i have piles and stacks of vaguely-important looking papers here and there that i mean to go through, eventually.
some of it was (and underneath it all might still be) 'nice' furniture, in that gramma style of nice (for that is indeed who bought it in the first place), although the dining table and coffee table have been given over to computers and the kind of crap that gathers around computers if the computer user spends a crazy amount of time on said computer. but aside from the nice but unfashionable tables being used the wrong way, there is a boxy brown chair, a boxy gold chair, and a boxy formerly-white couch being used as a bed. there's a rickety card table used for eating and homework, within view of the tv, which sits on the floor. there's an electric piano no one plays, and the vaccuum is always hanging around that area, because it has no home, and the nice dining room chairs are being used as places to stack things.
so i look longingly at the uncluttered rooms with the well-chosen, sleek furnishings and the glossy floors and the tastefully placed objects d'art, and i lust. but then i think, what would one do in such a room? would one perch gently on the furniture, careful to not disturb the chi or the feng shui or whatever, while one sipped a beverage without setting it down on something expensive it might make rings on? i'm sure the places look different on the days the camera crew isn't there, but there can't be that much difference. so my question remains, what do these people do in these houses with the perfect retro furniture that has no little cubby-holes to store anything? where is all their stuff? do they have some secret room that no one goes in, that's just packed to the rafters with potentially important crap?
sigh. guess i like stuff the way it is. besides, as chris often says, i lack the gene that decorating-inclined folks possess, the one that makes them put ... things and stuff here and there, like, scattering seasonally-colored leaves artfully around an arrangement of ... something, and then ... oh i don't know. i've seen it done and i don't get it.
today has been a sleepy day. to confound matters, my coworker with the lovely pakistani accent has been hanging out in the office all day, making small talk with my boss as they try to fix his computer. the problem is the accent. it's not just that it's soothing, it's absolutely hypnotic. i mean, i can physically feel the voice, it tickles my sleep centers or something, makes my eyes heavy and unfocused, my hearing goes all fuzzy-echoy, and i crave a nap so badly i can't think of anything else.
it's not just accents, though. some people just have voices in that certain key or with whatever inflection, i'm not sure what it is, it's like it harmonizes with my falling-asleep brainwaves. my high school algebra teacher had such a voice, and i would constantly fall asleep in her class (it was also right after lunch. i just never had a chance to do good in that class). i would prop my head up with a hand under my chin, be holding a pencil poised in my other hand, as if ready to take notes, hide behind my hair, and fall asleep, trying not to do that jerky thing that sometimes happens when i'm falling asleep while really, really tired. like now.
about five years ago a neighbor of mine committed suicide. it was meticulously planned & carried out in the most thoughtful manner possible; this struck me as an unusual way to approach what amounts to a desperate last act.
he gave no outward indication of his intentions during his final weeks; instead, he was laying out his cover story, a planned medical procedure that would have him out of the house for several days. he arranged for his bird to be cared for with another neighbor; he delivered the animal right on schedule, the last time anyone saw him alive.
the neighbor watching the bird had keys to the apartment. after several days, he went to check on things & found the suicide note -- written in marker on a piece of cardboard about 3 feet high by 5 feet wide -- & its author dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
he had been sick for several years, in constant pain with no hope for recovery, yet no end in sight. he was unable to work & living alone, in poverty. he apologized for the inconvenience of his death. there were three envelopes taped to the cardboard, containing his will, letters to relatives, & copies of bank & vehicle records, all very neat & organized.
down to the last line of the note, a line scrawled in large angry (or terrified) letters, with a different pen, a red one, apparently as an afterthought:
"THE LIZARDS ARE OUT THERE"
the lizards are out there. now, lizards have never really bothered me, but i know what he meant. it's the same way with spiders -- you know, there are always spiders. the ones you see, & the ones you don't. spiders are far more aware of us than we are of them. we walk in a room, the spiders there know. but how often do spiders walk unseen, unknown, through our rooms, all amongst us? often indeed, believe you me.
the lizards are out there.
kid: (with look of alarm, seeing dark red colored stuff dripping down my neck): mommy?!? wha...
me: i'm making my hair a different color
kid: why?
me: because i like red
kid: (brightening, as this is his favorite color) oh! that's my favorite color. what's your favorite color?
me: beige
kid: why don't you make it beige?
me: um ...
you know, i really did consider blonde this time, but i spent age 15-30 being blonde, and hating the whole roots all the time thing, and besides, the reds these days are so very interesting. herbal essences ruby something (it was on sale at vons).
after this, i'm going to brunch with my daughter, and her friend's mom who's an old friend of mine too, not a talking on the phone kind of friend, just a fellow mom i've known for a decade or so, and there will be all you can drink cheap champagne. things might get drunk around here in a bit. and yes there will be pictures.
* * *
later - kid comes into room in ratty, old "born to be wild ... california" tshirt and a pair of sweats with a hole in the knee.
me: you're not wearing that
kid: why?
me: becuse it's stained and unraveling and has holes in it.
me: you have cute clothes, and you're going to wear them.
kid: oh man. this is going to be the worst day of my life.
should be noted i also told him there would be no food fight this time. sigh.
it was the most amazing day. these are its ghosts:
and this is all i have of it ...
i can't begin to describe the day without the 18 or so pictures that i lost in an unfortunate drinking accidental oopsie let's clear the memory stick thingy.
friggin' champagne. suffice to say i got up, dyed my hair dark ruby, and set off on a brunch adventure. this bored the small child no end, and as we were downtown, we decided to beach. i am not making this up when i tell you that there were handsome punk beach guys who let me take their picture, and who knew it would be on the internet. it was a good picture. and then i had too many pictures and i had to clear some out. and blank. blank camera. erased. everything.
i'm off to the other puter to upload the next 18 pictures and see what i can see.
i could not describe this day to you without (a) more pictures and (b) you having been here on the beach in the seventy degree beach weather, all wet and sandy and salty here with me. it would translate into words if i was that good at that sort of thing. i am not.
all i can say is, it's been one of those peak experiences. and i was ocean-wet up to my waist and covered with sand when i got home, and that fucking rocked.
pictures to follow.
so i've playfully participated in the cooties meme, and in my last post, suggested i ride on the coattails of the gigglechick meme. and suddenly i am struck with a sense of unease about the whole thing, because playful as it is, there was at least one hurtful commenter that showed up at cooties (couldn't follow all the comments, too many), to say 'well you should have content' (which, as a matter of fact, he has, so there). but i have to wonder about my preoccupation with my hitcounter and with popularity in general.
i could tell you sad, sad stories of how socially outcast i was in high school, and junior high for that matter, hell, all the way back to kindergarten at horace mann elementary in oakland, i was ... not popular. are your heartstrings being tugged, or is that just a very teensy violin i hear, playing in tune with my whining?
in any case, i'm ambivalent. i'm alternately surprised as hell at what popularity i do have in an aw shucks lil' ole me way, and ... greedy, wanting more. this web presence blog thingy i'm doing here and elsewhere is maybe the most successful thing i've ever done, measured by what few benchmarks i have -- yes, i look at other people's hitcounters where available. i check the blogrolling top links (and have sunk in those rankings recently, which is perfectly understandable, i don't know how i got up that high in the first place).
this is an obsession, or at least almost that.
it's why i'm so quick to participate in the 'me memes' and promote the folks who seem to crave the attention as much or more than i do. i do it gleefully and with a sense of fun, but i totally understand the motivation -- without the hitcounters and the interactivity, the comments and the emails and the mutual linkage, blogging would be a very masturbatory exercise. it still is, it's just ... more fun when someone else is there.
i'll probably delete this in the morning.
erin needs to be more famous... and faster than mike.
if you want to add:
<a href="http://kdblog.com/arc/000355.php" target="_blank">kd does <i>too</i></a>
well, that would be fine too.
so, last night, in a fit of whimsy, i was googling around for the lyrics to that punk song that that punk is playing on an enormous boombox when Kirk and Spock are riding the bus in 80's San Francisco in Star Trek IV? god i love that movie. save the whales! anyway. i was googling too vaguely, as it happens, and i ran into No Kill I: Star Trek Punk Rock Band. they didn't do that song, but they have a lot of other very, very interesting lyrics, some excerpts follow:
Travellin' through time
One thing on my mind
Couldn't kill my labido
With a photon torpedo
and this one, about the poor hapless red-shirted crewmen who you knew were doomed when they got asked along on the away team:
Walk the plank, put your heaad on the block
Too bad you wouldn't doff your jock
Jilted Gene and pissed off Spock
An open mouth, gagged with a sock.
Got a tunic colored red
See your death playing in my head
See you die on my tv screen
All because you jilted Gene
...anyway, i am greatly amused by the existence of a Star Trek Punk band. greatly.
and it wasn't till this morning, with my head clear of the BayerPM (which works, incidentally), i realized i should have typed some of the lyrics themsleves in, rather than the more general 'punk song from star trek 4', and viola! i find this interview with the actor in that role, one Kirk Thatcher (I could win the Nobel Peace Prize and my grave would still say "Punk On Bus - Star Trek IV"). w00t! i love google.
here is interview. the lyrics are in more, and if i find the mp3, i'll certainly let you all know ...
post titles: such fun.
also, pictures are fun. this is looking up through an aquarium coffee table:
this is the sign that always makes my mind go all road-trip:
and this makes me want a job delivering pizza:
edited to add: a model of my teeth, with the bare crown post, in a red ashtray i got at a garage sale today, and a picture of some lights through same ashtray. i love those ashtrays.
anybody wanna get married? i can do it. i mean, marry you to someone else, not to myself.
As a minister, you are authorized by the church to perform the rites and ceremonies of the church (except circumcision), including weddings, funerals, baptisms and blessings, subject to the laws of your country, state, or locality. Prior to conducting any civil ceremony (such as marriages), you should know and comply with the laws pertaining to your area of jurisdiction.so i'm officially ordained in the universal life church. bless you my child. *nods reverently*
You are entitled to all privileges and courtesies normally offered to members of the clergy.
Your commitment is to always do the right thing. It is your responsibility to peacefully and sincerely determine the right course of action, and to avoid infringing on the rights of others. You alone are responsible for your actions as a minister.
i'm sitting here near one am with the warm winds blowing through the east-facing front door, following some two hours spent on the phone, which followed some hour of awakeness, which followed some four hours of napness. yes four hours. time, well, spent.
if you've never lived in any of the 15 places in the world where these winds with names happen, it's hard to explain. i went a-searchin' on google for some data, and i found, oddly enough, policeops.com. it's called full moon effect (you know, lunacy) (and yes, we've had quite the moon these past few days) but it also applies to the winds. devil winds. siroccos. santa anas (santanas). chinooks. sharkias. and other cool sounding wind names. but this ain't cool.
look at the side effects:
emotional unbalance, irritation, vital disinclination, compulsion to meditate, exhaustion, apathy, disinclination or listlessness toward work (poor school achievement), insecurity, anxiety, depression (especially after age forty to fifty), rate of attempted suicide about 20% higher, larger number of admittances to clinics in drug cases. and that's just psychological. physical side effects include body pains, sick headaches, dizziness, twitching of the eyes, nausea, fatigue, faintness, disorders in saline (salt) budget with fluctuations in electrolytical metabolism (calcium and magnesium; critical for alcoholics), water accumulation, respiratory difficulties, allergies, asthma, heart and circulatory disorders (heart attacks approx. 50% higher) low blood pressure, slowing down in reaction time, more sensitivity to pain, inflammations, bleeding embolisms of the lungs, and thrombosis.can somebody explain to me what "vital disinclination" means? and is a compulsion to meditate a bad thing? ohmmmmmm.
at the tone, the temperature at 12:51 AM on november 21st will be 70 degrees.
that nap was epic though. i had these great dreams, in which i was writing stories that were so surreal and poetic and entirely bloggy, but even as i wrote the words they vanished; had i been able to record them as they happened, i'd have one helluva post going here. as it is, i'm just babbling.
just in case anyone's looking for stacey, his site pretty much just vanished, and at the moment, we're looking all over for it. i've offered rescue and such, and we're just kind of waiting to see if his host has backups, and i must say he's taking all this rather well.
oh yeah. go back up your sites right now, ok?
* * *
update: stacey has a new home over on surreally.org: surreally.org/stacey. it'll be a subdomain in a few days, but right now it's running in just the directory.
we are still waiting to hear from his hosts about the request that they restore from the backups, so we can save his stuff and move it over here. eventually, we will get his URL to point at that subdomain.
you know that natural gas has no smell right? and that they put smell in it because it's dangerous and you need to know if it's leaking? well, do you know why they use that particular smell?
A retired engineer for Union Oil stated his company used turkey vultures to find gas leaks. Natural gas has no odor, but a substance is added to the gas so that leaks can be detected in pipelines, stoves, or furnaces. This substance, called ethyl mercaptan, is one of the chemicals emitted from carrion and thus attracts turkey vultures. Union Oil Engineers were sometimes able to find pipeline leaks by looking for turkey vultures circling above the gas lines [source]
Mike needs to be famous... and fast.
and when i find myself with this need, i expect everyone to do the same for me.
well, perhaps not that vast. i'm talking local, really. but there is definitely a rich, right wing, old boy network, pillar of the community, founding father kind of conspiracy, right here in the poinsettia city.
it's not that i ever thought that people were treated equally regardless of race, creed, color, or socioeconomic status. but i really thought that drunk driving was one of those universal evils that law enforcement would enforce more evenly.
however, there are people in this town, ok, men, alright, rich white men. old rich white men are what's wrong with just about everything, but i digress. these are the kind of old white rich men who bring their fast expensive shiny cars to the local car wash, where they are known and valued customers. the thing is, they're often drunk. and the other thing is, they're never worried about it. why is this? well, if they get pulled over and haven't done anything heinous, just a little failure to yield or a maybe a wee bit of weaving here or there, what they get is a stern tsk-tsk-ing and a ride home to thier palatial estate on the hill. it's a handshake wink-wink nudge-nudge type of deal. they buy breath mints by the case and do a couple drops, and it mixes with the alcohol for a truly nuclear mintyness.
they're old powerful white males who reek of classy booze and old money. and breath mints.
isn't that lovely?
so i was in kmart or big k or whatever it's called these days, to get some bubblegum flavored children's flu stuff, and i wandered into the haircolor aisle, thinking of looking for something called 'i've completely lost my mind red' or something like that. and then i got sidetracked by various shades of glowy topaz, and some really wacky blondes gone wild, and i realized ... i can't decide. i don't like mouse brown, but since i can't have color that changes as easily as blog skins, i just can't do it ... well, yet.
speaking of skins, those of you not actually selecting one, are most likely going to see spongebob in a bit, on account of Lisa can't get them to stick, and she misses the bob.
so, everybody's posting recipes (well, two people at least, that's sort of like everybody), (and now stacey's gone and posted one) so i thought i'd contribute my favorite recipe for chicken:
Cooked Chicken
1, 6-7 lb. chicken
1 cup melted butter
1 cup stuffing
1 cup uncooked popcorn
salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Brush chicken well with melted butter, salt and pepper. Fill cavity with
stuffing and popcorn. Place in baking pan in oven.
Listen for popping sounds; when chicken's ass blows out the oven door and
flies across the room, chicken is done.
so the story isn't in the quote, though in and of itself it's quite remarkably fitting in our world today. the really amazing thing is that this came to me in an email (why yes, of course i've checked snopes), from a coworker, who is (was?) aligned with the 'let's go kill scary people 'cause we're the greatest country on earth and boy are we pissed scared' faction that is so well-represented at my place of employment. could it be that light is being seen amongst the warmongers at my work? i have some hope, although i do remain skeptical.
and here it is:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
-- Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe,
President of the Reichstag,
Prime Minister of Prussia,and Second in Command of the Third Reich.
dilbert was funny this morning.
mad magazine does the onion. much hilarity ensues.
yeah. middle of november, 87 friggin' degrees out there. it was foggy all summer (lovely!) and now this. friggin' santa anas.
* * *
also: is Yahoo toast? i've been checking out the MyWay portal a bit today -- "no banners. no popups. no kidding". clean, simple interface. i just love that it's not flashing at me and jumping up and down all over my screen.
so i'm number one on google for does this make my butt look big?, and this tends to attract a wide variety of comments -- so much so i've had to leave the whole old site up (well, that and the still ongoing hallelujah discussion, but i digress).
and yesterday i answered a commenter, age 14, who was conflicted about the whole big booty issue: in magazines and stuff they say it is good but then u look at all the models...and they have no ass!. so i tried to say something reassuring in case she ever came back -- something about loving yourself the way you are now, 'cause i didn't when i was that age, and i am regretting the hell out of not appreciating myself then.
and then this morning i was in the shower and it hit me -- i'd better damn well appreciate this body i have now, now. stop whining (mainly inside my own mind) about my lost and underappreciated youth. no doubt twenty years from now i'll be wishing i looked like this still, unless i win the lottery, lose 70 pounds, and have a bout a hundred grand worth of nips and tucks during those years. which i often think about you know. and i would like to stop thinking about these unrealistic things and just appreciate whatever youth i have left. if that's what you would call this, youth, i mean it isn't exactly ... oh right. i was going to stop that.
it sounds trite, writing about it. but it was a moment, it was definitely a moment.