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?

Admittedly, this can be taken too far: one only has to think of those very CIA attempts on Castro's life that led Gerald Ford to create the Assassination Ban in the first place. Perhaps he wasn't so much forbidding the US from engaging in assassination as he was banning the CIA from it because they were getting overly sophisticated. I mean, how many times does someone create an elaborate plan to electrocute Castro via a shock device hidden in a woman's vagina or attempt to dose him with LSD via his scuba mouthpiece before you have to step in and remind them that bullets are perfectly effective?
So, are we set on the mission?
Sure thing, sir. We have the helium tanks all set up to flood his room, and we think we can get the white three fingered gloves and short pants into position shortly. It's going to be tough to get the head on him, but the epoxy should bond relatively soon and...
Wait, wait a minute. What the hell are you talking about?
Operation: Not Donald nor Goofy, sir.
Jesus, did it ever occur to you people to just shoot him?
Beg pardon, sir?
You know, shoot him? With a gun? Cause a bullet to destroy the soft tissues of his body as it tunnels through him after leaving the barrel of the gun at high speeds due to a chemical reaction?
Hmm. Do you think we could use these 'bullets' to deliver a dose of LSD that will make him desire to eat cheese and giggle inappropriately?

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.

so first krix calls me and tells me "i'm on msnbc" and i'm all, ohmygod, and then i go there, and lo and behold, so is surreally's lovely soup lady! as are a bunch of other bloggers i know, who are now officially famous (yes, including the cooties meme).

just remember people, i knew you guys when.

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.

standard precautions: consume no food or liquids while reading this post

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://dotlizard.com/kdblog/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.
 

"The ventral part of his scrotal skin had turned red, and there was a blister with a diameter of about two centimeters (0.8 inches)," Claes-Gorn Ostenson, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, wrote in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday.

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.

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.

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.

so statia's homer reminded me that i was supposed to be on a mission from bill. important stuff here. what's in my hand? yes, the hair, it's just everywhere:

arts and crafts time! statia asked a good question - how do you make gooze? i found a couple of interesting, fun-sounding recipes.

realize, this never happens. recipes? me? i'm not domestic. but i likes me some gooze.

this is what i found when i got home yesterday evening (it's homemade gooze, in the infamous brandy snifter. more of that later.)

here is my son at the beach, there are more beach pictures in more, remember there was much drinking on the part of the person holding the camera. much lens-flareage ensued:

that i have green apple twists (like red vines, you know, but ... not red) in my desk drawer. every time i open that drawer, i'm mildly pleasantly surprised by the rediscovery.

sometimes it rocks being an airhead.

Anil writes wonderfully about shadow government hijinks . and ooh! look! we're almost right there with the total information awareness thingy too. but don't worry. it's ok. everything will be just fine, and if not, well, remember, the universe's days are numbered. sure, the number is big, but ... the sun will have shrunk to a white dwarf, giving little light and even less heat to whatever is left of Earth, and entered a long, lingering death that could last 100 trillion years—or a thousand times longer than the cosmos has existed to date. The same will happen to most other stars, although a few will end their lives as blazing supernovas. Finally, though, all that will be left in the cosmos will be black holes, the burnt-out cinders of stars and the dead husks of planets. The universe will be cold and black.

so you know, perspective and stuff.

i've been involved in any number of bizarre mood shift incidents today, haven't i?

* * *
send free faxes to your legislators about that ugly homeland security bill, will you please? (via rawr)

so i get here to work, and the time card reader thingy is conspicuously absent from the wall. i mean, there's just a metal plate and the cord hanging. conspicuous. so i go to the lady who does the payroll and i say, 'the time clock is missing' and with a perfectly straight face she says, 'it was there this morning'. and suddenly my sanity is in question here. i go back to the time-clock area and yes, it is indeed not there.

but there was a good moment of doubt there. anyway, that cheered me up quite a bit believe it or not, it's always good to get a nice, relieved, 'i'm not that crazy' giggle.

because i woke up this morning after another particularly bad bout of sleep, and wondered if i'd ever be able to sleep through a whole night at once again, or if that part of my life's over. and i woke up to the fact that the only pants i had to wear were those i purchased during saturday's adventures (un-blogged about, but certainly disseminated by phone, y'know?) anyway, in that lovely 'i had foster's for breakfast' state of being, it seemed the thing to do to buy pants a size too small because the last pants i bought that fit in the store tend to get so baggy during the course of wearing them, that i have to hike them up all the time.

fine. except i'm really not a size fourteen. and i'm wearing that size, and i'm sitting down. i'm not very happy about that.

according to this calculator thingy, looks like my chronic insomnia might actually pay off tonight! since it will be the last great meteor shower in my lifetime.

this is well within my sleepless range:

once upon a time, there were a bunch of kids who hung out quite passionately, out of which there was a core group, four kids, who were best friends and also boyfriend/girlfriend, and this lasted quite a good long time, for the junior high/senior high kids we were.

now, at the end of the sophomore year, one kid's parents moved him to LA to get him away from the bad influence kid. another's mom sent her to boarding school in france for cryin' out loud, again to get her away from this naughty child, who i may or may not have been, and in all honesty most of the influencing was truly mutual, but everybody's gotta blame somebody, and i'm generally handy when things happen. the other members of the group drifted apart, which would be the end of our story, if it were not for the internet, specifically classmates.com. three of the four of us have connected under the auspices of that wonderful database, (and one of them even occasionally writes for surreally!), but one remains at large.

now, this girl, Patty, was my bestest friend. we're talking from grade school on through the france incident, and lingering on afterwards, although some bad vibes what with me dumping her husband's brother and all (if it wasn't best friends, it was brothers for us, you know?). anyway, her husband (if they are still married, and they probably are) would hate me, and there is no doubt that her mom doesn't much care for me either.

and the only way for me to find her is through her mom. see here? scroll down, that's the sweet little old lady that chased us up over the sidewalks in her butterscotch colored datsun when we made a break for it against her wishes. looks harmless right? well, maybe she's mellowed over the years.

calling that number to see if she's still around, is my only way to ever hope of finding Patty again. and i have fierce nostalgia these days, and it seems important to do so. however, chances are, it's a dead end -- a hang-up, with maybe some yelling beforehand. and if i get past mom, there's hubby.

it's a dilemma. if i do it and it fails, that's pretty much it for that. if i don't do it, it's always there for me to do, if she doesn't find classmates soon (you'd be surprised how well represented my classmates are). face failure or live with possibilites. and fierce nostalgia, either way. hmm.

first, go read bran's quote. i followed her link to carlsagan.com, and since it's all flashed out and framed, i'm going to quote the following (see more text).

because i'm going to remember this entry title, for my own reference if nothing else, when i really need my best critical thinking on.

i think critical thinking is one of the most important things any of us can do.

kid: (eating sweet tarts) mommy, are you a crossdresser?
me: um.
kid: if you pick blue, you're a crossdresser. if i pick pink, i'm a crossdresser. is yellow a girlie color? i won't eat the yellow.
me: ...

i have to wonder what's going on with kitty. obviously he has a very full and exciting nightlife, every night, that requires my services as doorperson on up to five separate occasions, under very different circumstances. i wish i could put a little camera on his head so i could prowl the neighborhood with him, but he'd never stand for that.

it starts usually around three am, he'll jump up on the couch and ask in a small, trilling voice mrrrr? i need to go out. i let him out. hour later, bang bang bang on the screen door (it doesn't latch, so it's his doorknocker). when he gets in he tells me what's been happening in an urgent sort of voice, and even if i did speak the language, at that hour i just wish he would hush. repeat this several times over, sometimes at fifteen minute intervals -- now it's not like he forgot he was hungry when he asked to go out, there's something going on out there, some tempestuous relationship with the girl kitty next door, even though they are both fixed. perhaps conflicts with that grey kitty that lives across the street, a territorial dispute of sorts.

it's a good thing i'm not a sound sleeper and i wake up frequently anyway, otherwise i'd be one frustrated catservant.

still, i'd really like to know what sort of dramatic feline dynamics are at work out there, in the wee hours.

yes, i was hacked. well, actually, one of the surreallys was. and not in any incredibly harmful or malicious way, just a copy of psyBNC running, neatly tucked away in an obscure directory.

hacked i tell you. who knows how they got in? they had to have the system password, and go telnetting around in my shell to make the thing work. there are only, i think, four people in the world that have the server password, and i trust them -- so that means someone got the password in some unknown way, out of an email? i don't know. all i know is it feels creepy knowing someone was sneaking around my servers.

hacked. wtf?

so sometimes there is a comment with a link and you follow the link and you are totally ... is smitten the word? or maybe just delighted. yeah.

saybajomba.net is such a great URL too.

it's just a song. however, this particular song seems to say more about how i feel than most. there you go.

is that all there is? if that's all there is,
if that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing
let's break out the booze and have a ball
if that's all there is

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
--Samuel P. Huntington [quoted from: where is raed]

ter�ror�ism
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons. [quoted from a small victory]

i guess it depends on how you look at it, huh?

yesterday kurtwood brought home a book of pictures, in which he was the subject, and each of his classmates drew their version of my son. oh believe me, this one not only goes in the memory box, it goes there in a sealed plastic bag. absolutely priceless art here. i've scanned a few for you:

oh, and kurtwood's 300 exposures entry is up over at photojunkie!

* * *
update! and kurtwood's name is going to mars! (via skits)

why yes, as a matter of fact i do have a brandy snifter full of hair wrapped in fuchsia mardi gras beads. i mean, doesn't everyone, at least figuratively speaking? i thought so. here it is, in its natural habitat, and also, posed up against the wall. because.
 

oh. the sunset. right, here you go:

well, i have about a foot-long ponytail. it's in my car right now. and i feel soooo weird.

direct quote from the lady who cut my hair: "long hair is for young people". oh. ok then.

it's about to my shoulders, and is pretty much all my natural color (mouse brown) for the first time in nearly thirty years. i'm not sure how long that will last, but for now, it's kinda cool.

i feel much lighter.

you know the name that blog game right? well, it's now been played more than 5000 times! and i'm just tickled to find that i'm in the top ten of recognizable blogs. cool, yes?

it's a great game, isn't it? very cool idea.

turns out that being moussed makes my hair frizzbomb by the end of the day. pictures of the actual haircut will be delayed until i wash it tomorrow, but for now, picture my old hair minus this:

or not? hooha.us -- i'm just not sure.

i can do it quite painlessly, in fact, i can setup a domain pointer and change the internal links and you'd be able to get here with either URL, which is kind of the lazy way to go.

and do you believe krix got krix.org? how cool is that?

god i love short urls. i really, really do.

shopping for a new url. a nice short one. do you suppose hooha.us would be good? i could have that. does anyone do the .us yet? i would like to. tired of this one.

change is in my mind. but what's change? and what good does it do me, jack in the box probably wouldn't take the many penny rolls that occupy the old fanny pack on the floor of my car, if i wanted, say, tacos. which i often want. the quarters in the cupholders do fine usually, although they are sticky.

i've been drinking, does it show? also watching austin powers, which is good for the soul.

silliness is good. life is ok.

amazing how learning that cutbacks are in the air has failed to cause me to buckle down and be useful. i suppose i'm more than prepared to get on with it and embrace whatever the next phase of my life is. and it explains why i'm sitting here with this ghostzilla window open, reading wonderful blogs. which brings me to the reason this is in the rant category:
· · ·
first, i recommend reading Jason's eloquent piece on the personal side of war, the side that is felt most by those who embraced a military career for the well-advertised job security and educational benefits of joining the armed services. and you know, i'd rather hear Jason's take on the sense of dread combined with commitment to duty, than what i've read elsewhere, in comments, can't remember where exactly, but there are folks who portray soldiers as 'chomping at the bit' wanting to go kill! kill! -- i find that most disturbing. there's some crazy shit that goes on in a ground war, the sort of thing that prompted Scott to write Not With My Daughter:

So to me, the questions are not "does Saddam need to go" or "will it be safer when he's gone" or "should we do something about it?" Those are the all-too-easy questions of these so-called warbloggers. My questions are would I be willing to subject my own child to the infliction of violent death on the deductions of a group of politicians? Would I be willing to subject my own child to witnessing violent death on the assumptions of a group of rear-echelon intelligence officers? Would I be willing to offer my own child up to a violent death when there are no plans for an aftermath that would make that death meaningful?

finally, here's Dru's take on the socioeconomic aspects of recruitment. let's know who we're sending, yes?

slightly off-topic: why is it that officially sanctioned expeditions into foreign lands to engage in mutual slaughter, is something that is just part of our nature?

for edification, click here.

for amusement purposes, click here.

otherwise, please come back a bit later, by which time i'll have snapped myself out of this, hopefully.

um. this is just wrong. people shouldn't surf the internet at work. the drain on productivity, etc, etc. but anyway:

ghostzilla renders Web pages to look indistinguishable from your work screen. you make it disappear instantly with one move of your hand and bring it back with another. ghostzilla can show Web pages discreetly within literally any application you work with.

i might download this, for those rare, isolated occasions when i look at the internet at work. on my breaks. you know.

Security firms are also interested in the textile chip technology. Shall we see the day when the Trustworthy Computing that Microsoft touts will electrocute you if you download a pirated copy of Windows 2007 into your electric underpants?

via boingboing

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
—electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                    A world of made
is not a world of born—pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if—listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go

--e.e. cummings

found through stand down, war veterans gather to stop a new war:

What distinguished this meeting from a typical non-veteran peace gathering was addressed eloquently by Marine combat veteran Jaime Vazquez when he answered his own question: what is patriotism? �I love my country. And the love of country is expressed as a willingness to stand up to and to resist your government. Patriotism is not blindly following the men of war, but resisting them.� [article]

the veterans history project:

Some of the audio- and video-taped interviews donated to the project were recorded by professional folklorists, but most were conducted by family members, friends, neighbors, students, and other volunteers whose enthusiasm and respect for their subjects outweigh the technical shortcomings that occasionally surface in the recordings. The interviews have taken place in private homes, retirement communities, VFW halls, schools, and libraries. They touch on all aspects of America's war experiences at home and abroad--from the routine to the extraordinary, from enlistment to discharge. Several clips from the collection are included below as an introduction to the riches that will follow as the Veterans History Project grows and as our resources allow for the collection's selective digitization.

Four of the 33 veterans the authors interviewed for the Ojai Valley book have died in the past year, said Bennett. He wrote the book as a lesson to future generations. "If we do not remember the horror of war, we are bound to repeat it," Bennett said. "These are disappearing stories."

it was a horrible oversight, or something, that i refrained from sharing boobies for the cause. this was made most clear in an IM conversation with bobby, who believes in the internet:

so i'll just go curl up in a ball and pretend i can. sleep will come, eventually, just never soon enough.

sometimes a word pops into my head, unbidden. sometimes, the word is actually unbidden, but this time it was entrails. mmm. entrails.

Main Entry: en�trails
Pronunciation: 'en-"trAlz, -tr&lz
Function: noun plural
Etymology: Middle English entrailles, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin intralia, alteration of Latin interanea, plural of interaneum intestine, from neuter of interaneus interior
Date: 14th century
1 : BOWELS, VISCERA; broadly : internal parts
2 : the inner workings of something [the entrails of the movie industry]

the entrails of the movie industry. m-w.com certainly has an interesting take on things.

batty's uncle has died. i never know what to say in these sorts of situations, i just feel very sad for my friend and her family.

god, i love papa johns. nifty user interface, including the ability to build your pizza by halves, so much more convenient and easy than trying to order food when you don't have the menu or current specials in front of you. they even have all the little extras listed. and you know they got your order right.

in other tech news tonight, i'm not having a good time with my scanner. the old win2K box says, 'i won't speak with that scanner. *arrogant sniff* it is much too old. perhaps your cheap ass should just go buy a new one'. linux, always the cooperative one, says, 'oh sure you can have that scanner! i like cheap old scanners! but i won't recognize the parallel ports of a newbie like you. go and learn, my child.' and the page that covers this particular configuration of the not so aptly named sane, is enough to make me anything but. i've included it in the more text, for no reason whatsoever, because i have no clue what it means.

it started out as a fundraiser to send statia to her 30th birthday, and has now turned into a fundraiser to support -- what else? boobies! with excess proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Research fund. how cool is that?

and guess what? boobies! yeah.

... when i was a child, i had a fever, my hands felt just like two balloons,
i turned to look but it was gone, i cannot put my finger on it now,
the child is grown, the dream is gone ...

i don't run high fevers like i did when i was a kid -- 104, 105, sooooo psychedelic. now? for the most part i am under 98 degrees, so 99.5 is like woohoo! i mean it's bad and all, but i don't really mind. (just that lingering tummy bug whatever thing, no worries). but i remember (sort of remember) (actually this is pretty much all i remember of it, too) the summer i was five, and i had typhoid. caught it on vacation in tijuana. found out what i had when i came home from a birthday party to find a quarantine notice on my door. anyway, what a fever that was. i can remember the feeling i was being run over by a train. just laying there under the train watching it roll over me. rather detachedly, as i recall.

anyway so i was just laying there on the couch, and hearing the digimon rumble arena theme song distantly in my head, and it kinda reminded me.

so i was sitting here setting fire to a lighter with fuel in it with another lighter that had a spark in it to light a cigarette i don't need to go with an equally unnecessary beer, and feeling like why the fuck am i up at this hour? could it be three/four days with good sick-sleep? yeah. i'm just too healthy and well-rested for my own damn good right now.

... all my energy is spent again
but i can't remember where or when
so i crawl back where i should have been
to tell the truth it's more than energy that's being spent ...
shoulda gave it away ...

i had a buncha things to say but i forget them now. it'll come. does anyone ever want to be wide wide awake at 4:whatever a.m.? and why? this would rock if life didn not await me, hungry for responsibility, at a deadline of noon.

oh well.

... should have my head adjusted
i simply can't be trusted
shoulda gave it away ...

(there are lyrics interspersed here, the mp3 will be in more when and if i find the thing and get it all linky'd up. it's called sound of drowning. go figure.)

damn. i had something to say, other than just outing myself for being up till near dawn. i did. honest.

well, i love you all. peace be with you, always.

via the equally ominous jett

i'm so doing this:

you should read the whole column. but here's a taste:

Feel that numbness? That strange slightly chilling shift deep in the heart, like a cold wind across the blood, an ice pick straight to the third eye, fingernails across the karmic chalkboard?

Fear not -- it's just the dark storm clouds of sadness and savage spiritual pain that just settled in over the collective soul of the country and indeed much of the world recently, as the Republican Party snatched total control of the American government and really honestly promised to further its agenda of fear and war and intolerance and bad sex and more petroleum products forevermore.

now, morford can be a bit of a loony snarkmonster at times, but this is one time i can say, 'what he said', point to it, and be done with my current opinion of the state of things. ok, go read it now.

according to this, there have been 16 accidents in the Ventura area since 9 AM. (you have to select Ventura in the pulldown). it refreshes every sixty seconds, with new incidents of idiocy.

under 'traffic hazards', we have a bridge closure (incident 0208) -- the santa clara river bridge, which is highway 101 crossing the river. because not only can't we drive in the rain, we also don't build roads that can handle it. 1.97 inches of rain since midnight and we're in road closure/bridge collapse mode. sheesh.

so we have rain. wonderful rain all night, and rain going strong today. i cannot remember the last time it rained. and we have a five year old, freshly dressed for school, for whom rain is a complete novelty. and we have temptation. so, we negotiate:

kid: i wanna go play in the rain
me: no! you'll get wet!
kid: i'll use the umbrella.
me: no! your shoes will get wet!
kid: i won't jump in the puddles, i'm a big kid now (ummhmm. yeah. right.)
me: if you get wet and cold, you'll get sick
kid: i'm not sick
me: but you'll get sick! when you're wet and cold, your immune system doesn't fight germs as well.
kid: system?
me: you have glands, organs in your body, that make things that go in your blood and fight germs.
kid: germs go in my blood? they suck the blood out of me?
me: no, no, you have cells that fight the germs. but if you're wet and cold all day because you can't get dry, your body is too busy trying to get warm, and it forgets to fight off the germs.
kid: can i just feel one drop?
me: oh, ok, stand on the edge of the porch, and reach out.
(five minutes later)
...

ok. i know technically lots of folks spend lots of time being cold and shivery and don't get sick. that's not the point. i just didn't want him getting wet before school, and the conversation was actually much longer than that. it included the material his shoes were made of, the depth of the water on most surfaces out there, mud, etc. germs were my last resort.

wild california rain:

runny beer signs:

they say that these are popular among mac-o-philes, but that doesn't stop me from wanting one too

i'm not hungry. in fact i'm the opposite of hungry. in fact i ... um, excuse me a sec.

ok, i'm back. damn. i don't know if it's all in my mind or what. boss was off work yesterday due to bad food eaten at jack in the box. now, knowing full well that i too have eaten at that very same jack in the box for the past two days running, and now suspecting that the place is crawling with e-coli, could this be causing all this tummy turbulence? it's not violently horribly bad, but it sure ain't good.

well, whether or not i'm being a hypochondriac, at least i'll lose a couple pounds. i never mind being sick when it means that -- is that sick or what? i meant mentally on that last.

in any case, i am despondent about my lack of sick leave, sitting here all queasy but determined to make it through the day, even if i have to whine incessantly. yeah, that i can do.

in lieu of an effort at blogging that would be physically beyond me, i offer: (1) an amazing sunset that i couldn't get a good picture of, (2) it's raining! but it's too late for the plants, i fear, and, (3) my cat, caught in the act of attempted tripping.

welcoming Tanya to the ranks of the converted -- ahh, brings back memories of my own conversion. good times, good times.

sadly enough, someone left a vicious comment on Robyn's blog, in regards to the pictures she posted a little while ago, of a gathering of good friends. the commenter had this little gem to say: "your friends are fat and my friend should be embarassed that he sat naked in the same hot tub with them at your house".

and you know? i specifically remember seeing those pictures. i remember being struck by how relaxed and carefree everyone was about not being built like stick-models, and they weren't hiding underneath layer upon layer of clothing, or diving behind furniture like i do when a camera's about to catch me. it was an inspiration to me that it's possible to accept yourself (and others) for who we really are.

i have to say that i feel pity for the shriveled-up soulless wretch that left the comment. what must it be like to live with that much venom in your veins. ugly. ugly indeed. to take images of good friends having fun, and attack like that -- must come from a horrible place inside.

i still have a lot of trouble accepting the weight i've gained, but i'm inspired by those that carry their bodies and themselves with style and attitude.

or more accurately the post appearing directly underneath this one. i'm hungover, PMSing like a fiend, and that just had to come out, kinda like a diseased, swollen, pus-filled appendix or something. don't take it personally, ok? thanks.

you would not believe the thoughts running through my mind right now. well, you might believe them, but you wouldn't like them. random thoughts like, people are incredibly fucking stupid. yeah, me too. because the people, that being an inclusive statement meaning the ones who did vote and the ones (like myself) who didn't, are responsible for sending a message to the government that went a little something like this: hi, we're stupid, we believe everything we're told, and we want tax cuts and war. hello? stupid much? war is expensive. and no, it's not 'good for the economy'. the defense industry maybe. the economy is in the toilet and we just gave the order to flush. flush, and then go kill some people. lots of them. know why? it's basic human nature. we're killers, have you noticed?

we're so fucked. and you know what? we deserve it. collectively. because we're stupid. stupid humans. look at us. have you looked at us lately? what we have done to our planet, what we regularly do to ourselves, and oh my god what we do unto others different from ourselves.

i really should have voted. we'd still be as fucked, but i wouldn't feel so godawful guilty about how fucked we are.

stupid. i'm stupid.

i was a very, very early adopter with sprint pcs's email. so early, in fact, that i have my initials (three of them) as my cell phone email address. i mean, how much does that rock? kdk at sprintpcs. never published this. kept it totally private. not sure what i was saving it for, but it was special.

just cleaned 33 spams out of it. only thing i ever get on it is spam. which is why i just put it out there, so it could theoretically be used for something other than evil. (it might take me awhile to read it, since i have to wade through the spams so i don't check it every day). but if you ever wanted to email me cellularly, well, there you have it.

i'm going to set aside my meme-avoidance for this one: reasons for love. and i do have my reasons.

having friends who send books is a wonderful and happy thing.

and ... look! a four fly plane. cool. (via Sea Doc).

it's a song. by pinching judy. i found it particularly meaningful last night at what. two am? i stayed up later than that.

the song is in more. i'm on my way to work, because i'm responsible that way. ha.

the mp3 linky is in more text too. at the bottom.

in my entry about the election, i alluded to voting. i did not describe actually voting myself, except to say in a general way what i thought about the process, and how i tend to vote when i do.

which in this case, i did not. the reasons were manyfold: i felt too hopeless with my political agenda. i did read the sample ballot cover-to-cover, it moved me to tears of fear and rage on several occasions. i was informed. and i knew it was an impossible battle from the vantage point of my views and where i live. the local elections would be decided by the landed gentry, and their take on the issues. the larger issues would be decided by the california electorate, which is quite liberal, perhaps the most liberal in the nation, and they didn't need my sorry ass. but mostly it's that i've been such an apathetic ball of apathy in the past, i've only recently taken any ineterest in this, and the form i had to fill in and return arrived just a day before it was due. would have required time off work to go down to the courthouse and file it in person.

yes i suck. will i refrain from complaining? hah. you know me better than that.

i think i'll go crawl in a corner and weep with shame. maybe do that beercan crushing on the forehead trick i do. do you know how much that hurts? eh. well, no, i really won't be beating myself about the head tonight.

but the thought is there.

in honor of election day, and because i love accidental poetry:

This poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George Bush. Circulating on the internet for some time, it was reportedly compiled by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked? They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our
wings take dream. Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

source: the guardian

sung by my son, as he walked down the hall: "soopa freak, i'm soopa freakaaaay"

this is the first time i've actually been physically nervous about the outcome of an election. with the current state of world affairs, we have no business putting all the control in the hands of one party. and yes, for the record, i may be a registered green, but i vote in a way that i am giving my support to the least offensive candidate who might actually win. and i don't vote party lines, for the most part. and furthermore, if we had a democratic white house i'd be hoping for a republican congress. balance. it's all about balance. too much power in any one direction and the whole thing goes all topsy-turvy.

yes, i said least offensive. they're all lizards man, i'm just there to try and keep the wrong lizard from getting in.

not that i have anything against lizards. i actually like lizards, but i also like to throw in douglas adams quotes/references wherever possible.

alrighty then. i was getting good and sick this weekend. i had an actual fever which rarely if ever happens, so even a small one feels like death by rotting. i was sniffly and sneezing in that annoyingly loud and explosive way i have of sneezing. i was sick. or getting there.

now i know zinc supplements have worked in the past, but they're sooo nasty and you have to suck them all the time. eww. so chris had bought this stuff as a kind of hedge against either of us missing work, this zicam stuff, these ... swabs. yes. in little tubes. you break the little tube open, you stick the swab up your ... are you ready for this? i hope so. your nose. not far! you swish it around a little, then you hold your nostril closed for about five seconds, then repeat on the other side. you don't have to snort it down or anything. in fact you're not supposed to. i did a little, just a little. snoooooort. just softly.

every four hours from when you first start feeling that rhinoviral ick. you know the ache, the taste in your mouth, the feeling like your brain is suspended in about a quarter inch of snot and keeps tilting inside your skull. that feeling.

and i'm better. well, i'm not bad. i'm ok. this is a good thing.

i've done zinc before and it's never failed to help, but the taste is just so awful -- and it lingers. and as with many unpleasant things, i would procrastinate. not go get it. deny i was really sick enough to need it. and then get really sick.

now i just stick swabs up my nose, which as we all know is actually kinda fun. it is! not as fun as sticking them in your ears, but, it'll do.

Which era in time are you?

via sissybooboo contemplates

on this day, in the same year (which i will refrain from reminding everyone, becuase you guys are old man), both Linkmeister and Dan were born!

go say happy birthday to them! go on now!

yesterday, kurt and daddy went a-fishin' on the pier. while there, chris got a good one of kurt using the kurtcam to take a picture of a fish:
 

earlier in the weekend, i cleaned. the first one i call, still life with mess, even though it was taken after a massive organizing campaign on my part, and the second, is some mold i found flourishing in a pok�mon glass of former juice:
 
chris's comment on finding the juice glass on the dryer: 'most people clean mold. you take pictures of it'. um. yeah. what's your point? :)

i've said some things here and there lately i'm not happy with, and i get this feeling i should just quiet the hell down. like there's no way to enter an emotional discussion without, metaphorically speaking, some of the sauce splattering somewhere. i never realize it till much later, and by then the stain's set (if it was even removable in the first place).

i generally don't really know what i mean to say, if it is something that arouses strong feelings in me, until after i've already said it the wrong way.

when i was a teenager and in posession of some truly lethal low self-esteem, it was very difficult for me to communicate in any situation in which it was important i get my point across. the more important it was to me that i make a good impression the first time, the more likely i was to be seized with spasms of verbal diarrhea that left me looking more than foolish, and even worse to myself, and i would become more nervous and more self-conscious and on and on, spiraling on down. and that little girl in me is still there, a faint but recognizable voice offering criticism after the fact, in that tone she knows will make me feel as small as i've ever felt, even now, even still.

fortunately i'm old enough to go through motions that suggest letting-go, learning to live with things i've said, shrugging, apologizing or clarifying if i can manage, moving on. that's still an act, but so was everything else i ever did to make the little girl critic as quiet as she is now. it's all about faking it.

hey, the spaghetti was good though.

the campaign to buy bush a playstation 2 is a success!

Dear Mr. President:

I represent a small consortium of voters who are deeply concerned over your proposed {or, if appropriate, ongoing} military action in Iraq. Given the amount of public speech and political rhetoric you have devoted to this issue in past months, it seems to us as though you are more interested in playing commando than in fighting an actual war with actual human casualties.

Enclosed with this letter, we have sent you some small gifts: one PlayStation 2 game console, one copy each of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs and Conflict: Desert Storm, a memory card and an extra controller for Mr. Cheney's use. We ask that you accept these gifts and use them, rather than the lives of Iraqi civilians and our U.S. servicemen, to fulfill any militaristic fantasies.

via michael grandner

the campaign may be over, but there will be a photo essay of the gift-sending, and there are letters to be posted, so i'm going to be checking back periodically.

Heater Wars are raging. the temp has begun to plummet into the bone-chilling 50's at night, requiring a little heat in the house. a little i said. somewhere between sixty and sixty-five degrees would be perfectly reasonable. there are clever inventions for dealing with this kind of teeth-chattering cold, you may have heard of them: pajamas. blankets. slippers. there is no reason to heat a house so that it can be occupied by people in boxer shorts and a wife-beater. in fact there is no reason other people in the house should have to even see that sort of thing. put some damn clothes on, in other words! the clothes, you buy once. the heat, you buy every single night.

but that's not the worst of it. i know i've said this before and yes, i'm saying it again -- i am nagging, that's what this is, nagging. deal. in a simple, basic apartment heating system, there are two possible states: on, and off. depending on how high the little dial is turned, it will not get hotter, faster. will only be on, longer. it will reach the comfort level in the same amount of time, but if the stupid wretched little dial is turned up too high, it will stay on until the house is fillled with arid, stifling heat. dries my skin, irritates my sinuses, and pisses off the rest of me.

and depending on the mood of the combatants, the temperatures we select without consulting one another (because there is no agreement on this) will get either higher or lower. doors will be opened. fans will be moved from room to room and pointed in different directions. people will bitch. and bitch and then the gas bill comes, and bitch, and bitch, etc.

what happens when productive intentions meet the middle of the afternoon drowsy lull, and both decide to jump on the couch for a little spongebob? not exactly a nap, and not exactly dreams, just very very floaty and almost participatory. i was there in bikini bottom, in spirit at least. and while i was expecting another program to come on, to let me know it was time to get up and get a move on, the bob went on and on. some sort of sponge-a-thon i suppose. hours, it was, till i roused myself enough to realize i was supposed to have been to the store and back, and finished the dishes.

it's scary how much i know about spongebob. i know almost all the episodes by heart. i always listen for the small voice-over in the background of almost every catastrophe crying out "my leg". i think that alone may mean i watch a little too much.

what is it about spongebob? it seems like it's always on, or more accurately, i focus in on it moreso than other nicktoons. it's almost the only tv i watch. is there some sort of mind control thingy at work here? why do i love that little yellow sponge so?

it's november.

but only after it's fixed. suffice to say that if anything is wonky anywhere on the internet, you may blame me. it is probably my fault.

and might i add, that the phrase 'scared the shit out of me' -- isn't just a figure of speech.

i know, i know, TMI.

it should *never* be that easy to delete stuff. *ever*.

also: sitting staring at the email indicator apparently doesn't make tech support emails come in any faster.