Cough cough Hack Hack

So, I just got done with the most painful, annoying, long lasting sickness I have dealt with in a long time. My advice to all you little people out there would be to NOT get laryngitis coupled with a throat infection. It is also to NOT lose your voice for 2 weeks as in can make you quite introspective and that completely ruins any progress you may have made with self esteem or life esteem. But maybe that was just the fever. Oh, and don't cough until your throat is bleeding and then throw up. It's basically vomiting on an open wound and stomach acid can eat through your hand. Well, that's about the grossest thing I can think of right now. Except I was in the petting area of the wild animal park yesterday and chris and I got to see a baby deer drinking it's mother's pee and pooping at the same time. Ewwwwww. Hope I lightened your day with a little schadenfreude.
Ps. Don't eat steroids, they taste terrible and dissolve quickly in the mouth.

Hormones Through the Ages

Hahaha, well, i found this in the dregs of my laptop, so if I've already posted it, please ignore. Here goes...

Hormones through the ages:

Why the hell didn’t they tell us this was going to happen?

I was raised on GI Joes and war games. My mother pushed us into sports where we would could plausibly injure someone else and score points at the same time. Even though I longed for ballet lessons and gymnastic tights, I went along with the program. My mom didn’t want no wimps, and we certainly weren’t going to become some of those whiny girls who chased boys in 3rd grade and cried when they pushed our face in the mud. I was gonna push right back.

My dad went right along too, showing my siblings and myself our first rated ‘R’ pic at six years old. Because of my mother’s wrath of fury, we hid these movie sessions from her and had seen the entire catalogue of Eddie Murphy’s and Whoopi Goldburg’s movies by the time I was ten. While this did loads to shape our twisted little senses of humor, it certainly did not promote my development as an empathetic, romantic individual. I didn’t want it to. I wasn’t boy crazy in school. I didn’t fall in love constantly like my sister. I was pragmatic and cranky.

Then I went to college and met more cranky girls that would rather die than be caught wearing pink. We made snarky comments about the girls who wore the latest fashions and made our clothes baggier and our hair spikier.

Then something happened. Something terrible.

I was driving home one day from the photo studio near the end of the school year. I was listening to the radio, trying not to get into any major accidents when a commercial comes on. Something about graduating high schools seniors and struggles with academics. Nothing that applies to me. So I turn on the blinker and the windshield wipers as this was the northwest. They were so proud of their graduate. I yell at the traffic. Then the applause starts. Something weird happens like little pins in my eyes. I think it’s my allergies. The applause gets louder. And I burst full on into tears. And I think to myself they’re sooo proud. And I sob louder. Then my brain turns back on. I blink my eyes and laugh at myself with one of those laughs that is half amusement, half shame.

I tell no one for months. This can’t happen to me. I used to sit dry eyed through the most heart wrenching scenes in chick flicks. You know the one where the chemo patient bravely reaches out to her boyfriend and tells everyone she loves them and someone in the background is swept off her feet and a baby is born while someone leaves for noble reasons? Yeah, not a single tear.

This slowly progresses. I don’t have an episode for months. Then suddenly I’ll be all puddly for no apparent reason. It keeps getting worse, spreading it’s insidiousness into many areas of my life. I start crying at movies. I’ll pop out a tear or two in frustration when I can’t find my keys. I cry at more commercials! Something is happening to me. Something bad.

Finally, while trying to hide my tears after a movie at my sister’s house, I crack. I’ve done everything possible to try and stave them off. I stared at the side of the TV and flexed my eyes. I did the stretch and rubbed my, preferably sleeve-covered, hand along my face. I yawned and feigned boredom with a discreet flick at the eyes. In a moment of desperation there was a well timed bathroom break to wipe my eyes when everything else has failed. Or the last hope is feigning sleep so you can lie face down on a pillow and squeeze out your tears there.

So I’m there with my sister and we’re both being stoic. And she asks me a question and I try to answer but my voice is all cracky. Finally, I break down and throw the gauntlet. I scream “I think I’m becoming a girl!” and bury my face in my hands. Of course, crying more.

She starts laughing at me.

I look at her with all the contempt I can muster. “I’ve been crying at commercials.”

“Oh that’s bad”

“The polaroid ones get to me, and arthritis commercials with grandparents.”

She says nothing.

Finally, trying to impress upon her the gravity of the situation, I wail “I fully understand the ramifications of Sleepless in Seattle!”

“Hmm, your further along than I thought...”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m up to crying at cheeky pop songs. You know, level seven.”

“Seven? Which song?”

“I can’t tell you for the shame.” She he hangs her head, then looks at me gravely. “It’s only going to get worse, you know. But you’re lucky, some women are born at level two or three and don’t have your years of romantic immunity to fall back on. Trust me, they will come in handy. Like get out of jail free cards, or something.”

She looks around her and whispers quietly. “I’d say you’re at a level two. But I can’t say anymore. I’ve already said too much.” She stands quickly. “You’d better go home now.’

“But I live here.”

“Oh, then put on Remains of the Day and shut up.”

The next day I asked my troop of angry girlfriends. I was appalled at their confessions. Moreover, I was pissed that we hadn’t been warned. We had been led to believe we could hold our own with the guys. But then the damn hormones came and messed everything up. And we’re stuck with this ever-increasing affliction of crying at everything.

“Sorting laundry, I was missing a sock.”

“There were two doves this morning...god this is embarassing.”

“Nothing. I cried at nothing. And it was so sad.”

“Is there a pill for this?”

“Can I be euthanized?”

“Will you remove my tear ducts? I’ve got pliers.”

“No, ladies, I think we’re just going to have to ride it out. But, look on the bright side. After menopause, we’ll be stone cold bitches again.”

And a collective sigh of relief fills the room.

A throwback to 1994

I found a letter today, eleven years old. It threw me off balance, switched things upside down, threw me back in the past. But I was seeing it through new things I have recently discovered. I saw the pain we constantly thrust oursevles into. Saw the prisons we constructed for ourselves. I knew the adage of sun tzu, keeping your friends close, enemies closer. But he never specified that you don’t befriend the enemies. Don’t let them control you. Don’t try to save them. They’ll only tear you apart. They are after all, enemies. They ate me alive declaring the whole time they loved me. We’d be friends forever. Swallowed me whole. Took me down with them, using me to soften their fall. And I never knew just to cut them loose before it got to be too much. That’s the one thing I wish I’d known as a child. When to say “when”. We all wanted to fit in so badly we’d take whatever we got, not waiting for something that was actually good. We didn’t have the patience.

An Open letter to all you goddamn spam commentors

not 11 minutes after I posted the last post, 2 damn spamentors put comments on my damn post. this pisses me off for several reasons, and here comes a numbered list.

1. Your stupid blog is advertising something crappy enough to have the only advertising be done on a FREE site.
2. Your blogs are all shitty tripe
3. They totally fuck up the reason for the "next blog" button because they are equivalent (in quality and relevance) to local telelvision commercials
4. You are the natural offshoots of spam email and are therefore the spawn of satan
5. People who read my blog (those 2 or 3 of you out there) may actually think I support whatever crap you are selling if I don't immediately delete them.
6. The new comment messages muck up my hotmail account.
7. you suck.

I would post more, but my arm is stuck under a boulder and I have to cut it off with cuticle scissors to survive.

Hello productive citizen

so I have started volunteering. and for those of you who haven't seen me in a while, this may come as quite a shock. I used to be violently anti-altruistic. A nihilist by trade, I wouldn't be caught dead doing something for someone I didn't know (or wearing anything other than black). But those times are dead and I retired my wardrobe and signed up at a couple places and started taking psych classes so I could go to grad school for psychology with an emphasis in art therapy. I know it sounds new agey, but I get to fuck with people's heads and play with paint at the same time. I believe that's called heaven.

Yes, it's a thursday...

does anyone else hate getting older? it's getting to that point,the dreaded quarter century turn, quarterlife crisis time. yes, I have two more months to hang on before it happens, but I've always been someone to be prepared, so I am starting my freakout now. why does it have to happen this way? why can't I just skip it and opt for a midlife crisis that is extended by two weeks longer than it should actually go. Like a crisis extended payment plan. And why do I have to be held accountable for every damn thing I do? It used to be, if I fucked up, I would run as far as possible in the opposite direction and created some disturbance over there, then go back to my little mess and cover it up like cats do in litter boxes. Sure it would stink, but you couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from and by the time you dug it out, it was so coated with super-freshness crystals, that you couldn't recognize the original form. There. Problem solved. Now, I'm like the dog I used to have (her name was mandy and she was very ugly and everyone loved her for it). She also had a guilty conscience that would force her to lead us to her mistakes. When I would get home from school, there would be our mangy little Mandy with head lowered wagging her tail at half mast waiting to be scolded. When I would ask her where it was, she would lead me to some magnificently torn up trash or a small pile of poo in the corner of the downstairs den. And now I've turned into that, cowering at the door and leading people to my little pile of poo and looking up expectantly at someone else hoping that something can be done about it.

Where's the slots again, Mr. Skinner?

And the devil took jesus up to the top of the mountains and showed him hotmail.

B.F. Skinner (psychiatrist famous for messing with rats and some sort of box) did a whole bunch of studies with said rats and came up with operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is basically something one does to the environment in order to to cause an effect. This effect can be positive or negative and the effect influences whether or not one commits the cause again. I watched a tv program on this years ago and it explained how rats press levers to get food pellets and they were alternating the video of the rats pressing levers with videos of fat people in vegas playing slots. Turns out if the rats never get any pellets for pressing the levers, they stop. Bored now. If the rats get pellets all the time, they stop. Bored now. If the rats get pellets at random intervals they will keep pressing the lever 'til doomsday. Literally, they'll press it until they're dead. Which is why so many people go to vegas to die. Not with the noble purpose of drinking themselves to death while dating a down-on-her-luck prostitute and getting increasingly more digusting in order to win an oscar (Nick Cage, I'm talking to you). But they just get stuck at the slots with nothing better to do than get fatter and more pathetic.

Which is how I see myself.

Not literally, I assure you. But, figuratively, every damn time I check my email at work. Sometimes 40-50 times a day. I'll check my email when I think someone's trying to send one. I'll check it when I think no one could possibly send one. I'll check it when I've just signed out because I might have just missed it. I'll check it whenever I get back from some place. Just in case someone is trying to get ahold of me. I've tried weaning myself off it, you know, slowly. I won't check it until 9am today. And even if I manage to stave off checking until 9, then I'll check five times in ten minutes to alleviate all the anxiety that built up between the hour I got to work and the point where I was miraculously allowed to enter the magical world of hotmail. And I don't just do this with email, I'll do it wth my cell phone, whenever I'm around an answering machine, I used to do it with mail. It's pathetic, that's what it is. Sad and pathetic. I am a fat, middle-aged, overweight, socially-pathetic rat in tweed pressing my feeder bar. And you know what? I'm going to go do it again. Right now.

Swear to god.

Job hunting on Capitol Hill

See, I got this friend, she really needs a job. It's not like she's desperate, but you know, she kind of wants to switch it up, you know, try something new. But she doesn't really have any experience. And apparently one needs to magically have experience to get a job. If anyone has tried to get a good job right out of college, you know what I am talking about. Even the shitty jobs. I remember being crushed in high school because I couldn't get a job at a cool clothing store. I ended up making sandwiches for fat people and cops, smelling like yeast and onions after a shift and nary a hot guy in sight because I had no experience. It's hard times out there. Say it with me "hard times" and shake your head. Trust me it will be cool.
But where could she get a job? I know, how about the Supreme Court! Apparently they're hiring just anyone. You don't even have to be a judge. I know, I know, the whole point of electing people who are already judges is just so passe. Really, If you seen one judge you've seen them all. Just watch some reruns of night court and Judge Judy and you're in like flint. But I can't promise you a quirky bailiff or bantering sex-crazed lawyers. Oh, don't even say anything about how lawyers are bred to be strictly partisan and experience on the lower courts would let them stretch their little non-partisan muscles that have atrophied since law school. No, that would be silly. Almost as silly as hiring someone qualified for the job.

Christ, I can't keep this up anymore. Was kind of irresponsible moron would make a political move like this just to stack the courts? Does he give a shit about anyone who isn't filling his coffers? And apparently hiring people who have never been judges to the supreme court is tradition going back to Lincoln which makes me lose my last ounce of faith in the courts which is unfortunate as I have always had a phobia of being wrongfully imprisoned.

And why does she look like skeletor? And he like curious george? I got ten bucks the next one's going to have a curiously freaky, but altogether uncanny resemblance to Peter Griffin. Then again, don't all republicans resemble Peter Griffin?

Serenity, Fuck Yeah!

Subhead: The post where I lose any cool points I have gained from previous posts. Don't make a lick of difference to me, as I have met many cool people and you're all assholes. But I still liked your band. Call me okay?

I saw serenity this weekend. Huge fan. HUGE. We're talking about months of anticipation, like about nine months anticipation culminating in the birth of the worst fan-freakness I have ever experienced. Yes, there were temptations to purchase a brown coat to wear to the movie and show solidarity to the independence. Luckily, meager bank accounts and aversion to leather prevailed where good sense could not, and I arrived at the theater entirely unclad in leather.

Plus it was damn hot.

So, there's me twitching in my seat 45 minutes early in case other people decided to see the movie. And lo and behold, not only do I get to see Serenity, but I get to see two of the most ass-kickin' trailers I have ever seen. I'm sure Chris still has fingernail marks on his arm where I was clutching like a maniac and nearly crying from excitement during the Harry Potter trailer (yes, I said Harry Potter, and wtf was up with the end of book six? 'Taint right I tell ya). I mean crap, that is the coolest looking movie ever. Then the chronicles of Narnia trailer comes up looking as cool as Lord of the Rings without those creepy hobbits mucking things up.

Then Serenity. Oh Serenity, how we missed ye. You better turn into a damn trilogy or you're not getting any supper and you can just forget about that pony I promised you. My gawd, can Joss Whedon be more of a genius? For those of you reading this post, if you haven't seen the entirety of Firefly, then you won't understand most of this and I am not explaining it to you, because you are banished to time out until you watch the whole thing and it will thenceforth be self-explanatory.

side note* we're very sorry for the loss of you two. would that I had watched the movie in a non-public forum, for I could have cried properly for your untimely ends.

2nd side note* I didn't actually cry in public. I swear.

Bite my ass, Socrates

Let me send a message out there to everyone who may be teaching at a community college or college, or even high school level. SOCRATIC TEACHING DOES NOT WORK IN AN INTRO COURSE. For christ's sake people, the students have to have at least an elementary grasp of the concepts before they can debate them.

I'm taking this dumbass PSYCH 101 class at one of the community colleges in San Diego and it is a big waste of my damn precious time. Funnily enough, the textbook is practically riveting. I actually want to read it. It's the class that's useless. Basically we sit around and have group dicsussions about things like hurricane Katrina and indigenous populations with people who can't make a distinction between "civilized" and "westernized" and who call said indigenous populations "barbarians". The whole thing makes my little women-studies-trained head want to pop right off and start beating the unlearned about the ears. And the problem is, this is how we train our high schoolers (most of them are 18). They have no way to verbally treat subjects with respect not to mention the very little respect they exhibit for other cultures as a whole. It's downright disheartening. Not to mention the fact that the teacher lets this go unchecked, but I don't think he is very qualified to lead this class anymore.Granted, he has about 40 years teaching community collge, but has the gall to ignore this straight forward question regarding our dicussion of the indigenous populations:

Guy: "Um, I don't get it. What is psychology? Because I don't get why we're discussing this."

and the teacher responds with this gem:

Teacher: "Well, that's what we're here to find out" magnanimous smile.

No, you ass, answer his damn question. The kid is obviously not going to get anything out of this discussion if he doesn't have the slightest idea why the discussion is occurring. It's called a different learning style. One I happen to suffer from myself. I won't understand things unless I get why the thing is happening. It's like having a puzzle. I have to have the frame put together first. I can put a couple things together otherwise, but without the frame I will give up and go find a parcheesi board to play with. All he had to say was "psych = psyche + ology = study therefore psychology is the study of the mind. And the mind makes choices, we're studying mind choices. And all interaction and behavior are dictated by mind choices. That's why we're talking about civilizations." There, easy as pie.

This just in: Real news story overshadowed by filler article

And who says investigative journalism is a lost art? Just check out this article entitled "Inventor denies using dead cats for fuel" subhead: "German says alternative diesel uses waste paper products, possibly a toad". Within the article, they have this to say refuting even the need for this stupid filler article:

A spokesman for Bild told Reuters the story was meant to show that cat remains could “in theory” be used to make fuel with Koch’s patented method. The author of the story said Koch had never told him directly that he had used dead cats as the story implied.

Being this was printed in Germany, I don't think there was a dire need on the US's MSN to correct the assumption that cat carcasses are being used in unseemly ways by those notorious Germans.

But the most apalling thing about this article is that there is a real story in there. One completely ignored and much more headline worthy.

Christian Koch, an inventor and patent holder of the “KDV 500” that he said produces high quality fuel, said he can transform waste products such as paper, rubbish and plastic materials into fuel.

Do you mean to say that we have found an alternative fuel source? And it uses trash? All that shit lying around that will eventually cover New Jersey and all the other poorer states? If this actually works and the oil companies don't buy off Koch with several small islands, then this could be the solution to a couple problems at once.

I don't get it? Why hasn't this become front page news? This could boost the falling american dollar. This could alleviate national waste problems. Lower gas prices. Eliminate fossil fuel consumption. And who has more shit lying around than the US?

Just another example of why humans are much worse than animals

Disturbing article here.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.
“They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,” Wondimu said.
“If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage,” he said.

Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country’s 71 million people live.

Are the levees an impeachable offense?

We all know what is happening down in New Orleans and the whole gulf coast right now. It is sad and disheartening and infuriating. There is one thing I want to know right now: Are the levees an impeachable offense? Bush was informed that the levees in New Orleans would not hold for a storm larger than category 3. He knew and he diverted funds designated for levee building to the Iraq war and homeland security. He knowledgeably put people at potential risk in New Orleans and now there are hundreds dead, a demolished city under martial law terrorized by vigilantes, prison riots, people starving and dying from dehydration. Should the administration be held accountable? Should they be convicted of manslaughter? If this was a private company that had chosen not to reinforce the levees, the courts would already be flooded with lawsuits. There would be a media uproar and a company would fall in disgrace.

Perhaps one good thing will happen from this and the public will become aware of how much Bush has siphoned off of America in sacrifice of the Iraq war. Fund diverting, social service cuts and no-bid contracts. We're getting fucked and New Orleans is just a symptom of an overall sickness. Granted, it's a big gaping wound, but the rest of us will eventually be afflicted by more than just high gas prices.

An unfinished idea about why I want the conservatives near me

After the election, there was all that talk about the intellectuals seceding and taking all the good cities and making our own super-fab country with nary a conservative as far as the eye could see. And all the conservatives could go make all their little conservatives laws to their hearts content. And maybe we could make a little revolving door citizenship policy and whenever you felt like changing on over to the other side, you could just take a little trip across the border and go live with all your like-minded friends. Sounds good right? Like everyone will get along as long as we exist in a constant state of a seventh grade dance. Liberals on the left nodding there head to the music and self consciously adjusting their anti-sweatshop garments and giggling, conservatives on the right hoarding the punch bowl and seeing who can make the best farting noise with their armpit.

But do we really want to leave the conservatives to their own ways? Sure, they'll be busy for a few years subjugating eachother, price-gouging and creating a caste system to rival India, but what happens next? I presume it would go a little something like this: take a fat guy into a china shop, blindfold him and tell him there's a twinky in the corner. Leave him there for a few days. Over a loudspeaker, tell him he owns the china shop and give him a gun. When the owners come back from vacation, arm them and watch the rest unfold on security cameras.

T'ain't pretty is it? The moral is, we shouldn't let the conservatives out on their own any more than we should let color-blind people coordinate outfits because it just isn't going to be pretty. Was it Sun Tzu that said keep friends close and enemies closer? I think that's a little extreme, but you could at least keep your friends playing a lively game of Canasta and eating a feast while you throw scraps to the conservatives locked in your basement.

Stupidity at the post.

Okay, I like the Huffington Post, but this one paragraph Amy Ephron's puff piece about the things she didn't get this week pissed me off. Not only does she spell Tom Matzzie's name wrong, but she has this drivel to say:

Tom Matzie, one of the heads of Move-On, a supposedly politically correct
organization, sent out a mass e-mail asking "Moms" and "Dads" to write in in
support of Cindy Sheehan, the woman leading the anti-war protest outside the
Crawford Ranch triggered by the death of her son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan,
in Iraq. Wasn't that one of the things she was appropriately upset about -- that
in their personal meeting, President Bush referred to her as "Mom"?

Who the hell should he be addressing his open-ended letter to over 2 million people to? The reason Cindy Sheehan was rightfully pissed was that Bush was using the generic term "mom" to gloss over the fact that he knew niether her name, nor her son's name during a meeting meant solely to praise the dead soldiers and their parents for sacrifices to the war effort. Perhaps Bush could have sacrificed a little time to memorize the names that went along with this apparent photo-op.

Tom Matzzie might have been a little more politically correct and said "mothers" and "fathers" but that kind of scrubbed-clean language hardly inspires letters from grieving or distraught parents. Overall, this is a stupid paragraph that should have been eliminated in a swift perusing of the document before submitting. However, the lack of investigation on any of the topics in the piece suggests Miss Ephron didn't even bother to get that far.

There's nothing like a biased poll...

This is a weekly poll on one of msn's sites:

In your opinion, should the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay be closed?:

Yes. The reports of human rights abuses are damaging our image.

No. National security should be our primary consideration.

I'm undecided.

What about the option where you think it's wrong to violate human rights? Where it's wrong to operate a violent jail on another country's soil in order to completely bypass our Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and common decency. Or maybe just 'I think it's terrible to wrongfully imprison someone and hold them without trial for an indefinite period while toruring them'.

Maybe it's because this poll is on a women's site that they don't allow strong points of view against the government facility. Maybe they think women are only concerned with the image of things, the shallow part. We couldn't possibly be worried about the underlying causes of this prison. We couldn't have problems with the racial stereotyping that has donated many of these prisoners. We couldn't believe the reports that label the prison a 'gulag'. No, we women are concerned with the bright and shiny face of democracy. So, we'll lick a tissue and rub across the face of gitmo and put it in the corner until it realizes it should behave in front of company.

Empathy's a bitch

Another weird thing about television:

This study can be used to prove that watching television does not decrease intelligence, but rather increase our personal experience.

The current Queen's study uses human subjects to examine patterns of eye-hand coordination when performing and observing a simple block-stacking task. The researchers discovered that, both in watching and performing the task, people's gaze pattern is the same.

When watching a task being performed, subjects don't simply follow the movement of hand and block with their eyes. Instead, their gaze shifts in anticipation of the next move, and the brain patterns mimic those of someone actually doing the task.

But I find it more disturbing that I have performed some of the task (if only in my head) that I have seen played out on television. I mean, how many people would I have killed? maimed? berated? There is a rape scene in something like 1 in 7 movies. How many movies are about abuse? And with television getting increasingly violent, what is everyone learning from this empathetic response?

Why TV sucks

I was going to write a post about how stupid this article was and how telelvision doesn't make you smarter. But I won't, because I found a blog where someone has already done that with more nuance and intelligence than I could hope for given the fact that I am work. This is a great post, so I recommend reading it. But for posterity's sake, I will add a few things below.

Kathleen Murphy is worried her job will end if too many of these crazies catch on to what is really going on...

I go ballistic -- sputtering and flinging myself about like Lewis Black in full rant -- when some smug twit trumpets, "I got rid of my TV a year ago and guess what! I haven't missed it once!" This brag is typically expressed in the same tone of voice you'd expect if the person had kicked heroin or had major liposuction. And it's obvious that the dweeb looks forward to being washed in warm waves of approval from anyone within earshot. Implicit in such silliness is the hackneyed notion that, like bad medicine, TV kills brain cells, dumbing-down viewers into something very like a persistent vegetative state.

She goes on to name 7 whole shows that challenge one's intellect, of which, there was only one news show "the daily show".

She also doesn't mention the fact that television watching makes you antisocial and fat. I remember when I was at the height of my tv watching. I was completely hooked on at least seven shows, some of which cut into my sleeping patterns. And these shows were only on basic cable. I'd show up bleary eyed to work and only be able to talk about the previous night's complex plotlines until at least noon when my head would clear from the fantasy fog it was wrapped up in. I was watching a show for five of the seven nights of the week and would not go out if the activity conflicted with a scheduled show. My sister and I would be depressed when the shows went into their midseason rerun slump. Finally, I got fed up and left my tv by the dumpster, ditched my blockbuster membership and went into withdrawals.

I remember when my friend Turkey quit smoking for a few days in college and he asked my friend (who was smoking) just to blow smoke into his face so he could breathe it a little. I started to exhibit the same traits begging my sister for a tidbit from the show. How was Sydney? Did Jack start hallucinating again? Is the gardener boy still hot? She'd tell me and I'd writhe with jealousy that I hadn't seen the show. Finally I hit the cold turkey stage and just didn't care about it anymore. My sister was still watching obsessively and desperately needed someone to rehash script points with, but I wasn't having it. I had started reading the news and caring about actual events.

Then I fell off the wagon.

The KKK is as harmless as a fluffy little bunny wrapped in dynamite

A cute little tidbit from the Killen case:

The defense rested earlier Monday after a former mayor testified that the Klan was a "peaceful organization." Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion. Majure said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past. "As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.

Now, I don't know how many of you are completely ignorant of this organization's past, but here's something Ulysses S. Grant published about it after a report was filed in 1870 in a grand jury investigation into the KKK.

The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering.

Oh, fuck. I was trying to be objective and fact based, but what the shit is this? This is a previously elected official. He is supposed to exist in this little place we call reality. What exactly is the KKK supposed to be if it is not a terrorist organization specializing in xenophobia and ethnic/racial cleansing? A church group? A gardening society? Sure, they might help old ladies across the street, but you'd better be the right fuckin' old lady or you'll be pushed under a bus and they'll burn a cross at your funeral to prove you shouldn't have voted. And for anyone who thinks the KKK died in the 60's, try looking up Michael Donald who was lynched in 1981 in Mobile, AL. If the KKK wants to be all peaceful and whatnot, they better disband, turn in their elders for the crimes they have committed and try doing something positive with their time. However, I'm as ready to believe the KKK is peaceful as I am to believe that the neo-nazis are a knitting circle.

Killen: I just can't stuff any more skeletons in this closet, better try the one in the hall

Once you start looking into the history of Edgar Killen, it just starts getting more and more fucked up. So I thought I'd start with some of the highlights.

ABOUT KILLEN: Edgar Ray KillenBorn: Jan. 17, 1925
Where he lives: Union on Neshoba County Road 515 (the same road where the three civil rights workers were killed)
Occupation: Sawmill owner. He has been a preacher at a number of Baptist churches. He's still a part-time preacher, substituting for regular preachers where needed.

You'll see why this is messed up in a minute or two. The article continues to state the following situations (which prove he would be incompetent as a preacher IMHO).

After the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Killen said FBI agents showed up at his doorstep, wanting to know his whereabouts that morning. He said he refused to tell them.After some time passed, he said he called one of the agents, wanting to know who killed King.

"Why do you want to know?" Killen said the agent asked him.

"Man, I just want to shake his hand," Killen replied.

Killen denied any role in the killings of the three civil rights workers. Asked what should happen to those responsible for the slayings, he said of the killers: "I'm not going to say they were wrong."He explained: "I don't believe in murder. I believe in self-defense." In fliers, the Klan urged white men to join because "the issue is clearly one of personal, physical SELF-DEFENSE or DEATH for the American Anglo-Saxons."
Killen said he had no motive to kill the trio because he didn't learn until the trio turned up missing that Schwerner and Goodman were "underground agents of the Communist Party."
According to FBI statements, the Klan believed Schwerner was a "communist" prior to his killing, and after the trio's deaths, the Klan called them "communist revolutionaries" executed by their own.

It seems Killen believes that being a communist is a plausible reason to be murdered. And had he "known" before their murders of this fact, he could have presumably hunted them down and murdered them in cold blood by reason of self defense.

Killen also denies being in the Klan, however, his trial was populated with just such folk.

"Out-of-state Klansmen have attended both days of proceedings so far. “We didn’t bring any trouble to anybody,” said Charles Denton, a member of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from Florida who initially gave reporters an alias. “We came up here to support (Killen) and his family in this trial as much
as we can.”

Seems they went through a lot of trouble for someone who wasn't even associated with them. Although, one association Killen does admit to belonging to, as he was a part time preacher, wasn't noticeably present: the clergy. But they tend to ignore it when one of their own goes to trial for a more unsavory crime. I guess they figure they needn't attend as their presence was already known to the "impartial" jury.

Killen was tried on federal conspiracy charges in 1967, but the jury deadlocked 11-1; the holdout declared she couldn't convict a preacher.

And also:

He almost walked free again in his 1975 trial when a lone holdout told other jurors she didn't believe a preacher could do this, but she was finally convinced Killen was guilty.

In this trial, Killen was actually tape recorded issuing the following death threat:

"I looked at your house for the first time," Killen said. Your husband "didn't have on a light last night. He was scared to death, and you tell him he had good reason. ..."Folks die for things that he did, honey. Did you know that? ... I don't make no mistakes and get the wrong man. ... Your life is too sweet and precious to throw it away on one sorry son of a b---- like that. You hear? ... You tell him that he is exactly right, that he is dead."

Killen also claims not to be prejudiced saying the following words of racial tolerance:

"I have some very good black friends," he said. "I regret to say that there are not too many of 'em that I trust."

[Killen's] always paid his black workers minimum wage and no more, he said. "If I paid 'em 10 times that, they'd still come back to me on Monday and need to borrow money. They ain't gonna pay you back."

Oh, he certainly is a pillar of the community. But for now, he'll have to settle for being a geriatric, racist, down-home prisoner after today verdict of guilty of manslaughter.

I propose we all sign a petition to rid the world of ants and send it to god.

I got home yesterday exhausted as all hell fucked out exhausted and was just about to lay my pounding head on the sweet softness of my pillow when I noticed something move. So I squished it. I believe in live and let live except when you're in my goddam bed. This goes for spiders too. So I was like, "oh, that was an ant and now it's dead, so, sleep uggghhh." Then something else moves. And for those of you who have lived in southern california, you know if there's one ant, it might just be a fluke. but if there's two ants there's a million. So I look across towards my open window and see an infantry of ant repelling down my wall, charging pell mell over the hills and valleys of the dirty clothes on my floor, and issuing battle cries in a pitch my ears can not register. So I do what any good tree humpin' environmentalist would do and I slam my window shut, spray the outside with raid and armed with garden scented lysol start spraying the little fuckers to death. I know it won't kill them immediately and it's best to use febreeze because it's actually labeled for asphyxiation of smalls animals but the lysol's handy. Turns out it doesn't kill them as planned, it just stuns them and creates a goopy mess which makes them easier to squish with a paper towel. And those I don't get on the first round end up stuck to the residue so when I wipe them up, their little legs stay stuck to my bookshelf. Then I have to clean my room and vaccuum their little carcasses into my roommate's vaccuum. Easy as pie.

Total time: 5 hours

I think this would make a damn fine jazz song

Sometimes I feel I've got to run away
I've got to get away from the pain
that you drive into the heart of me

The love we share seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night
Once I ran to you Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
you've given all a boy could give
you take my tears and that's not nearly all

Now I know I've got to run away
I've got to get away
You don't really want IT any more from me
To make things right

You need someone to hold you tight
And you'LL think love is to pray
But I'm sorry I don't pray that way
Don't touch me please
I cannot stand
the way you tease I

love you though you hurt me so
Now I'm going to pack my things
Tainted love, tainted love
Touch me baby

And someone spoke about the past

I have this theory about timelines, the past, memory, whatever. I'm sure it is just a watered down version of someone else's stellar theory or philosophy. If not, then I would have had an original thought, and I don't know that it's possible with all the thoughts flying about and the thinking going on. Billions of people on the planet and thoughts leaking out of all of them. Thought soup. Digression is imminent with all the headaches going on, so an apology in advance has just been issued.

I've never been much of a immutable facts kind of person and I don't really believe in a fixed timeline. You know, like the timeline you spend your whole life trying to speed up or slow down depending on the mood and the atmospheric pressure. Or, I actually believe that there is one timeline we exist on and it is always moving in a forward motion like a string pulling us forward through space. But that our body and mind are mutable, everchanging, stretchy. It's those parts that exist on separate timelines. Parts of you are always travelling through time. My legs ache, they are stuck in yesteday. An old war wound acts up. A scar flares. Suddenly without any warning, I am as flexible as a 5 year old, then it dissipates, I am brought back to the present.

Your mind is the most succeptible. And given that I define myself by my thoughts, my existence is constantly traversing time. I see myself in vivid memories. A smell transports me to New York, two years ago, a sip of coffee and the humidity drops, the buildings disappear I am standing in the Kitchen in my office, the dullness sets in. The gray of tile without sunshine.

Time travel of this sort is mainly conducted through filters. Nostalgia or pain. A filter the color of emotion covers the lights of the set. A week ago, intense nostalgia set in for a coffee shop I used to visit. Sunshine, yellow, white light infused memories. I stayed half in this memory for the entire morning. I needed to recreate this memory desperately. I drank hot coffee in the sun, contacted those who had been there, recemented connections. It felt perfect. It was good. But the light faded eventually, the filter was torn down. And I was left shivering in the dark. And all that's left was the present.

That's why the past is so threatening. It's never gone. You're never fully out of it. You can fool yourself that it is behind you. That you will never be in it again. That you're in control. That anyone is.

The brilliant things that happen when sex is involved.

Well, now there's an interesting thing happening on down at Savage Love. I typically enjoy Dan Savage and agree with most of what he writes and get some of my voyeuristic/gossippy jolly rocks off by reading his column. But every once in a while he says something that is downright profound. And here it is:

While the religious right's war on gay people gets all the headlines, their war on straight rights gains ground daily. They've destroyed sex education, undermined abortion rights, and successfully prevented emergency contraception from being made available over the counter. Now they're going to block the HPV vaccine. Why? Because the American Taliban would rather see sexually active women dead than vaccinated.

Now where the hell is that right? The fundamentalists want to block vaccination because apparently vaccinating is a call to action. Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told New Scientist magazine that "giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." I don't know about you, but the last time I got vaccinated (tetanus), I didn't go around sticking rusty nails in my hands and licking rusty fences. I thanked my lucky stars I didn't get tetanus and forgot about it. Besides there are numerous factors out there associated with sex that this doesn't account for, so until you find a vaccination for AIDS, pregnancy, date rape, boredom, herpes, heartbreak, love, domestic violence, alimony, palimony, divorce, peer pressure, alcohol, miniskirts, testosterone, estrogen, biological urges, fun, dating, pills, prostitution and regret people are still going to be having sex or not having it with the same regularity as before. There just may be fewer funerals for the sinners to put in their daily planner.

The thing about nightmares

This morning I woke up hyperventilating and completely terrified, insanely angry, and completely depressed. I also wanted to kick something. Suffice to say the events in my dream sucked. It was so intense, the only way I could work through what was going on was to replay the scene incessantly in my head until I broke down in tears. I decided to wake early and take a walk and try to clear my head before work so I didn't have a mssive emotional collapse between my coffee break and lunch time. It worked partially.

This has only happened to me a few times, but when it happens, the effects are far reaching and last much longer than your typical nightmare. Usually, after a nightmare, you freak out, turn on a light, drink some water and play a cartoon on your laptop until you fall back asleep. Problem solved. But sometimes things don't work that way and you end up feeling like an idiot for not being able to just put it away and get over it. So, while walking around like a zombie today, I analyzed the whole thing and came up with the following.

There are different kinds of nightmares. We already covered your standard the dog is chasing me nightmare, there is a solution to that one. But when you have an emotional nightmare, your subconscious is stripped bare. Vulnerable when sleeping, your body is an outward mainfestation of your mind. Your have no defenses against someone's actions in dreams. The walls we create for our waking lives to keep people at bay only work when our conscious can activate them. During sleep we have no defenses against any wrong visited upon us and therefore, react to such actions as a child would. Children have not yet learned the defenses our worldweariness has allowed us to create. Emotional defensiveness is a learned trait.

Children also perceive all sensual (as in senses) experiences as being true. Part of this is never lost. For example adults find enjoyment in viewing films on a two dimensional screen. The films, intended to represent a three demensional world, exhibit power solely when the audience allows the film to represent that reality even though they consciously know this world does not exist. Without the ability to perceive a false action as true, there would be no escapism, no entertainment industry, no imagination.

The same applies to dreams, however, we do not have the conscious to intervene in our dreams (very often). We do not have the conscious filter to separate the dream world and the real world into different compartments. This is especially true when one abruptly moved from the dream state to the waking state with no subtle transition in between. The dream state remains vivid in the memory without this buffer to temper the false reality. Therefore, in the abstract realm of memory, the memory is vivid, perhaps even more vivid than other true memories. Since we base the validity of memory on how complete the specific memory is, we find that the false memory is now, possibly more true in the mind than other events that occurred in real time. This becomes truth for the person, and in the case of nightmares this truth can be devastating.

Somehow this makes me feel better. Just a little bit.

I'd Rather Micheal BOLTON for UN Ambassador

Republican senator George Voinovich has decided:

“After hours of deliberation, telephone calls, personal conversations, reading hundreds of pages of transcripts, and asking for guidance from Above, I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton,”

Hmmm...sounds like a 'no' vote to me. However:

“That being said, Mr. Chairman, I am not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues.”

Funny, I thought that's exactly what a senator is supposed to do. I thought that was why we hired them. They make tough decisions. The occasionally vote against their party. Perhaps, they even do what's right.

There's also another really good reason to send an unqualified candidate for the senate for a vote:

“We owe it to the president to give Mr. Bolton an up or down vote on the floor.”

I can promise you, from personal experience, hiring a person as a favor to another person (even the president) is a very, very bad idea. He made our lives a living hell for quite some time, and still does from time to time. Thus, if you hire someone for a public relations job, who is (as his supporters describe)

1. an aggressive policymaker who pressed his missions at every opportunity
and argued vociferously for his point of view. In the process, his blunt style
alienated some colleagues.
2. [whose] actions were not always exemplary
3. sometimes engaged in objectionable or wrongheaded behavior.

you're going to get burned. We, as a nation are going, to be internationally fucked if we throw a loose cannon in to fix our rocky relationship with the UN. (Who, if you think about it, is like a wife whom we cheated on with the war in Iraq. I'm just saying.)

quotes found here.

Conversion Consmersion

Now, call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that Jesus taught unconditional love. I don't really know because I never payed attention in church, I was too busy doodling on those flyer things they handed out before every session. I don't know where it says it, but apparently there was some fine print in the whole unconditional thing. Because everywhere that I see religious zealotry, even the more positive forms of it, there is a message of love these people because they can change. And if you love them enough, they will change to be just like you and finally they will be deserving of your love. This is god's way.

There's a lovely little article I found in townhall that describes the process of de-gayification by religiosity spearheaded by an ex-"gay" (their quotes) himself. And he's talking all about the process for ministries to heal gay and lesbian people with love and how they tend to get cranky when you give them the salvation message. But their not paying attention to what they are doing. Witholding love is never going to make anyone happy. Where is the last child you saw whose mother was always saying "sure honey, I love you. but you should be better, you should be pure. god hates one major aspect of your person so, cut it out or you're going to hell." On the top of a damn tower with a rifle. That's where you saw this person. Or, maybe spending a little too much time with the priest after altar boy practice.

Oh, that and the fact that these people are GAY. Leave them be. Let them find their own belief system. And for that matter let everyone else be too. If one more person shows up on my doorstep with a free bible at nine in the morning on a weekend while I'm hungover, heads are gonna roll! Or just sit in my freezer next to the girl scouts I'm collecting.

This man is probably in fact an ex-homosexual. He has a wife, children and a brand new dandy life as a minister trying to convert the others he used to fuck. Which is a pretty sizeable number if he's being accurate and not just elaborating like all men are wont to do. But, the real question is: who does he think about in order to facilitate these marital relations. Hmmm?

Oh, and what's with the "gay" quotes, but no quotes around lesbian. Come on people, aren't men and women equal yet? Aren't our sexual "deviations" regarded with the same amount of derision as the men's? C'mon people, get with the program.

SPAM...Nature's way of saying WTF?

So, this post is going to be about nothing. I have nothing important to say today, I just feel I must keep up with the other crazy bloggers that actually find shit to talk about that is more intelligent than my stuff (you know who you are). So I post this blog as an antithesis to all you intelligence. This blog will be a black hole to suck up anything worthy of being read and destroy it with the might a little black hole can muster. There, take that.

Proof that the devil spawn is a-comin'

Apparently to hide the fact that britney spears is getting fat, her rep has finally released a statement saying she's squishing one out sooner rather than later. It seems the devil wants his comeuppance sometime within the next nine months and her first born child will be taken away with her hot bod, fame and fortune. Why else would she marry the publicity nightmare that is her husband if he wasn't one of Satan's footsoldiers and her own personal soul guard. Apparently though, Beelzebub has relaxed his hiring requirements if he's the best they could come up with.

It's damn obvious that this is what has been going on, how else could someone get so famous on brains like these:

(Posted by brit on her fansite, found here)

Honeymoon Poem

11.10.2004

A honeymoon at last, to get away from it all
My assistant Fe gave me the call.

I remember it well, as she was smilin'
She said it was called Turtle Island.

I packed my bags light and quick,
Then grabbed my pink dress & favorite lipstick.

We hopped on a plane and took our flight
I slept really well, all through the night.

As we arrive, I turn and look out the door,
People are greeting us right at the shore.

A meal, a shower and some ice cream
Then I threw my man down, you know what I mean!

Magical nights filled with stars
Silence is golden, no running cars.

Private dinners, romantic fires
Little piece of heaven, whatever your heart desires.

Friendly "hellos" and never goodbyes
When you're having fun, oh, how time flies!

As we sit and prepare to make our part
I thank you, Turtle Island, with all my heart!

~ Britney

Perhaps satan didn't give her the full package. Or if he did...this would be an elaborate cry for help that we all missed. Either way, I think we should let her burn.

I don't think this one'll make it to theaters

And right up there with the worst idea ever is this one come straight from Britain today. I'd like to see what producer was so damn royalstruck he agreed to finance this inevitable piece of crap. I guess someone thinks it's a great idea to create a movie about Charles and Camilla's early romance. Yeah, this is a brilliant fucking idea. Let's make a movie about some unattractive boring people and skip out on the adultery and death, because that's what makes a movie great.

Yet another superhero fantasy gone wrong

I'm crossin' over to the dark side. I'm grabbing my lollipop light saber, donning my pink Darth Wanda helmet and strutting down to the local video shop to rent me the worst chick flick you've ever seen. And there's nothing you can do about it either. Granted, the helmet is to protect my identity and the saber is for poking people in the eyes lest they should recognise me.

Fact is, I've got a superheroine job to do, and I ain't got much time to do it. I'm gonna pull all the sappiest, whiniest chick flix available, charge them all to my card and wander the streets handing one out to each of the coolest chicks ever. They will belittle the movies to their hot boyfriends/girlfriends in public. Then, when no one is looking, they will hug the sacred videos to their chest, find an excuse to go home early, shut all the blinds and pop the damn thing in the DVD player.

Then the shame will set in. Rolling over coyote-ugly style in the morning, the emotional hangover clearing, we're left with that empty video case with the impossibly cheesy title staring back at us. We know what the neighbors would say, the ones who watch Fellini. We know what our friends would say. So we put on our celebrity-avoiding-paparazzi-disguise and drop it in the drop box outside after wiping our fingerprints off of it.

But we needn't feel ashamed. A new era is upon us. We simply need to redefine the chick flick's role in society and we'll be off, scott-free, to rent whatever we damn well please.

Okay, let's get this over with. We like them because they are bad, not beacuse they are realistic. It's the exact same thing that drives people to watch old horror films and bad action movies. It has always been acceptable to watch those movies as long as the camp rules are strictly obeserved and a thick layer of irony coats one's love for these movies. But chick flicks have always been verboten in the camp arena. So, I would like to pass a motion to admit them. They most likely have bad acting, poor plot lines and minimal to no impact on society. Really, they're a shoo-in.

I think my ass just got karma'd

I know this may be hard to believe, but sometimes Missoula Jaye can make an ass out herself. She sometimes fancies herself evil-er and more snarky that even she thinks possible. And thus on a character high, she tends to exaggerate the importance of a subject to herself and criticize ruthlessly, usually to the chagrin of whomever (whoever?) is unfortunate enough to be the audience to her tirade.
Last week, I took it upon myself to lambast the particular name of a pet that I had heard. I haughtily brought it up to my friend a few times during the day and kept going further with it despite my instinct that I was just digging my own grave where I would eventually have to lie down with my foot in my mouth for all eternity. Later that week, the same friend takes me to a party and introduces me to his best friend blessed with the offending nomer. Yeah, I felt like an ass. Didn't bring it up though, because I am a coward.

And I still felt bad until today. When I got my ass Karma'd. So yesterday, I wrote a little article about Bush sleepwalking through office. Yeah, I think it is funny. Certainly not pulitzer material, but maybe a precursor to an early onion article. Or something a particularly bright 7th grader might dream up.

So I sent it to my aforementioned friend with the unassuming tagline "tell me what you think of this article." And he wrote back the following:

well i think it had the possibility to maybe be funny. im thinking a few or couple "intellectual" stoners said "hey...the president is sooo stupid. It would be sooo funny to make up a fake email that everyone thinks is real and makes him look sooo stupid."
"But we cant make up quotes, we could be arrested."
"Are you scared Larry, stop being such a little puss Larry. No one will know we did it."
so that's what i think about it, there is really no excuse for his stupidness.

Yeah, I just got the equivalent of a karmic band-aid being swiftly and painfully ripped off. And you know what, it felt good.

It goes all the way to the top...

And, more news for you news buffs...

Stockholm, Sweden--Swedish scientists, acting on a hunch, confirmed grave suspicions yesterday when they performed routine medical checks on the President. He underwent several tests over a number of days under the scrutinous eyes of Sweden's medical elite. The tensions felt at the White House and all over the world in concern for his health were ultimately relieved by this alarming and surprising diagnosis.

Ben Fjordson, head of Neurological Sciences at the Swedish Medical Institute (SMI), said "it is unclear how this condition has remained undiagnosed for so long." He went on to comment that "this disease may have significant impact on the American public and the world considering the man who is afflicted." Fjordson, 49 and single, chose to have an underling deliver the rest of the diagnosis to a nervous public.

Richard Blahnk, an American finishing his residency at SMI, elaborated. "The President checked in citing diminished speech capacity and numbness of extremities. After completing a CAT scan, we were alarmed to note there was minimal brain function and no evidence of sentient activity. But after more testing and conversing with the president himself, we determined he was simply sleepwalking. As this is the longest known bout of the illness, it is more likely the president has lapsed into what we have dubbed 'the waking coma.'"

The president has the appearance of sentience while utlizing no active brain waves. While being potentially alarming to the American public, it does solve some lingering questions on the President's phrasing in speeches. The White house has now officially retracted such statements as "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."—Sept. 6, 2004, Poplar Bluff, Mo., and "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein."—Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004.

Vice President, Dick Cheney, was seen muttering to Condolezza Rice. "Should we wake him?" To which she replied "no, it could be dangerous."

Modern Pizza Delivery Urban Myths

a chinese food delivery man was stuck in an elevator for 80 hours in brooklyn. my only question is, did he get overtime? Because, if I got stuck for 80 hours in an elevator at triple pay for most of it, I could pay a months rent and take off for mexico and work on my tan. the greatest thing about this story was that the man spoke mandarin chinese and apparently couldn't surpass the language barrier to tell the security guards that he was stuck in the elevator. what kind of retards don't investigate an emergency call, in any language, that is originating from your defunct elevator lodged between floors for a few days? and another point goes to the service industry.

Fwd: Living Will

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a forward...but I like it, so here it is. Maybe I'll modifiy it later today. Or maybe I'll just sign it and send it to my lawyer.

Subject: LIVING WILL

I, _________________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren't in a permanent coma.

Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don't care how many fundamentalist votes they're trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me alone to die in peace.

I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to
legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own business, too.

If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a
political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.

_______________________________________
Signature
_______________________________________
Witness

I don't know why I made the damn blog pink.

Just try to think of it as watered down blood.

Spank the Illegals!

And back in the valley of eternal retards, vigilante justice is in for the spring season. Tombstone, Arizona, is overrun this week by clumsy impersonators of Yosemite Sam making it completely impossible for people who actually work for border patrol to patrol the goddamn border. Apparently being a trigger happy, red-necked control freak doesn't exactly inpspire ballerina-like grace as they keep setting off all the alarms the border patrol has to answer to, letting more illegal immigrants storm our fortresses. Apparently these interlopers, who have as much power as a high school janitor with a walkie talkie, have converged on the AZ border because people settled there are feeling overrun. Call me crazy, but doesn't living on the border of Mexico guarantee a certain populus of the illegal persuasion. Jesus people, suck it up and be men, and if you don't like it, move to mexico. There ain't a real big problem with illegal immigrants on the side of the border.

On the other hand, I just might have to send one of these idiots after Lynn, who, after my several month hiatus, has convinced me to read the news, and, god forbid, comment. I feel sick.

I lost everyone...where did they go?

so, I'm panicking in traffic this morning, cursing and honking like a good californian at the cops that have decided to block off half my main thoroughfare with a damn stalled truck. the lights all turn red, I turn up my music and start making up excuses about traffic because I left my house ten minutes late cuz I stayed up too damn late last night. and the excuses are starting to be accurate, which is nice, because it's easy to lie when it's the truth. and I show up 10 minutes late, which would actually be 50 minutes early if those bastards hadn't stole my hour! anyways, I got excuses plowing through my head and reach the office door. and it's locked. I am the first one in. and every time this happens I think all my coworkers have disappeared stephen-king-style. so I praise whatever patron saint takes care of contracting secretaries with inabilities to drag their sorry asses out of bed, and enter carefully, checking for zombies.

Nice to see you again

my lovely california is back today. oh, how I've missed you. 80 degrees outside, not a cloud in the sky and me antsy as all hell to get outside. and i'm going to stop paying attention to all the news headlines on the internet because everywhere I look, it's schiavo. fortunately, i avoided the schiavo thing until last week, but i finally got the skinny and all i could think of was how embarrassing and completely invasive the public interference with this case was. and these people have been in the limelight for something extremely negative for the better part of a decade. their lives will never recover from it. and can you think of anything more inhumane than starving someone to death by pulling a feeding tube out of their mouth? why didn't they just go down to the corner, get a nice big bag of heroin and send her on her way with a fantastic trip. or hell, they got enough opiates to do her in nice just laying around the hospital. I mean, christ, have you been to those places, pills stacked everywhere, just shove some in an IV bag, shake it a little and it's a nice little party to send her on her way. I don't see what is wrong with assisted suicide. We have way too many people who want to live without keeping constant tabs on those who are in pain and simply want god to give them the check so they can settle their tab and do some shuffling off the mortal coil.

Shoutout to a friend

they used to call me bitter. at alternate times I both reviled and revelled in the apt description. i tried it on a couple of days ago. it didn't quite fit the same. the elbows were a little worn and there was some odd bunching around the midsection. i'm dropping it at good will this afternoon if nobody else wants it.

Pool for Bitches

Way Back Story: So, during my junior and senior year of high school, my friends and I would play pool. That’s what we did. We weren’t delinquents or troublemakers in the strictest sense. We just liked to drive forty minutes to the dying mall on the far side of Anchorage, Alaska and shoot some stick.

There were certain rules we adopted as our own group’s “house” rules. The main one involved letting the girls play slop while the guys had to call their shots. It leveled the playing field quite a bit and coupled with a large dose of teenage hormones, sometimes the chicks would prevail due to a nice helping of female distraction. We had all sorts of excuses why we weren’t as good as the boys. They ranged from not playing nearly as much (as two of the guys were either in college or dropped out and therefore had copious amounts of time to waste in the all ages pool hall) to having earlier curfew (which is something I still carry a grudge about). But the important thing was we were armed with excuses. And they made sense and were valid until graduation. THen we were out of good excuses...until now.

Last week: I decide that my pool game needs to be sharked up a bit as I am wee bit out of practice. So I do what any card-carrying geek would do and I grab my worn out library card (swear to god, the thing’s practically frayed) and get me a Fat’s Domino book and “The Hustler’s Handbook” which actually has good tips. So I read up on all the things you are supposed to do to get your game started, and I stop when my brain gets full and starts leaking onto the table. Then I drag my leaky head over to the pool hall where all the old sharks hang out and try to calculate curvatures on balls and banking angles, and where is my foots supposed to be when the stick is balanced where?

Because I have no social self-preservation left, being that my brain is so full, I tell my friend about the books. And, after refusing to speak to me until I denounce my library fetish, he starts grilling me on the finer points of the game. In true hustler fashion, I tell him only the information he seems to know and leave out vital info which I plan to let slip from my sealed lips for maybe five bucks a go. Hustle this, Fats!

Anyway, I show this friend the very dashing photo of the man who wrote the hustler’s handbook. I personally enjoy his white stetson coupled with an entirely black cowboy outfit. In fact, I have changed my will and plan to be buried in this exact outfit. So, with a snicker, I snatch back the book so he can’t get to the important stuff.

Immediately, this guy who was pretty evenly matched to me before starts kicking my ass. So I’m all “Dude, you’re never touching that book again.” And he's all "Dude I am so buying that book!" And I'm all "It's out of print sucka!"

So, he's kicking my ass, and I'm watching the balls create geometry on a plane of green felt. And all I can think with every ball that drops into a pocket is “damn your spatial intelligence.” It becomes a mantra in my head which is nearly drowning out the jukebox vomit of metallica. Because that's all pool is: spatial intelligence. And men have it for biological reasons. Maybe we just lost the coin toss at the dawn of peopleness, and God turned to man and said "Yeah, you'll be better at cool games, but they're going to win all the arguments." And man was like "okay dude."

And back in the pool hall, the cieling cracks open and a ray of sunshine illuminates the dive bar and the clouds part and god whispers down “psst. hey you. yeah, you in the black hoodie. you have your excuse, keri. you have your excuse.”

I look around to see if anyone else heard it. They all act like nothing happened, so I go back to my game and I accept this premise: I am biologically determined to suck at pool. It doesn’t matter that I have high spatial intelligence, I have an excuse, cuz I’m a chick. And chicks are supposed to have low spatial intelligence. I've got a free hall pass from trying at pool! So I’m throwing out my books, grabbing the crappiest cue and donning a barely legal mini skirt. I’m gonna win the old fashioned way: sexual deviance and gettin’em wasted. A pitcher for the lady please!

How to Fake It with the Cool Music Crowd.

So, you got lost in the dirty-trendy side of town and decided to pop into a little shop and ask for directions. Lucky you, it turned out to bean alternative record shop and the guy behind the counter giving youalternate glances of lust and disaffectedness through his black rimmedglasses has no idea where it is you want to go. After ten minutes of confused banter, you've decided to bail, but only after you wrangled a date out of him. At least you think it is a date. You're definitely going to a show together.

So you get back into your car and turn up your old Hanson cd and slam your head on the steering wheel. There's no way you can pull this off. You're screwed. But here are a few simple steps to help even the most devout top 40 listener blend in with a crowd of hipsters for a night.

Step 1: Do your research

Look up the band on the internet. Hopefully, they're hot and you can print out a picture and stick it on your wall. Try to find a snarky music site (there are plenty of them) and read about their present and past releases. If you can't stand to do that, just skim the first paragraph and memorize the label that released the record. This will come in handy later. I promise.

Buy the cd of the band you are going to be seeing. Shows are always more fun when you know some of the songs. Now put this cd on permanent rotation in your cd player. Chances are, you will only like one song on the cd. If this occurs, play a few songs before that song and a few after every time you listen. I find I usually only have time for 5 songs in any listening session. Eventually, the other songs will worm their way into your heart and you will grow to love them, if only like an annoying gnat you can't quite bring yourself to kill. Most of my long-term music affairs have grown out of such listening habits. This is the music that lasts.

Now, check out the album art. Notice the color scheme. This is what you can copy when buying your outfit.

Step 2: Dressing yourself

Go to a trendy vintage store, but not an expensive one. You don't want to pay more than $10 for anything. Maybe $20 for a really good jacket. Most of the people that work at these stores run with the same crowd you will be trying to infiltrate, so pay attention. They are good to emulate, but go for a toned down version of their style. Most newcomers will make vital mistakes such as over-coordinating or cross-stylization. This will result in your being found out as a non-hipster.

The standard outfit for a beginner is a worn-in pair of jeans with no adornments, no flare and certainly not acid washed. Pair this with a fitted t-shirt with an ironic saying on it. Add a funky belt, a messenger bag (instead of a purse) and the perfect jacket. I give you license to go crazy with the jacket.

If you want to go a little deeper, you are going to have to analyze the music. If it is slower or has tinges of desperation and self-deprecation in the lyrics, you may wear any combination of earth tones you like. Preferably topped off with an earth toned sweater and some really beat up converse shoes. I've actually had my converse all-stars rated by some one who thought I was just posing. I probably was, but I didn't let the bastard know. So he drew on my shoe.

If the music has heavy bass and muffled to loud screaming, you have license to drape yourself completely in black and don clunky silver rings. Be sure to wear make up to match the severity of your outfit. The earth-tones allow little no makeup whereas, black begs for thickeyeliner, dark nail polish and so much eye shadow, you'll be scrubbing it off for a week. If you're not sure, stick to outfit 1. It's the most versatile.

Step 3: The Show

So you meet your hipster guy as some divy venue on the cheapside of town. The walls are painted black, there's probably red decorations and lights everywhere and the whole thing looks like a health code violation. This is the hipster's natural habitat. This is also where the best shows are.

The first hurdle is to order the appropriate drink. Do not order anything that comes in a special glass such as a Martini or a Cosmopolitan. Stick with simple drinks such as a rum and coke. It's best to order whatever cheap beer is the local favorite. In thenorthwest, there is an almost cult-like following for the drinkers of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Yet, in California, PBR is low class.

Your hipster boy will appear disaffected and bored if he is not drunk. This is not because you are boring. This is a carefully affected persona to create the illusion that he has somewhere better to be. If he is elated at the music, a rhythmic head nod is the only break in his ennuic stoicism.

Your hipster boy's friends will be some of the most beautiful women you have ever seen. And they will be impeccably styled and tragic. You will feel mousy and uneducated. This is normal and there is no way to get around it. It is something you will have to suffer through whenever subject to this environment. Don’t worry, hipster crowds, like everything else on this planet, are just a natural extension of high school. Everyone is still deeply insecure and highly cliquish. And they will hate you for stealing their hot hipster boy.

If you have to engage in conversation in between sets, chances are it will revolve around obscure music references. Try to work in the fact that you know which label the band is on, then get out of the conversation as quick as possible. You should appear aloof and intelligent, therefore, silence is the only natural option.

So ignore everyone, nod your head to the music and for god’s sake don’t act happy.

right...

ladies and gentleman, our president would like a word to discuss his social security plan. not necessarily sentences. we have not budgeted for sentences, but certainly words. enough words to make verbose kindergarteners blush with envy. this will be a post-modern nod to deconstructionism to pull the educated liberal vote. or a concerted effort to make the uneducated feel a little bit smarter. well, the microphones were cutting out and he had an eyelash in his eye and look! Osama! there, that covers it.

"Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."—Explaining his [Bush's] plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

do you feel that vertigo? the only way I have been able to make sense of his sentence construction is to picture a boat trying to get safely into a harbor, only it can never quite get into the harbor, it is just pulling in, pulling out all around the little island until it gets tired and runs aground full speed ahead. period. end of sentence.

how does this happen? he is the most funded and well connect person in America. Can't he find someone to write coherent speeches? since they fired that hooker-mole from the news correspondence, they certainly have an opening in their payroll for some tweed-jacketed geek to find him some complete sentences. or at least to keep him using the right verb conjugations, or pluralizing correctly. whatever happened to the earpiece he had during the elections? couldn't they have tiny little transmitters planted in his ear to feed him lines? it works on alias. hell, maybe they should just hire syd to impersonate the president. she's good at improv.

(quote courtesy of jenni. thanks dude.)

a sonnet for a monday...

and going back to high school, I have written a sonnet, because it seems to be a good way to remember all those words I've forgotten. anyway...here 'tis.

We Met in an Alley

My breath abates for lack of will to breathe.
Red lights, light blue, a strobe and pity sound.
The sirens crash the walls of that I see
from blusih creature prone and dying found.

A voice then digit prod my anguished cells.
He death proclaims when pulsing flatters weak
his pad of finger, slim, abating tells.
His breath on leather mine, still warm, my cheek

in blended light does tremble, ripple, freeze.
Air sculpture paints my face to fear. His taunts
push pliant skin to taut and on his knees
bends near his face to mine. An anger haunts

him, pointed finger placed on lips tense shakes
and bids me slip from life. My silence breaks.

Morning as a CA citizen...

"I don't know what this vehicle is!"
"What?"
"I don't know your license plate number!"
"Well, neither do I, you didn't give me one."
"I don't know your license number."
"You mean my old one?"
Blank stare.
"It's _ _ _ - _ _ _"
"That's not your VIN number!"
"No, that's my old license number"
"You didn't give me your VIN nimber."
"That's like 46 freakin digits."
"This is your license."
"My old one."
"Okay."
"But, that's an Oregon plate."
"Well, this is California."
"Yes, I'm aware of that."
"What is your license number?"
"Oh, for christ's sake!"
"I can't help you."

It's 7:30 in the morning and I am sitting on a cold concrete step waiting in line so I can wait in another line to get a number to wait in one of 4 separate queues next to people who don't shower so I can get yelled at while I am missing hours of work which subsequently leads to a smaller paycheck. Yes, for those of you who have been to the California DMV, you should be having some damn uncomfortable flashbacks right about now. I have been to the DMV 6 times in the past year to get my license and registration. A process so involved, painful and mystifying, it makes exorcisms look like...well, something simple and clean like a game of candyland or chutes and ladders. but as is, it's more like getting a labotomy with a rusty nail from someone taking instructions from a quadripalegic speaking in Aramaic. With slightly more paperwork.

I can understand why we have so many illegal citizens in this country. They don't want to deal with the DMV. Hell, if my job didn't require it, I might just let my license expire and my tags rot so I wouldn't have to step a toe on that cheap stained carpet ever again. Plus, there's always the added humiliation of getting your picture taken after you've been verbally beaten and mentally crushed. That kind of mind frame always lends the visage of a drowned rat.

And there are ways the DMV could actually be efficient. They've all got computers. They're always clicking away on them and probably playing everquest with the troll running the license picture station while you sit there fiddling with your papers that never have the right documentation. But they never use these computers to look up information on you. I had to yell at the idiot working on my stuff for 5 minutes before he would even look at my name. But he keeps saying that he won't do it because sometimes the names are typed in wrong and this isn't the best way to do it and why don't I have my license plates. And finally the assmonkey types my name in and Voila! there is all the information he needs. And he hands over my plates and smiles at me. the bastard.

Oh man, this is not my week.

Once again, I have succeeded in failing miserably. First, there was Hitch on Tuesday. A fantastic failure. Then this monstrosity fills up my Tuesday evening when I could have been drawing or painting or dissecting my own eyeball and had more fun. Lets forget the food was drenched in oil and the vegetable plate inexplicably had bacon in it. And let's forget that it was 2 hours too long, no, let's make that 3. Let's just remember that it sucked. Immensely. Huge amounts of sucking.

Write that down.

But it is solely my fault. There were a bunch of people in the audience that enjoyed themselves. Most of them were hopped up on martinis and probably had lost most of their brain cells to overdoses of peroxide. And some idiot girl decided to bring a damn infant who cooed and half-talked through the entire goddamn thing. There are several places children should not be, and in my vicinity is one of them.

Back to the fact that it was my fault. Let me get this one thing straight...I HATE AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION. I HATE when people ask a question and expect everyone to answer. It's self-important enough to think that so many people want to hear what you have to say, but it's goddamn egomanical to think that all those people would actually like to talk to you. I HATE clapping and hooting and yelling "bravo/a" if nothing special has been done. I HATE encores and clapping until your hands are numb for some band to come back out that has already been playing for you. Why don't they just stand there and say "look, we've been up here for an hour, we're going to take a ten minute break so we can give you a couple last songs that will make a good last impression." See, nice, civilized, and no need to take part in any sort of group chant.

I think the best showcase for the immorality of the audience participation is presented in Donnie Darko when Patrick Swayze (in his best role ever!) represents the moral majority as a depressive pedophiliac running a kiddie porn ring. Donnie sums up my views exactly when he says "I think you are the fucking antichrist" and Swayze just shakes his poofy little head and we want to see Donnie kick his ass.

I also HATE puns. Should puns really be an acceptable form of humor? I vote to outlaw them. Or to put them on restrictive use. Perhaps you should only be able to use them in small doses, like alcohol. And no punning while driving. The entire show was littered with puns...bad ones. Like (a girl was named Helen) "she doesn't know what the helen her name was". Is your stomach turning? Do you feel nauseous? That was the bad effect of the pun. Or was it the dinner which still has me feeling sick.

Alas, I have spewed my vitriol over this page. Think I'll go read a little Anne Carson to battle the effects of dinner theater on my embittered mind. G'nite all, and have the courage to make better choices than I do.

Remember: Good decisions come from experience, experience comes from bad decisions. So this better damn well pay off good.

Hitch: The Movie That Restored My Belief in the Devil

Let’s forget the fact the I actually went to this movie of my own volition and paid for the ticket. Please, I don’t think that I can ever forgive myself and I would rather keep it as a skeleton in my closet than have it out there in the open, peering at people over my shoulder, advertising my idiocy. The only reason I utter this dirty fact into cyberspace is that I hope to save some poor unwitting soul from wasting 2 hours in the hell that I recently escaped. Like an ex-addict AA counselor, I seek to save people from their bad decisions, hopefully before some permanent damage has been done.

Now, It is usually easy to tell the caliber of film you are watching from the previews. This was my favorite part of the movie when I was a kid. It was like having full movies told to you in 30 seconds and that was about as long as my attention span, so I reveled in it. I’d squeeze my candy tight in anticipation and gawk silly-eyed at the screen, my mouth agape in awe. And by the end of the previews, my popcorn would be finished, the sour patch kids on their last legs and half the gallon of soda happily bubbling in my gullet. I was one happy girl.

Then, somewhere along the line, they started sucking. It wasn’t immediate, more like a gradual downfall. Perhaps it was simply my adult self asserting itself and demanding more depth and extended plot to get my blood pumping and cause me to scramble sideways to whisper in my friend’s ear “I’m dying to see that!” But I don’t think it’s adulthood, because every once in a while, I see a preview that inspires me into that same manic frenzy.

This movie was preceded by self-important trash lacking plot lines and acting ability. They were exactly what the film was, cloying and boring.

And back to hell, I mean Hitch. In the grand tradition of movies marketed solely on the strength of the male lead’s popularity status, they completely ignored the women’s acting abilities while casting them to sit in the men’s shadows. Eva Mendes can not act. If they had performed a simple screen test on her they would have discovered that the five minute scene she led in the beginning of the movie would have bombed as fantastically as it did. Or perhaps they did a screen test, but were so distracted by her breasts that they didn’t notice how wooden and rehearsed her lines were. Sure, she’s got that thing that some people have where they are comfortable in front of the camera and essentially play themselves with different dialogue. This is mistaken as acting all the time. How else can you explain why Jennifer Lopez or Drew Barrymore are so highly paid? And Drew is lovely sometimes, but if you’ll watch her performance in Donnie Darko, you’ll see exactly what I mean. I won’t even defend Lopez.

The other chick who’s paired with the overweight accountant. She’s barely even worth mentioning except for the fact that she slightly resembles Cate Blanchett. And the accountant, Kevin James, he’s adorable and does well with what he’s got, which ain’t much. I mean, really, couldn’t they take a sliver out of Will Smith’s millions and hire a decent writer to revamp this script? It’s an interesting idea, but the dialogue is terrible. And when you take the dialogue from a script you ain’t left with nothing much.

Which brings me to Will Smith who has essentially come full circle on his acting career and is now starring as an older Fresh Prince. Only, the FP had better screenwriters. There are some chuckle moments here and there. But mostly I found myself gagging and checking for the nearest exit. Half the lines Smith said in earnest had me hiding my groans in the lapel of my jacket. Which has very nice faux fur by the way.

And as for the cinematography, it was about as exciting as a car commercial, you know, one of the local ones with the zoo animals. There were way too many close ups and practically all the shots are singles with one big mug staring back at you. The music was damn lame and oddly enough featured saxophones at the forefront of the entire movie. I hate saxophones, they remind me of the late 80s and Richard Marx and oddly enough my mother, whom I do not hate, but would rather not conjure in a romantic comedy setting.

To be fair, the movie did hit on some accurate points and had some small truths sprinkled here and there, but they were far to few to save this train wreck. Actually, it wasn’t as interesting as an accident, it was more like a flat tire heaped on the unsuspecting public in a desperate bid for some valentine’s revenue.

And walking out of the movie, I felt dirty. Now I’m just going to go stuff this skeleton back in my closet...

Stormy Weather...just can't get myself together

God, will the rain ever stop. This is like being back in Eugene again. Without the whole ecosystem being ready for the rain. All across southern california, mudslides, tornadoes, flooding, rockslodes, sinkholes eating city workers. Nowhere in there does it say sunshine, warmth or you don't have to wear clothes today because it is damn hot. This is not why I moved down here. I didn't move here to be cold. I didn't want to wake up to find my lanai flooded and have to worry about whether my furniture will suffer from flood damage. And I certainly didn't sign up for no damn tornadoes. Those belong in the middle states where I plan never to visit.

But on the bright side, I don't have to wash my car. Or even pretend to do anything productive. Because I have the day off. With holiday pay. I love labor laws.