Twisted Spinster

We had yet another car/train meetup here in Orlando. It did not end well for the car. What happened (according to the local tv news report) was the Amtrak Silver Star was heading towards a crossing, going about 58 miles per hour (under the speed limit for trains), signalling all the way with its horn of course, and the crossing lights came on and the bars went down. Now, SOP for cars coming up to the tracks is for them to stop at the crossing bars. However, our genius driver had Better Things To Do than to wait for some stupid train, so he went around the crossing bars. And promptly got pasted by the train. The driver is now dead, as is one of the passengers in the car. I believe there was another passenger in the car who was injured. And — here’s the kicker — this will surprise no one who has grown up in an area full of immigrants from a certain culture — the driver was in his twenties, and his last name was Martinez.

Trust me on this, I’ve lived in Florida all my life, and whenever there’s been news of a traffic accident caused by some stupid-ass move on the part of the driver such as running a red light (because Real Men don’t let little lights tell them what to do) or driving too fast around a curve (because he’s a man, baybee, and he’s got important places to go, and he can do wheelies, just watch!) or going around a crossing bar when a train is coming up the track (because his Macho Man rays will slow time and enable him to defeat the laws of physics), nine times out of ten the driver, and usually the passengers, are all in their twenties and all have names like Martinez. And the few (very, very few) times I’ve been in a car driven by young Hispanic men, they’ve all driven like arrogant, world-stops-for-me assholes. It’s supposed to be racist now, but when I was in my twenties my friends and I had a rule for dating: no YLMs (Young Latin Males). Not only were they jealous macho pricks (all the smooth, romantic Latin lovers died of some plague in the Fifties), but the insanity that seems to overcome them when they get behind the wheel could have gotten me killed.

By the way, the train? Was delayed about two hours. Then it continued on its way.

One of my number-one pet hates: whistling. I hate it. I’ve always hated it with an unreasonable white-hot hatred. I don’t know why. My father used to whistle all the time, and he was good at it, but otherwise we got on fine so it had nothing to do with some conventional psychological father-daughter dysfunction. I hate whistling on tv. I hate whistling in public. I always itch to find the person who is whistling and smack him right in his hokey, smugly pursed lips. Whistling is irritating. Even the word “whistling” is irritating. Don’t you just envision some grinning leprechaun hopping around saying “whist, mon!” And then whistling “Danny Boy.” And then you pop him in a cauldron of boiling beef broth, stupid green shoes and all, until he’s rendered down to fat, which you make into soap and sell under the brand name “Irish Spring.”

Okay, the whistling guy has stopped, perhaps because someone walked up and stabbed him through the heart. Not me. You’ll never get me, coppers. I was sitting at my desk typing this at the time of the murder. Bwahahahaah!

Here’s another reason I’m glad I didn’t keep that job at Walmart: an employee was killed when a bargain-crazed mob rushed the doors of a Walmart in Long Island when they opened for today’s “special” sales. Today, as we all know, is “Black Friday” — which has become the day I stay home. Not that I have any money to spend, but even if I did, the insanity that this “tradition” has devolved into makes the few dollars I might save, assuming I would be able to get my hands on any of the “while supplies last” goodies, aren’t worth it.

If we were still a civilized nation and not on the brink of Third World-dom, we’d abolish “Black Friday” and just have a normal shopping day. Or the stores would stay closed on the Friday following Thanksgiving so people could spend more time with their families like they always say they want to. But God forbid someone not make a few extra pennies; never mind that encouraging events like this are actually going to bring the economy to its knees (perhaps when people decide to stay away in droves from stores because, well, they don’t want to be trampled to death by a horde of bloated chavs* looking to save 20% on their fifth wide-screen plasma tv) that much sooner.

*We really do need a special word for the sort of lower-class, often-welfare-supported, yet overfed, over-supplied with unnecessary material goods like brand-name shoes and clothes and electronic equipment, under-educated and ill-mannered ranks like the British do with “chav,” which I believe is even racially inclusive, whereas the term “yob” more specifically referred to a white, lower-class, uneducated thug. I think in Long Island and New Jersey they use the word “guido” but that just refers to people of Italian descent. Well for now I am appropriating “chav.”

Update: more on Protein Wisdom.

So here’s a stupid meme! Since it’s long, I’ll put it under the cut:

Read the rest of this entry »

In the interests of irritating the politically correct, here’s an old Polaroid of me and my sister (who was a Real Native American, by the way) dressed in costumes our grandmother made for us. The reason I looked so thrilled was: I hated dressing up for photos, I hated dressing up, I hated having my photo taken (for one thing, they always put us facing the sun so the light would hit our faces — I blame my future cataracts on the approximately 9,000 photographs taken of me in the horrible Florida sun).

(Click for larger.) The Indian headress was not made by my grandmother, but instead was acquired at a tourist trap in Cherokee, North Carolina, where we used to go whenever we would visit my grandparents at their summer home in Highlands. By November, though, they were back in Coconut Grove. This photograph looks like it was taken in their back yard — I can’t remember exactly, but most Thanksgivings we ate at their house. The date on the back of the photograph says “Thanksgiving 1971,” which means I was eight years old, and my sister was six. The years have not improved me.

Festivities update: despite my ailments I managed to tuck away two nice-sized chunks of excellent prime rib. No, my friends did not make turkey — however, there were baked sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, as well as many other delightful edibles. That meal, and the dose of Nyquil I just took, have left me feeling like a semi-sentient floor pillow. I need to observe another Thanksgiving tradition: sitting in front of the tv in a catatonic state. BBL

I don’t usually do the news reporting thing, but this is important. More commentary on Ace of Spades, and here’s an on-the-scene account I found on Instapundit.

The blogs are really the best sources for news on this. I tried watching the mainstream news but I ended up turning it off. If the stations weren’t busy maundering on about Obama’s boring political appointments (it’s Clinton II, that’s all you need to know), they’re still whining about the mortgage thing. And then when I do find a station running footage of the attack, I have to hear commentary from some academic sort on how we can stop this sort of thing by opening up more of the textile industry to Pakistan also by giving them flour, of which they’re suffering a shortage. (I think that was on CNN.) Yep, let’s try to buy off terrorists by giving Muslims more stuff. You know what? Why don’t Muslim countries pull their heads out of their asses and quit with the jihad bullshit? Then we can talk about giving them food that they’ve been too busy playing war games to grow. There is no excuse for this, and it certainly isn’t because of all the other countries who worked hard and prospered. I refuse to feel guilty because some group of people can’t cope with reality.

Health update: well, after a good night’s (and morning’s) rest with only five or six interruptions to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel as exhausted. However, the cold has moved completely up to my head, which means my skull is a ball of itching, dripping torment. I’m running low on stuff to catch the drips (note to self: never buy the cheap dollar store toilet paper again — if sandpaper could be a nano-micro-millimeter thick, that’s what was in the package) and medicine to make me not care (i.e., the mother of all cold remedies, Nyquil; and I have to buy the liquid form too, as the gel caps don’t work as fast and don’t have alcohol in them — check the “inactive” ingredients). So for the rest of the day, if I am sentient enough to post, the content may be… interesting.

I’ve been seeing references to this site NetRightNation for a while now. It’s supposed to be a central source for people to find conservative blogs. It seems above-board, but I got an email from one of my readers about how posts from other blogs show up on this website when you do a search on their site. You get a list of blog posts, all “written by Administrator,” that are actually just excerpts from the blog you searched for, none of them with any attributing links back to those blogs. (Here’s one of mine. It should link to this post.) I couldn’t find an email for NetRightNation, so I left the following comment in the latest post on their own blog:

This is off-topic, but I can’t find an email to contact you directly. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but when you do a search on your site for someone’s blog (like Ace of Spades, or mine — Twisted Spinster), you get a list of blog posts which are just excerpts from the blogs you searched for, but they aren’t linked to the actual blogger’s site or attributed in any way, and the posts on your site all say “written by Administrator.” I’ve already had emails from people complaining that their blog posts have been stolen, so you may want to see to fixing this. Here, by the way, is the list of search results for my blog. Since you do link to bloggers properly on your own front page, I am assuming this is just a glitch in your search template.

They really should have fixed this before putting up their site. They should know how concerned rightwing bloggers are about their intellectual property. This was the result, by the way, of just going to their “search” link on the top of the page and entering the name of the blog — say, “Twisted Spinter.” It isn’t some arcane hidden thing. I hope they fix this, or there are going to be a lot of pissed off conservative bloggers.

Update: nice reply — see the comments.

For some reason I’m exhausted today, even though I’ve hardly done anything. I went to the bank, walked across to the grocery store (next to the bank), then came home. Yesterday I felt well enough to go for a long walk — today I made it as far as the duck pond on the other side of the apartment complex and had to go back. Also I’m peeing a lot (yes, TMI) and also am very thirsty — I woke up about every hour last night to pee, or so it seemed, and today my allergies are also bothering me. And I have a scratchy throat. So I think I’m coming down with something. I did make the mistake of going to Walmart a few days ago because it’s cheaper, and my cashier was guzzling cough medicine like it was soda. I’ll bet you she gave me her virus.

So I’m doing a load of laundry, because I’m out of clean underwear. Which brings me to my pet peeve: why is a washer/dryer for clothes in one’s own apartment an alternative that not all apartment complexes offer, yet hardly any apartment complex dares offer units without a dishwasher? Dishes can be washed by hand, but washing all your clothes by hand is a pain in the ass, not to mention where do you dry them? In the bathroom so they can mold and mildew? What about sheets?

And that being said, why do we have to put money in the laundry machines here? It’s not like this place has washer-dryer hookups for everyone. (This complex only offers them in the large two-bedrooms.) You’d think that the cost of the washers in the laundry rooms would be included in the rent. They should offer a washer and dryer unit as an option to the dishwasher. I’d gladly wash my dishes in the sink just to be able to wash my clothes in my apartment. I sure do miss having my own washing machine, grumble…

Later: gah, feeling worse — itchy, stuffy, fevery. I took Tylenol and prepared one of my cold remedy suppers: chicken ramen noodle soup with onion, garlic, hot red pepper flakes, sliced bell pepper, and sliced grape tomatoes thrown in. Vitamin C city. And I ate an apple and an orange. So at least I still have my appetite. This better be gone by Thursday — I’ve been invited to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving eats.

PS: thanks to those of you who have donated to my Paypal and Amazon tip jar in the past couple of days. This is a lean week, so the money is really helping.

Question: when did “literature” become defined as “anything you read that makes you miserable, guilty and hopeless about the universe” whereas any story that not only entertains you but makes you feel happier when you come to the end has been relegated to the status of inferior pulp dreck for rubes and morons? Once science fiction was all of the latter, but then somehow the genre attracted the attention of the Littritchur Brigade, and it’s been downhill ever since. Personally I think someone at a university somewhere had their stacks of “Princess Theta and the Moonbeasts” paperbacks discovered and had to come up with an excuse quick lest they become the laughing stock at their next faculty party. Tell me the truth, is any of that “thought-provoking” “speculative” science fiction about how White Anglo Saxon Males (“metaphorically” disguised as humans) oppress women ‘n’ minorities ‘n’ other-sexuals (“metaphorically” disguised as aliens) really fun to read? Is it uplifting? Does it make you feel hopeful — which is the base mental state necessary to enable human beings to actually work towards improving the conditions of our life on earth?

No it does not. Barring a few exceptions, most of the “literary” science fiction that has been published is depressing shit that I wouldn’t let my kids near if I had any. I’d let them glom up piles of “racist, sexist” pulp about evil Martians and Space Princesses in peril, because they’d know it was fantasy, but they’d learn valuable lessons on fighting evil and protecting good, but let them absorb the lesson that the human race is destined to misery and oppression forever and that there is no good or evil, just blobs of arbitrarily arranged molecules, as so much “important” science fiction promotes? That would be child abuse.

And that, folks, is why I don’t like the new Battlestar Galactica, and much prefer the old series despite it’s late 70s-style cheesiness. Also, coming up, my list of sucky science fiction books and why you should never let college professors write the stuff.