Victory Soap v. 2.0

Let the Moving My Crap saga begin:

Oh God, I've got to pack.

Well. The first stage of packing is figuring out what you're not going to take with you, which means my favorite activity: throwing things out. Of course, that leads to a less favorite activity: dragging the stuff to the dumpster. Oh well, can't make lemonade without lemons...

I am also going to have to get rid of some larger items, i.e., furniture. The new place is much smaller, and has much less wall space due to the large windows that I craved and as well the open-plan kitchen (I have a real breakfast bar, finally -- but I don't have a wall there). So I have to make some (not really) hard decisions and let go of some of the nice furniture pieces I'd picked up at the thrift store. Ideally I'd like to sell them, though if time goes on and I get no buyers I'll just call Goodwill or somebody.

I also need to go through my books. I just have too many -- yes, I know you can't have too many books, but I have to get rid of some of the ones I read once and know I won't read again. Also some textbooks I'd kept because the college bookstore wouldn't take them back and I thought I'd use them for reference but that hasn't happened. This will probably be one of the smaller discards, though.

I am of two minds whether to keep all my vinyl LPs. I do know of a store that will buy them off me, if at nothing better than 25 cents per record, but it's all the way over in Winter Garden.

Anyway, I am going to get rid of some garbage, and go through the house making lists.

One day this blog will return to the usual snark and so on instead of being a compendium of My Boring Life, I promise.

Love and Rocket doing "Yin Yang the Flowerpot Man."

Well, that wasn't too bad -- I took time off from work to talk to my landlord about breaking the lease, and they were pretty understanding when I explained the long commute was killing me. So all I have to do is come up with an extra month's rent ($600) plus whatever prorated amount I'll have to pay for staying here until May 4th, my move-in day to the new place. I was lucky this time -- the last time I had to break the lease the management company I had charged me the remainder of my lease, because apparently no one rented out that apartment until the end of my lease (or maybe they did -- I ended up getting some of the money back because I'd overpaid, but the company had sold the apartment complex in the meantime so the girl I was talking to couldn't find anything in the records). They also told me I'd get my security back, which will help, because otherwise I'll be eating ramen noodles for a year. This is going to take all my money and then some. But it will be worth it.

At least one headache has been averted -- I asked a coworker who happens to have a truck if he could help me move, and he said yes. He helped me move before, so it's nice of him to forgive the nightmare of ten thousand books (or what must have seemed like ten thousand...) Also, I plan to get rid of a lot of my furniture. I will be keeping the bed (of course) the dresser and the smaller chest, an end table or two (needless to say the search for the perfect nightstand is on hold indefinitely), the couch, the coffee table, and the small cabinet that I planned to make into my bar but so far is just holding junk. And of course the small writing desk. The china cabinet and big dining room table will of course have to go, and as well the "Danish" style cabinet with shelves that really is too rickety and old. I will keep one armchair, but the other (the more worn one) must go.

I've already mentioned books and record albums as things to go through and start culling. Really, I wish I wasn't so tired after work -- I itch to start pitching. I'm going to toss all the Christmas decorations -- they are battered junk anyway, and half the lights are dead. I need to go through all my dishes -- none of them really worth anything, they might just go out to the dumpster. They were cheap to begin with -- or free -- so not much of a loss. My goal is to actually be packed before moving day, instead of my usual habit of packing at the very last minute after drinking myself into a stupor the night before. (I don't usually drink a lot -- I just hate packing.)

I haven't said much about the war and the current effort of the Enemy Party (aka the Democrat Party) to derail it because party politics is more important than the fate of Western Civilization, etc., because I've been too disgusted for words. Kim Du Toit can still come up with a phrase or two. But it's this sentence in one of the articles he linked to that stand out for me:

The Iraqis’ greatest fear (contrary to what those in the U.S. who are opposed to the war-effort seem to want everyone to believe) is that the Americans will abandon them.

(Emphasis mine.) And the realization came to me that this is just the way we do things in America these days. Haven't you heard (or had) this conversation before? The child begging his parents not to get a divorce, only to be told that it's "for the best" -- the best for them, that is. The woman begging her midlife-crisis-affected husband not to leave her, only to be told that he was bored with their marriage and felt he deserved some excitement after working all his life. The relationships thrown in the trashcan because the intense, initial rush of romantic feeling had faded away as all intense, initial feelings do.

I used the divorce analogy for a reason. Did we think that the way we governed our personal lives wouldn't spill over into the way we relate to the rest of the world? Not at first -- I am old enough to remember when the idea was that all this "liberation" would in some vague way spread out across the world to free every man, woman, and child from whatever oppressed them -- if you were dissatisfied with your marriage, getting a divorce was supposed to somehow, in a kind of butterfly-wing effect, loosen the grip of a dictator in Tanzania; where on the other hand, trying to work through a bad marriage in order to give your children at least a stable home life was the same as promoting fascism.

But toying with the institutions that hold a society together is the pastime of the rich and decadent. People who are a bit less insulated from the chaos of the universe are not as inclined to play games with their own lives. This is the stumbling block that our "progressive" elite keeps encountering, and trying with increasing ineffectiveness to ignore: the idea that other cultures take seriously the things we have discarded as "outmoded" and "backwards." Not just things like family and marriage, but things like honor and the value of keeping ones' word. We gave the Iraqis our word that we wouldn't leave them in the lurch when we got bored of war and wanted to go back to our toys, but some of us had our fingers crossed behind our backs. Unfortunately those people seem to be the ones in charge these days.

So I've mostly given up attempting to encourage support for the war. At this point everyone who can possibly be convinced has made up their mind one way or the other. When those of us who survive the next attack (and there will be a next one, and another, and another), we can comfort ourselves playing the "I told you so" game. We like games.

Update: I thought I'd add -- when we ran away from Vietnam like a toddler who'd burnt his fingers on the stove, we thought we had taken a pretty bad psychic hit. But the contempt mostly was self-inflicted -- if the Vietnamese ever thought we were lowly worms for cutting and running and leaving them holding the bag, few of them have said so. But this time we'll be giving the ex-girlfriend treatment to Arabs, who react rather differently to being treated like shit. The difference could well be akin to that of the ex-girlfriend who you always felt guilty about betraying because she was just such a nice, self-effacing person, and the psycho-ex-girlfriend who comes to your house and boils your pet rabbit. Oh, and you'll also have people like me, who are sick and tired of having their lives disrupted because of your lousy relationship skills. Get ready for some fun!

I have a question: why is Nancy Pelosi (no senatorial titles for you, lady) walking around Syria in a headscarf and long black robe? I could understand if she were in Saudi Arabia, where women who show so much as a flash of ankle run the risk of getting whipped out of the public square (close eyes to briefly dwell on the pleasant thought of Pelosi screaming and running down the street as mad Arabs with camel whips chase after her), but it was my understanding that Syria was a fairly secular society as Arab fascist dictatorships go. This is leaving aside the question of what Pelosi, who has plenty to do on these shores or so I thought, is doing in Syria in the first place.

(Via Instapundit.com.)

I don't know why I made that the title of this post. Anyway... gah. Today was -- a day. After work I ended up at the mall (where I pick up the connecting bus). I prefer to wait until the later, less crowded bus comes along, so I got it into my head to get my hair cut. There is a Hair Cuttery in this mall. (I don't fuss much about my hair. Hair Cuttery is fine.) Anyway, I told the guy to make it short, so now I look like Derek Jacobi in I, Claudius. Well, I did until I applied the hair dye -- now it's kind of brown. But good and short -- everyone else who does my hair seems terrified at the idea of shearing a lady's locks, and I always end up with my head looking like a huge ball of fluff after a couple of weeks.

I saw my next-door neighbor's (we share the front patio) young relatives of some sort barbecuing on their part of the patio when I got home, and I offered to give them one of my patio chairs -- a resin Adirondack style that someone gave me and I never used once. I already have a porch chair, and the two of them looked odd sitting on my side of the patio while hers had none. Now there is a chair on each side. So I have taken care of one pre-moving task (getting rid of an unwanted item of furniture).

I have basically decided just about everything is going to have to go. I will just take the smaller (the three-drawer) dresser, and sell or give away (if it doesn't sell) the six-drawer dresser. I need to go through the rest of my clothes and just get rid of everything I know I am not going to wear.

And so on. So much to discard... I can't wait.

Apparently the Brits don't really care that some of their fellow British are being held hostage by the Iranians. They just don't care. I don't get it. How can this not bother them? I didn't give a hoot about Middle East politics or anything like that in 1979, but our own Iranian hostage "situation" just made me sick. This was despite the silliness of my youthful "political" ideas back then (I was against Reagan, for instance, even though in 1980 I was still too young to vote).

Well guess what, selfish, uncaring, heedless British people: I no longer care about you. See that grave over there with the new headstone? The corpse of my Anglophilia is buried in it.

(Via Garfield Ridge.)

When I was a kid in elementary school -- fourth grade, I think -- we had our own mock presidential campaign, as part of a civics lesson. As I recal, Nixon won -- but grammar school-age children are much more conservative than teenagers.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

I've been meaning to say something about this upset blogger woman I read about who was (apparently) reduced to a house-bound wreck because some asshole spewed garbage about her on an internet forum. The reaction of the woman, and of her male fans, was so typical of the hothouse/protected-from-the-real-world upbringing of most liberalish under-thirties: observe how it's all about how "shocked" and "horrified" everyone is, as if no one had ever said a crude word in their presence before. Another thing that struck me is that apparently not one of her male fans -- and I presume friends -- offered to hunt down and beat the guy up for her. Such quixotic expressions of support have been bred out of too many males -- you can't exactly call them men; they are more like girls with penises. In a sense I can't really blame her for not wanting to go to a public convention filled with so many empathizing nellies, who would have been totally useless (except for maybe being able to dial 911 on their cellphones) were anything to have happened.

Jacqueline Passey actually has some good suggestions here. I'd add one more: set up comment registration on your blog and avoid web forums. The first item will keep the flood of raw sewage down to a minimum (I've had maybe three trolls in three years try to get on my site since I've set up comment registration and monitoring), and the second is because web forums tend to very quickly become infested by mouthbreathers, one-handed-keyboarders, and freaks who will do anything for yucks -- such as making disgusting comments about an innocuous female tech blogger.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Well, isn't that special.

Today at Large Nationwide Homebuilding Company, Inc., we got a sudden announcement of a "mandatory" meeting of our department.

Uh oh.

So, I learned that as of sometime in July (I have a date, but they've told me it may be later than that) I will be officially laid off as part of a company restructuring that is moving my department's functions to Tampa. They will then have new positions open in Tampa, but I as I have never been interested in living there (too much like Miami, bleh)...

So far I've been offered a generous severance package, and as well all sorts of help in getting a new job either elsewhere or in some other division of the company, perhaps even what is left of us here in the Orlando area. There will still be parts of the company in the new office, as apparently the building is leased to forever, and not to mention we have new projects coming up that somebody local has to build. Personally, I've been given quite the buttering up by my bosses, so I am hopeful. I am not too worried about finding a new job, either in my company or elsewhere -- if the last three and a half years have done nothing else at least they have reminded me of my capabilities.

Now you may be asking, my two or three readers, what about Andrea's plans for moving? Well, as of this moment they are unchanged. In fact, I need to move out of this neighborhood more than ever. This section of town is Loserville unless you want to work in retail or the airport. No thanks. Also, to catch the bus here involves crossing a highway to stand on the side of a ditch (I must take photos one day of my main bus stop, you will wet your pants at the hilarity of what sort of waiting experience the county administrators feel people who take the bus are entitled to). And to get anywhere but the airport or Apopka I have to take a connecting bus. Whereas the apartment I want to move to is a few steps away from a bus that goes straight downtown, with all sorts of office centers all along the route.

However, things can change. Right now I'm concentrating on getting enough cash together for the move. As things are going I think I may just barely make it. Then two more months of employment, and after that? Who knows.

Things are looking up a bit -- I found out about a position at one of the divisions of my company that isn't moving to Tampa -- in fact, it's in the same office, just a different department. I went ahead and applied. If the job pays the same or more I'll take it. I also got a call from a temp agency (the one that set me up at my current employer); they noticed I'd updated my resume on Careerbuilder, and have a position they want to talk to me about. If it pays more than what the new job at my current place pays, and is conveniently located to where I am going to be living, I just might take that job instead.

Speaking of where I am going to be living... I got the final approval for the apartment today. Yays! Now all I have to do is scrape up the money.

I wants it.... behold the Steampunk Keyboard Mod. I love the sound it makes.

(Via Ghost of a Flea.)

Now it can be told: it wasn't diplomacy that saved the British sailors from the Iranians, it was Christopher Walken.

By the way, it's 57 degrees where I am right now, at 11 o'clock in the morning. In April. In Florida. The high today is supposed to be 72. Did Al Gore take the kids to Disney World or something?

(All temperatures in the REAL MAN'S temperature scale, Fahrenheit.)

Okay, my day was as follows: I took the bus to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a set of those fold-up china storage boxes for my one good set of dishes. I also found one for stemware, so I have someplace to keep my wine glasses. That's all I bought -- I need boxes, but I'll just use the ones from the office that our copier paper supplies come in.

And now the difficult part: I have to actually start packing. And I also have to start separating out the things I am going to sell or give away (or throw away). I have also decided to advertise on Craigslist, so if any of you are in my part of the world and want my stuff, there will be a url for you here soon. I was going to buy a color cartridge for my printer and just put up signs with pictures, but I decided against the expense.

Anyway, that's the plan.

I'm doomed -- they have opened a Total Wine & More store in Orlando. I saw it from the bus yesterday on the way back from Bed Bath & Beyond (I went to the one on Colonial instead of the one in Casselberry, which is closer to me but I'd have to walk across evil State Road 436 to get to its new location), and it was all I could do to stop myself from getting off the bus and spending all my money. But my will is strong... for now!

I like to listen to the local jazz station. Unfortunately, it's sponsored by NPR, which means I have to listen to their news, usually narrated by someone with a snide BBC accent or a snide American-trying-to-sound-Canadian accent. And the sound of their voices isn't the most annoying thing...

But I have found a way to deal with the annoyance. I pretend that they are speaking in a foreign language. Occasionally they will say "George Bush," but it no longer has any context, being that everything else is gibberish.

Well, yesterday had been such a nice, if cold, day, that I decided that the morning would be spent at Crane's Roost Park. I also decided to eat at the Denny's there. (Nothing else seemed to be open -- either times have changed, or they take Easter much more seriously in Central Florida than they do in Miami.) So I got on the bus. The weather was even colder than yesterday, and cloudy as well. Denny's was already crowded -- I wanted to get their early to avoid the church crowd, but as usual I was too lazy about getting out of bed -- but I got a table squashed in the corner. I ordered one of their fat-and-meat packed breakfasts. It was okay, but they need to clean the stale grease off the bacon griddle. I would have lingered a bit over my coffee, but they'd seated a family with a hysterical brat screaming about something or other (such behavior would have gotten me a trip to the bathroom or the parking lot and a spanking -- he was speaking in complete sentences, so old enough to be told "you're old enough to know better") so I left. I stood forever behind a large family that was standing right in front of the cashier, only to have them tell the hostess/waitress that they were waiting for a table. A few steps to the left was the actual waiting-for-a-table area, and it was empty. Fuming, I paid.

Then I went down to the lake and walked around it once. It's a good-sized lake. Crane's Roost is a very "urban-style" park, as opposed to some of the somewhat wilder ones in the area -- with the concrete walk and the bandstands and so on, and last but not least the annoying piped-in music from loudspeakers. I wouldn't mind if they played classical but they choose mostly some dreary pop. I snapped a few shots of some ducks on my camera, and decided to go home.

I have decided to move the dining stuff back into the dining room, and the couch and other living room things back into the living room. Even though the arrangement is less comfortable it will enable me to get certain items gathered together properly. I've already moved my computer work area back into the bedroom. I have some pictures I need to upload to Craigslist of some items I am selling. I packed up two of the tea sets I am keeping. I put my old patio set -- the one with the moon chairs and the glass side table -- out on the patio, so I could take a picture of it (I'm selling the set). I threw out some Christmas decorations and some other garbage. And I'm exhausted. I sure hope I'll be done by moving day. And I sure hope some of my stuff sells -- I really need the money.

And now for this commercial break -- I've been moving things all over the place, mostly so I can get pictures of the things I want to sell. While I attempt to sort some items, in the extended entry are some shots from my day (click on all for extra-large size):

It is always a shock to upper-middle-class urban liberals when they venture into what they call "other cultures" expecting to find the sort of freethinking, unquestioned acceptance of the ideals they themselves hold, only to find out that minorities are much more socially conservative than upper-middle-class urban liberals. (And black or not, the young woman in the story is more a part of white, upper-class liberal culture than she is American black culture, or else she would have known full well what to expect when she "came out" to her fellow students.)

(Via Sondra K.)

The first rule of Right Club is - you do not talk about Right Club.

You see, this is what makes people mock the so-called "blogosphere": the way people form their little groups with their little rules and get their little panties in little twists when someone offers an opinion that doesn't follow their little clique's rulebook. Case in point: in the comments to this post on yet another instance of trash-radio talk show host Don Imus crapping on himself and getting in trouble for it, I dared to utter the Forbidden Thought that maybe Imus isn't a victim we should care all that much about, considering we otherwise encourage his sort of shit by continuing to make his profession (saying stupid things on the radio) such a lucrative one:

The real problem is the popularity of this sort of trash-talk radio. Until that garbage is no longer popular, we’ll have Imuses all over the place.

This brought upon me the ire of a person calling himself Hog Whitman:

Beats the hell out of having Al Sharptons all over the place. Imus is a person of fairness, generousity, and solid character. I know Don Imus, I’ve worked with Don Imus, and believe me: Don Imus is no rascist. (sic)

By the way, here is what this "person of fairness, generosity, and solid character" let fall from his yap that started the whole thing: of the Rutgers' women's basketball team's black members, he entered into this exchange:

"That's some rough girls from Rutgers," Imus said. "Man, they got tattoos ..."

"Some hardcore hos," said McGuirk.

"That's some nappy headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that," Imus said.

Hm. You know, I can't stand Al Sharpton, but he may just have a legitimate complaint here. Grant you, he is being an idiot about it as usual, but it's the sort of idiocy that gets him eyeballs, and any new "protect fragile minorities from any slight or hurt" rule that is put on the books in the future will be there in large part thanks to the rank stupidity of people like Don Imus.

And his fans. My next rejoinder, to this Hog person, was this:

Then why is he in trash-talk radio? No, I don’t think much of the genre and nothing you can say will make me like it, or much admire the people who get famous because of it. Surely someone as wonderful as your friend can find something better to do.

The existence of Al Sharptons are part of another love-affair Americans have; on the one hand we love freaky minority characters with weird hair. If he had a normal haircut no one would listen to him. On the other hand, those of us who are liberal love to be chastised by minorities. We’ll pay good money for them to tell us we still suck. In the Middle Ages we had flagellants who would go about whipping themselves for real and imagined sins, but at least participation was voluntary for the general population. Liberal race-flagellants won’t be happy until we’re all bleeding.

I guess I used too many big words, but he managed to grasp the idea that I didn't think much of talk radio, and I mentioned the word "liberal," which is like a red flag to a certain kind of rightwing bull. I got this considered, intellectual response:

Has anyone ever told you argue just like a drooling libtard? WTF is “trash-talk radio” and what does it matter? Do you even have an idea, or is it just anything you don’t like? FYI: most radios now come with tuning dials and on/off switches. The technology is amazing. Check into it. It’s a lot easier than trying to censor the airwaves and impose your blue-nosed puritan values on the general populace.

If you want to respond to this, please do, but answer some questions first before you head off on another nonsensical tangent, mmk?

1. I said Imus was fair and generous. He is. He’s raised millions for charity, and contributed millions more of his own, not to mention most of his spare time. If you can find a case where those funds have discriminated against any race, please state it. Nevermind, you can’t.

2. Where did I even REMOTELY suggest that you should like “trash-talk radio”, or that you should “admire” Imus? Would you please answer that one? Oh wait, you can’t.

3. I never said Imus was my friend or that he was “wonderful”. You said that. As I stated; he may be all kinds of other things, but he’s not a rascist. (sic) And FWIW: “wonderful” is a word that aging women and homos use. I’ve never used it to describe any man, woman, or anything outside of The _________ World of Disney.

4. Have you changed your dosage levels recently? (it’s a rhetorical question)

As I read that over now, I think the most bizarre thing about that comment is the strange criticism of the word "wonderful." WTF?

By the way, if you read through the comments, you'll see that I wasn't the only person to dismiss Don Imus, and a couple of other "right wing" celebrities (Bill O'Reilly, for example). But for some reason I was the only person who got singled out for special attention. Was it because I didn't make enough noise about TEH AWFUL PC RULZ BOO? I thought that sort of thing was a given, and that we didn't even have to mention in every time the subject came up, but it's apparently part of the right-wing blogosphere rosary ("...and on the third day, he was taken up in to court, and slapped with a hate crime citation"). Apparently you're supposed to chant your conservative bona fides every time you criticize a right wing hero, or else someone may "cleverly" ask you how you feel about Air America (which, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in the real world and not the freaking blog CAVE is or was a pathetic attempt of the so-called liberal leftwing media to create a "leftwing talk radio" channel that would be just as popular as rightwing talk radio, only they forgot that no one wants to hear a bunch of politically correct nerds try to make fun of Bush without insulting women, the handicapped, or ethnic minorities), and then call you a "troll" when you don't catch that he was "just curious about how you felt about them." Uh huh.

Let me tell you this, my children: this conservative doesn't grade fools and idiots by what political "side" they are on. Whether you're a lefty or a rightard, if I see you saying or doing something stupid, and am sufficiently irate about it, I am going to tear you an equal-opportunity asshole. If we want people to come to the conservative side (not the "right" side), we need to quit sobbing about what otherwise WONDERFUL people are the folks spewing shit like "nappy headed hos." I don't care how much Imus gave to charity. The company I work for that just laid a bunch of us off gives loads of money to charity. Bill Gates, who everyone hates, gives boatloads of money to charity. But I should suck Imus' dick because he gives? Excuse me if I decline.

Belated update on this post on the British people apparently not caring about their kidnapped sailors -- then again, what was to care about? (Alternate title to this post: Money Trumps Honor.)

This is what makes the constant effort to appease and coddle the feely-weelings of poor little Muslims so ridiculous: time and time again they produce a representative who gives evidence that when they were handing out feelings of entitlement and fat egos, Muslims got more than their share. The latest example is that of a so-called "Muslim leader" who is miffed about plans the Russian Orthodox church has about building a memorial on the site of the massacre of Beslan children by Muslim terrorists. But he's not upset because this memorial would remind everyone about what Muslim terrorists are capable of -- he's upset because "it would hijack a national tragedy."

No, really. Here's the statement:

"It is not acceptable to present this tragedy as the tragedy of followers of only one religion," Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis, said in a statement.

Yeah, it was too bad all those Muslim children were killed. What, Beslan is a majority Christian community? Never mind....

Muslims are the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. If you give them the attention they want, like all attention addicts, they won't go away -- they'll just act up even worse the next time. Want to bet if this memorial thing goes forward it gets put on the attack list of all Muslim terrorists in the area? Never mind that it's a memorial to murdered children. They're only dhimmi brats -- they don't count.

(Via Hoystory.)

Dear Would-Be Blogger Behavior Controllers: go fuck yourself with a broken keyboard. I'll write whatever the hell I want on my own goddamn website, and I am the one who makes the rules around here.

(The above-linked post of Althouse's is too long, but she's a lawyer so I guess she feels the need to argue and analyse everything. I on the other hand think that some things just aren't worth discussing. Kathy Shaidle's pithy, one-sentence dismissal of the blog nannies is perfect.)

No, nothing naughty, you pervs. I confess instead to a liking for devices that do more than one thing. For instance, I bought -- and still have in the box -- a toaster oven/griddle/coffeemaker contraption at Big Lots. The same device was about forty bucks online, but Big Lots had a pile of them for twenty smackaroos. (The Fifties-ish lingo will soon be explained.) It will furnish my future separate office, or beach cottage (which will be a real beach cottage -- a ramshackle hut that you won't mind tracking sand into -- have I told you about my beach cottage fantasy? I've become old enough to start entertaining those)... Anyway, I heart multiuse appliances. There was this Royal typewriter on Ebay that also had an AM radio in the case, which I unfortunately didn't win... But James Lileks has come across the ultimate way-cool multipurpose device: a car that has a record player in the dashboard. If I find one of these babies for sale (after I sell a few best-selling novels, or have an anonymous millionaire leave me lots of money) I may buy that instead of a Jeep.

Or a Miata... (complete change of subject here) I set up my Amazon tipjar years ago, and haven't changed the settings since. I was in a jocular mood, I guess, so I set up the thank-you notices to say things like "thank you for helping me become an Eeville Capitalist Running Dog!" and "thanks for helping me buy a Miata, bwahahaaha!" I never dreamed that anyone would 1) actually think I was serious, and 2) get upset that someone would dare to use money donated by readers to buy whatever the hell she likes (assuming I really want a Miata, which I don't).

Well, that shows how naive I am... a few weeks ago Kim Du Toit was kind enough to respond to my many whines and complaints about how unhappy I was in my current domicile by asking his readers to donate a few bucks to my "begging bowls." The Amazon thing is set up to go to a yahoo email account I don't check regularly. So I missed an irate letter from a would-be donater who was so upset at my "Miata" reference that he pulled his donation. I sent back an irate response of my own, but the whole thing basically has me scratching my head. I never changed the settings because frankly Amazon doesn't make it easy to do so, and now I can't change it to something more generic ("thank you for your contribution" or something) because people like this fool will think I was chastised.

In any case, I finally went in and changed it. It will now read "Thanks for helping me buy a Cadillac Escalade! Take that, Gaia!" That's much better.

There is certainly madness in the air today. Work was a perfect bitch (I responded in kind, hitting "reply all" to one of those stupid chain emails that gets passed around at work, so I could send the Snopes.com link debunking it -- it was the "John Hopkins Medical Center Says All This Stuff Will Kill You!" one), and then I got home, and to my everlasting joy -- okay, to my amusement, I got the first nonsensical hate email I've received in years. Here's the whole thing:

You are the perfect moral argument for abortion. If you were black, you'd be the perfect moral argument for lynching, and if you were Jewish, you'd be the perfect moral argument for Auschwitz.

Beautiful sentiments! And who was the brave, brave soul who sent this out? "Anonymous Remailer (Austria)." Funny names parents are giving their kids these days.

Anyway, on to other things... re the recent Don Imus scrapplefest, mark this as the first time in history I've ever agreed with anything Howard Stern has said. Quoted by Udolpho, the Stern says Imus is "apologizing like a guy who got his first broadcasting job. He should have said, 'Fuck you, it's a joke.'" It's not like his grovelling has done any good. At least a Stern style reply would have afforded us the amusing spectacle of seeing Sharpton and Co. splutter and fume, their self-righteousness confronting the brick wall of don't-give-a-shit.

Update: Kathy Shaidle's One-Step Program for PC-holics:

The only solution is to refuse to apologize to professional victims, ever. Even if they're right. I can't think of another way to cut off their food supply.

Sounds like a plan!

Email addresses you probably don't want to use in your resume.

(Via Transterrestrial Musings.)

It says something about my level of emotional maturity that I can sit here drinking a glass of wine at my age and still think "Look! I am doing something grownups do!"

He. Hates. You.

Don't mess with him.

(Via Dave at Garfield Ridge.)

People are laughing outside my window. Should I kill them, or just take an antihistamine? Leave answers in the comments.

Update: well, they stopped laughing, and I was able to go to bed without resorting to Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus. Or murder. So you're all off the hook.

The new excuse I've been seeing around the blogtopia from bloggers of (I guess, I can't see into your monitors) non-color is "I didn't know 'nappy-headed' was a slur."

Oh negro, please.

I guess these people don't come from the south, or from the city, or are under the age of thirty, or were otherwise raised in a bell jar. I thought it was common knowledge that anything black people chose to call themselves ("niggah," "yo' ole' nappy-headed fool," "bitch ho," etc.) as a "term of affection" -- or at least in mere joking around -- was still verbum non grata (or however you say it) when it came to white people. This has been the way ever since at least 1969, when we were taught to chant, in the experimental school I went to for second grade, "Black is Beautiful!" Anything having to do with the physical appearance of black people that was anything other than carefully worded approval was banned. And words like "negro" and "colored" were stricken from the Acceptable Use dictionary. With all the fawning over cheesy pop-culture of the sixties and seventies that is so fashionable now, and that in fact permeates Hollywood, are you trying to tell me that you don't know this?

What the feminist movement has descended to: the notion that making your husband happy = female subservience to the evil Oppressive Male. This sort of yapping is usually followed or preceded by blog posts and essays that might as well all be titled "Why Won't That Male Chauvinist Pig Go Out With Me?"

Money, money, money, money...money

Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
You wanna,
Do things, do things, do things, bad things with it
Well, you wanna,
Do things, do things, do things, good things with it

Well folks, it's that time of year: gotta beg for that mean, mean green. (No, the reference isn't to envirohugger concerns -- rest at ease!) You were going to use that spare cash to do something pointless, like buy a new tv or some food, but why do that when you can give it to me! I'll put it to good use. Promises. (Seriously: I get the feeling that selling my ratty old furniture probably won't defray all of the costs of moving. Though to my immense surprise my craigslist ads have gotten a response....)

Oh great. It's that time o' the month, and my brain has been temporarily been replaced by a box full of bees, or washers, or something that rattles and can't stay still for a moment. I can't even concentrate on blogs -- that's how short my attention span i

You know, speaking of aches and pains, I was just exhausted yesterday, so bone-tired that I nearly left work early. But I was too tired to actually get up and leave until I had to. I thought I was coming down with something, but maybe it was just PMS. By the time I got home I just cra

Squeaky the Ancient Cat has taken to sleeping on the surge protector. I move her off, she goes back and puts her butt right on it. I guess it gives off comforting warmth. I don't want her to set herself on fire (or me), so I am thinking of putting the heating pad down and seeing if she'll move. Then again, I have cramps so

Among the things I am selling is my television. I don't watch it, and the Netflix account is taking about $19.00 I can use every month to buy the cat's medicine (which costs about the same). I am going through my books because I'm going to sell some off too, and good grief I have a lot of books. I need to actually finish reading some of them. That's assuming I am ever able to sit still or hold a thought in my head for more than five sec

I had the interview with the manager of the closing department today. She likes me, though she is supposed to be "difficult" to work for. Well, she can't be any worse than the big loud mortgage guy who was my boss for over ten years in Miami, who was a Jew from the Bronx who had done all kinds of crazy things in his life, had an attractive wife, a good-looking son, three parrots, liked to wear gold jewelry, and when he retired bought a motorcycle. He was one wild and crazy

I go to Mark Shea's blog on the recommendation of Kathy Shaidle, but it's a Blogspot blog with wonky links, so you go there at your own risk. You may find something funny and spot-on, or you may find yourself confronted with Evil Mark, rabid Bush-hater who never met a Guantanamo-torture-horror story he didn't like. And then there's sniffy, superior, "sin makes you stupid" Mark, who somehow manages to make it through this vale of sinners despite the handicap of a giant plank in his eye.

Oh, and I am beginning to think I was an idiot for asking for donations during tax month (as I stare at the unfilled-out EZ Form and check -- yes, I owe, though at least it's not that much), but there, I still have to move on the 4th, even if I live on stone soup and boiled beetles for a couple of weeks. At least the insect life is plentiful down here.

Did I kill the internet?

I'm sorry.

Another fucking Canadian vampire tv series? What the hell is it with the Canucks? Kathy, do you have a clue? Help me out here, my American brain is not getting this. (Confession: my friends and I were much enamored of 90's tv show Forever Knight, which was also a north-of-the-border product. My favorite character was the cryptically evil yet somehow sympathetic vampire deejay played by Nigel Bennett.)

What can I say, it's a BIG bottle of brandy and I don't feel like lugging it to the new place. Anyway -- your daily Imus. By the way, word from the African American street, at least from my office (via a black coworker) is that Imus is just a shock jock, who cares what he said, and what the hell does Al Sharpton have to do with this and why is he putting his nose in this business? Also, she is nappy-headed, she don't care. I just pass this on to you, America, because I LOVE you and want to BEAR YOUR CHILDREN.

I forgot what else I was going to post here, except that I heard we were in a war somewhere, but that must have just been a rumor. Well, peace out!

Ten thousand books on the wall to pack, ten thousand books on the wall...

One of my next-door neighbors has taken to singing in the early morning. For hours. Very loudly. I would not have so much of a problem with this if he could actually sing, but he sounds like a cat with his tail caught in the door.

Twenty more days...

Oh dear. I'm sitting here waiting for a woman who was going to buy my "Danish style" cabinet and I'm hearing the gentle sound of raindrops. She lives all the way in Waterford Lakes (far from me) and may decided not to come out tonight. And tomorrow it's supposed to be stormy. (Today was, of course, a beautiful day.) I think I picked the wrong month to move in.

Oh well, too late now, even if I have to give all the crap I don't want to the dumpster or to Goodwill.

I have nothing else to do at the moment, I might as well complain some more. I had actually been thinking about running across the street to the Walgreen's to buy some bread (I'm out), but I don't feel like going out into the rain. Orlando drivers are bad enough on sunny days, on rainy nights they go insane. And it's Saturday night. I'm so pissed I was at Publix today and forgot to buy bread.

So I've been packing and sorting through all my books, culling the ones I don't want to keep. My God where did all these things come from? It's like they had babies or something -- the more I put away or in the to-go pile, the more I find. Oh good grief, there's another stray on the dresser. Right now I'm at the I'll-never-finish stage of packing. I hope my friend at least comes by tomorrow to pick up the computor monitor.

I also contacted some people who asked about the tv and dvd but I've got no replies yet. In any case I disconnected them so I could clear the cabinet but I'm so bored I just might plug them back in. Yeah, Miss "I Don't Watch TV."

My cats are very upset with me. They see me putting things into other things, and moving all of THEIR belongings (which they graciously allow me to use) around, and they know I'm up to no good. There have been several episodes of hissing and snarling at one another. At least I cleaned out the stinky litter box.

And on that note, I'm going to close. Later.

Oh -- and thanks to everyone who contributed to my moving fund. Every little bit helps! I found out that I have to add one month's extra rent onto the downpayment (due to my credit not being so great), so I will have even less money for the next few weeks. Great.

'Tiny Bubbles' singer Don Ho dies. My father used to drive me crazy with that song.

Well of course, the big storm with the rains and the tornadoes and everything blew through here and left behind a beautiful windy day. Just the sort of day I like to go on long walks -- but I am feeling none too great right now. I did walk over to Walmart to get some necessities (like Pamprin).

I also was able to get rid of the bookshelves -- a guy responded to my Craigslist ad and came and got them -- and my friend came and picked up the computer monitor and also an inkjet printer that was still in the box, never used, that a coworker gave me. I was also able to pack some more things, so the place is finally starting to look empty and packed. I may get to the bottom of my stuff after all.

Leftists are terrified of him, but pre-teen girls love Vice-President Dick Cheney. I leave you to make your own conclusions as to what this says about pre-teen girls and leftists.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

That's what I've been saying all evening. Because if things weren't bad enough, now I'm having problems with the dsl. I may just go back to cable internet when I move.

Oh yeah -- I heard about the mass murder by a "lone gunman" (I am really starting to hate the word "gunman") earlier today. And my first thought was "how the hell can one guy walk around an area full of grown adults, killing at will, with no one stopping him until several people are dead?" Then I read Steve H. and found out what the brief news segments I've read haven't bothered to mention. "Gun free zone," eh? Well, it wasn't today.

Update: a hero, in the old-fashioned sense that we have mostly bred out of people these days. (Via Tim Blair.)

People wonder why so many apparently meekly lined up for their "execution style" deaths. I don't -- I've had the same public school education everyone else has. Americans are taught to line up and obey authority from the cradle. Only the fast-fading grip of our native orneriness and individuality keeps us from doing this in every aspect of life, but I notice that nowadays we only remember our freedom to act when it has something to do with our personal pleasure (who we have sex with, what we watch on tv, etc.) When it comes to life-and-death situations, we form orderly groups. This can be a good thing -- when there's a fire in a building, the evacuation line is the last place you want people to do their own thing -- but as we can see in situations like this one, it can also cause people to rotely follow the only authority in the room, even if he's the one about to kill them. I'll write more on this later.

I am beginning to think that we should just shut down all of our universities for a period of time. I think we can get along without them for at least a few years. Private labs can offer spots for all that important "research" that supposedly goes on in these places, and all those unemployed academics can do something useful for a while, like get jobs picking fruit (as opposed to giving these jobs to illegals). All the students with "nothing to do" can find something to do, like join the military. All the "learning" that universities are said to provide can mostly be done at home, with a library card. And do we really need more badly-written term papers? As for no more college sports -- excuse me while I bite back my yawns of concern.

Anyone think my idea is a bad one? Do you really think we should let these society-undermining sheep factories continue on their merry way to oblivion, dragging us with it?

(Via a commenter on Mean Mr. Mustard.)

You know, even if this guy hadn't killed anyone this isn't the most reassuring photograph.

Update: yup, crazy as a shithouse rat.

Well, to make a long story short, I didn't get the job. It went to someone who spoke Spanish, which, believe it or not, I can't really do (except for "restaurant Spanish"), even after a lifetime in Miami. I can't speak any other foreign language either, despite my lifelong philological fantasies -- I took five years of German, four of French, and two of Italian, along with all the obligatory Spanish, and I can't speak any of those languages. Something happens to my brain when I try to speak out loud in any other language but my own, and my speech center just shuts down. I can conjugate verbs (on paper) like a motherfucker though.

But that doesn't change the fact that as of July 10th I'll no longer be employed at my place of employ. There are a number of bright sides to this: I'll get a nice chunk of severance pay, I won't have to work at what I have started to call the Madhouse, and, um, well there.

So maybe it wasn't such a good idea to move to a new apartment -- on the other hand, I'm not going to be immediately unemployed. And the location of the new apartment is loads better for job searching; the bus is on the corner instead of being two blocks and a four-lane highway away (and I can stand on a sidewalk instead of a ditch to wait for it) and it goes straight downtown, passing through the business districts of Maitland and Winter Park along the way. But I hope that by the time July rolls around I'll already have something lined up. Well, as the song says, "the future's uncertain and the end is always near."

The new consensus seems to be that running away is the New Bravery, and if you don't believe that you're "another nerd on the internet" who fantasizes about how you'd totally kick eight-foot-tall, steel-carapace-by-Hyundai, Korean Killbot Cho's ass. Me? I'd just be going to get help.

Update: read this.

And here's a run-down of the event. Sure looks like a lot of cowering and curling up and waiting to be killed was done. And I persist in thinking that there is just something wrong with that. But I don't blame the students -- this is how we've trained them to react, after all. Violence only begets violence.

Hi folks. I am sitting here wondering whether or not to pay my phone bill, because they turned it off. I am terrified of coming to Lease Signing Day and not having enough money to pay the downpayment. Ridiculous, I know. But I have been less and less pleased with my phone company -- most of the phone calls I get are of the "Hi! It's (Fake Name) and I just wanted to tell you about this great deal I have for Dish Network/vacation homes/mortgages/investments!" variety. I never talk on the phone. I might just end up getting cable when I move instead of rehooking the phone back up. I don't really know what to do.

I guess I'll just pay the fucking thing. Goddammit. I really can't wait until I've moved. Then I'll be able to think again.

This is probably just a coincidence, because I rather doubt that a 60 year old NASA employee could be inspired to go on a rampage by a 20-something killer college student, but it's odd how these things tend to cluster together. It could just be a trick of media reporting, though. Also a hostage situation/killing at NASA is big news even without anything else happening. (Or is it? You would think that the usually all-things-NASA-obsessed Orlando Sentinel would have this prominently on their main web page, but I find nary a mention of this. I did find out, however, where all the smoke that is making my throat feel like someone scraped it with sandpaper is coming from.) On the whole, it supports my theory that sometimes a sort of free-floating Evil Force builds up periodically, causing sporadic outbursts of extra disaster.

One final note. The article in the Houston Chronicle contains the immortal line (so standard to these stories it must be a macro in every newspaper office's Word setup), that the killer was "known in his neighborhood as a quiet man who kept to himself." Of course! Is there any other kind? I can see it now -- anyone with the slightest indication that they aren't frantic social butterflies will be bothered within an inch of their lives, just to make sure they don't grow up into crazed sociopaths. This won't help introverts like me, who know that there are two kinds of loners in the world: those who like to be alone because they accept themselves for who they are and are content with their own company, and those who seethe silently because no one likes them or appreciates their special qualities, until they finally snap and take revenge on an uncaring, indifferent world that refuses to center itself around them.

Link via Instapundit. Also, a commenter on Ace of Spades says he was a friend of the slain hostage, David Beverly.

"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all," is no way to run a blog. Just so you know.

Oh dear me, now I'm being compared to John Derbyshire. Kinda. Well, let me assure you all that I and the Derb couldn't be more different -- for one thing, he's some sort of math whiz, and I have to take off my shoes to count to twenty.

As for the rest... well, I could sit here all night writing examples to show that yes, people are much softer -- I can't think of a better word -- much less willing to go to hard physical effort for anything other than pleasure (I don't count things like the current fad for "extreme" sports as real hard physical effort), less willing to put up with discomfort, less willing to simply fight adversity -- than previous generations. It doesn't take studies by learned authorities in the field, all it takes is observation over a lifetime (I'll be forty-five next month, so I'm no naive spring chicken), and a general knowledge of history. That doesn't mean we -- I'm part of the flabby, lazy generation too -- deserve to die (a note I am sensing underneath all the snotty sarcasm); it means we seriously need to change our behavior. And yes, I fear that if we don't, we will lose everything we have gained over the centuries, because the strong, insane people we no longer have the ability to fight will destroy it.

But you know, maybe making fun of people like me, Mark Steyn, John Derbyshire, etc., will keep the scary thoughts away. Whatever.

(Via the Corner, further via Kathy Shaidle.)

Update: just found this courtesy of Rand Simberg -- see, this is what I mean.

Second update: well, I guess there are some blogs I won't be visiting as much, if at all. I don't know if I'll be able to appreciate their writing on other subjects, considering what they have chosen to reveal about certain matters. Well that's okay. It will give me an opportunity to read all those books I keep meaning to finish, like War and Peace.

So much in this article on campus killer Cho is simply ridiculous, but at the top of it has to be the idea that he went into psychotic rage because of the "mixed signals" American girls send to males. Do we really have to dig up that old canard ("Your lips say no but your eyes say yes, you hussy!")? The most shameful thing about this is that it is my fellow females saying this, including the usually robust Camille Paglia. Note to Ms. Paglia: spree killings fueled by psychosis shouldn't be included in the male behaviors to be admired.

It is obvious -- to me, anyway, who is no expert, just someone who has known more than one psychologically unstable person -- that Cho was one of those withdrawn, disconnected sociopaths who just snapped as these people sometimes do. Most of them just grow up into the "weird neighbor" who does things like threaten to set fire to your dog if it doesn't stop peeing on his fence, but sometimes they just go haywire. Since they are generally able to "function" in society, there really isn't much we can do about them except to stay vigilant. But vigilance takes effort and personal responsibility, so it's easier to just blame vague societal forces for "driving" the killer. Much in the same way the killer did.

(Via Instapundit.)

We really have no right to demand that "moderate" Muslims stand up against their crazier fellow Muslims, if we won't even contemplate defending ourselves against killers (because to do so would somehow be "disrespectful to the victims").

And now for something completely different: via Ann Althouse comes this article on a pill that suppresses menstruation. Of course there are the usual stupid objections -- "but that's unnatural!" Eg.: "We don’t want to confront our bodily functions anymore." And “Women are not sick... They don’t need to control their periods for 30 or 40 years.”

Well, fuck you, lady, what do you call feeling like shit five days out of every freaking month of the year? I call that being sick, and no amount of propaganda from the Womb Fanatics will change that. And to answer Althouse's question, hell yes I'd jump on that pill -- if I could be bothered to go to the doctor, and could afford to pay for it every month. I doubt that birth control -- which is all this is -- is covered by my medical insurance. It wasn't back in 2000, which is when I started taking the Pill, and did so for about a year until I broke up with my fiance and went back to a sex-free spinster life. And if you must know, that pill -- I forget which one it was now, one of the common ones with the five placebos you take one week so you'll have a period -- did calm my cramps down, and made my usual gusher of a menses into a demure trickle. However, it also made me fat and weepy, so there was a trade-off. Now I am only weepy one week out of the month, but boy does that week suck. And it's getting worse the closer I get to the Change... this last one was the worst, seven straight days of cramps and clots and emotional disturbance. I may actually make that doctor appointment, though I'm afraid he'll want me to get a bunch of tests first involving various cold metal instruments being poked up my hoo-hah. That's not as much fun as it sounds.

Back to the Womb Fanatics: my favorite quote is the Anne Frank one. Girls, Anne Frank called her period a "sweet secret," so how can we dare diss it?

I feel like making some pasta for dinner tonight. I've avoided tried to avoid* pasta since I hold it responsible for the thirty pounds I've put on in the last five years. Also it plugs me up better than Kaopectate. On the other hand, it's great comfort food, it's easy to make (well, the way I make it), and it's cheap.

Pray for me.

*Amended. Truth now!

I was going to drop this subject, because I've said all I can think of to say and my head's getting a little bit sore from beating on a stone wall, but Ace of Spades found this interesting tidbit, about an instructor at a school in Boston apparently getting fired after daring to "re-enact" (the article's words) the Virginia Tech massacre to show how the killer could have been stopped. There's not a whole lot of information in the article, and there might be more to this than a simple, typical example of academic PC bullshit. Or it could be that, as someone who held "pro-gun" views in bluer-than-blue Boston, this teacher was on the radar of his college's academic board for a long time, and they finally found an excuse to get rid of him. You know, in the name of the V-Tech dead.

Well, there must be at least a few students at VTech (you know, the unimportant ones who are still alive) who must be thinking "Shit, all I have to do is get shot to death and I can get my fucking degree."

This post was inspired by the great Jim Treacher.

What the fuck is going on here? I am so glad I no longer watch television -- I might have come across this made for TV gem and vomited up my skull.

And I thought the Seventies, with all of its "After School Special" movies about kids with the Problem of the Week ("This week: Johnny gets hooked on marijuana!"), were bad.

Sorry for the longer-than-usual hiatus, folks -- I've been prostrate ever since I heard how Sheryl Crow plans to save the earth -- one square of toilet paper at a time. I wonder how many people are going to refuse to shake her hand now?

Yes:

Here is a class declining in power—not just because of the Great Inflation or the influx of talented newcomers to Wall Street—but because, like our heroes’ fathers, they no longer feel obliged or able to be active participants in the modern world; no longer think that their traditions or conventions—much less their values—are worth defending; no longer believe that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” But retreat is a moral act.

Relax, it's just a movie. It's all over now anyway, even the crying.

(Via Udolpho.)

Nine days until I don't have to go to sleep listening to the 24/7 video game playing of my upstairs neighbor. It's not too loud, just loud enough that I can hear it. Usually I just pretend it's thunder...

Vice President Cheney has a few things to say to Senator Harry "Soy un perdidor" Reid. Reliable sources* claim that Senator Reid's reply was as follows:

"Ow! Ouch! Ow ow -- hey! Stop-- ow! Please stop-- ow! Ow-- No no -- not the nostr--Auuuggghhhh!!!"

(Via John Weidner.)

*My minions are never wrong!

In the comments to this post of Amy Welborn's on the Virginia Tech shootings, a commenter says that one of the students did try to take down the shooter but was killed. However, his classmates were able to escape. According the the commenter, this hasn't received any media attention. Most tellingly, this student is supposed to have been an ROTC candidate. (She has no direct comment links, do a find on "ROTC.") Does anyone have any links to any articles in the snooze media about this?

Thank you to the person who dropped some much-needed bling into the Amazon tipjar! (The tipjar doesn't tell me who donates -- so if you want to donate anonymously that's the way to do it!)

Thanks again -- I am going to be really low on cash for at least a month after I move, it looks like -- never mind that after July my employment future is uncertain indeed -- so every little bit helps and is appreciated!

Just offloaded some furniture onto a coworker and a lady that answered my Craiglist ad. I have a few more things to get rid of (like the gigantic dining room table, which is getting bigger everytime I look at it), but I think I might actually accomplish the goal of moving without being reduced to sitting and rocking gently back and forth for a year or so.

Well, as everyone seems to take the weekend off from blogging, I guess there's no excuse for me to not get off my duff and finish packing. I did have some bad news yesterday -- the friend who was going to help me move (some) stuff has pulled a muscle in her back and is also having an arthritis attack, and has been told by her doctor not to leave the house or lift anything heavier than a kleenex. Fortunately, the coworker who is going to help me move the furniture hasn't been hit by a car or had a meteor drop on his condo (yet). I also have a tentative promise from another coworker for some help, so I'll talk to her Monday. If I can manage to throw stuff out and not pack it in a last-minute frenzy, I just may be able to do this thing. (I have vowed not to create three "junk I need to sort through someday" boxes like I did last time.

I also have laundry to do. So it's time to turn the computer off. Later, people.

PS: thank you for all the monetary help -- I may actually be able to stock the refrigerator in the new place!

Well, I went and gave the leasing agent at the new place $859.32. That leaves $600.00 to give them on Friday. I got a good look at the building I'll be moving into -- it's nice and shaded by trees, looks down on the "courtyard" (the space under the trees -- unfortunately including a small playground, but I only saw a couple of toddlers plus adult guardian making noise about the thing and they soon left -- this on a Saturday, so hopefully there won't be too many episodes of screechy kids; I don't mind children, just ill-behaved and noisy ones). The parking lot is right next to the building -- it's not a very large complex anyway -- so there won't be too much distance to cover to carry things.

After much heat and waiting for buses I got home. But something -- the heat, dust, whatever -- is getting to me. I feel absolutely wrung out and beat, much too tired to do any more packing up today. I also have laundry to do. Well it's not getting done tonight.

I have decided that if no one will buy my remaining items (the dining table, the dinette set, the tv) I am just going to give them away. There certainly isn't any room in the new place for the things. I don't want to shove them out by the dumpster, so if the sinus medication (which I am going to take now) and a cup of coffee revive me I am going to post a sign in the laundry room. Oddly enough it is the cheap bookcases and the patio set that people really seem attracted to, and they've been snatched up. No one wants to pay for an old table, however expandable, and a cheap Kmart dinette set. (My friend loves it but she has no place for it in her apartment, which is full to bursting with their furniture and office equipment. Oh well -- cheap dinette sets are readily available at Walmart and Kmart and so on, and soon Ikea will have a presence in Orlando -- drool drool.)

This post is starting to look like my living room, so I am going to sign off now. Later...

I guess I'm a skinflint update: several thousand dollars???? Where is she moving, Arcturus XI? Not to mention, the ability to pay that much money doesn't say "middle class lifestyle" to me. Well, not the lower-middle-class lifestyle to which I aspire...

I still don't feel that great about packing.

But they should have.

(Via Charles at Dustbury, from whom I also stole the idea for the title of my post -- but that's only because that song lyric came immediately to mind the minute I saw the words "Pablo Picasso," the way they always do when I see Picasso's name.

Mmm... Rose Congou tea....

And you know, the dumpster is right behind my building. I don't need to pack nuthin'.

Well I'm sitting here and I came across this post on Protein Wisdom about some poor Asian A+ student who has been chosen as the nation's sacrificial goat to atone for the Virginia Tech killings. But I'm not going to write about that (what's the use? and everything that needs to be said is in the PW post anyway): I'll just focus on the advice of one commenter to another who is worried about his daughter getting indoctrinated by the PC-BS going on at her PS:

When you’re [sic] daughter gets to college, have her aim for the business classes. Much less moonbattiness there.

Well that's all very well and good if the daughter is interested in business courses, but what if she's in the position I was, in love with history, literature, and the humanities -- all fields of study which have been infested and poisoned with political correctness and multicultural rot? I must say that the teachers I had in the few business-type courses I had to take (an Intro to Economics course for my "core" studies, and a business statistics course when I was trying to be practical -- that is, when I was disappointed at the way my rambling, unfocused college "career" was taking me and was trying to pin myself down to something that would get me a better job) were among the most down-to-earth and sensible instructors I had. But I find business studies to be dreary and boring, though not difficult to grasp -- but the dreariness and boredom made it difficult for me to concentrate, and if the teachers had been dull drones I'd have made F's instead of the A and B I did get in each course. I will say this, though -- most of my teachers in the other, more airy courses that I preferred were also good, though they were often a bit more "odd" than the business instructors. Yet for the most part discipline and a concentration on the practical requirements of learning a subject were kept in focus despite all the different "cultures" of the students in a community college in South Florida.

True, a degree in literature or humanities won't lead directly to a great job in upper management, but not all people are meant to be upper managers. I finally got my Associates Degree years ago, and did most of the work for the Bachelors until I threw in the towel (for now), but I haven't been on a campus since 2003. And I graduated high school the year Reagan was elected. I hear more and more horror stories of this sort, and I think it's really unfair that the only way for a sensible student to escape the claws of the multicultists is to go into business or the army -- not everyone is meant for those paths, and art and literature are important to society as well as business and the military.

I was going to leave this as a comment in this post at Thought Mesh, about a home improvement show featuring "kitchens of the future," but I decided that it was long enough for a real post on my very own site. Here we go:

I've often been amused by these "kitchen of the future" gadgets that were obviously invented by men to conform with their idea of what constitutes both a horrible, back-breaking chore, and an item that is not really necessary to comfortable living. For instance, when I had cable I used to watch HGTV*, and one of their shows featured a machine that created new, clean dishes out of plastic. So whenever you had a dinner party, all you had to do was press a button, and you'd get the number of dishes and bowls and so on that you'd need, all pressed out of these disks of plastic. And when you were done you'd just throw the whole mess of dirty dishes into the machine, and they'd be melted down (and the dirty food bits somehow eliminated by this process) into new plastic disks, to be reused for new dishes when the time came.

Needless to say the device was a prototype and therefore cumbersome, but that wasn't the thing that amused me: it was the idea that a woman would be happy with a machine that made new dishes out of an ugly, grayish-white colored plastic, instead of having a set of "good" china, which she most likely got at her wedding after choosing the pattern from a special catalogue, and then somewhat more common but pleasing -- to her -- "every day" dishes, and then there would be the junk the kids ate off of. And every once in a while, when the number of chips and cracks in the "everyday" dishes got too much to bear, she would go off to Walmart for a new set of Corelle (which would necessitate an agonizing study of the five or so available patterns before choosing the one that felt "right.")

I know my people. This is how we are. You can't change us. The only human beings who will be thrilled with a dish-creating machine will be single men (married men will have no choice in the matter). George Orwell had a similar blind spot towards dishes and the washing and tending thereof, when in one of his essays he mused on what a waste of time it was for everyone to have to wash their own set of dishes, and wouldn't it be better for there to be some sort of service that would come around to neighborhoods and take away the dirty dishes and provide a clean set every day. A woman consenting to eating off some "stranger's" dishes in her own house? Unthinkable. True, he was having to cope with washing his own dishes during the Blitz, and dealing with some substance called "soap flakes," but the dish thing does appear to be one of the areas where men and women really don't think alike. (However, we do seem to share a similar dislike of washing up.)

*I am a girl, after all.

Good grief. The more I junk I throw out, the more junk I find. I just put a bunch of stuff out on the patio with a sign: "Free Books and Stuff!"

One thing I'm going to do: if no one takes my old videotapes of U2 interviews and videos from MTV and the like, I am junking them. To the dumpster! It's time to let go my misbegotten rock 'n' roll past. (And do you think the punk kids upstairs were at all interested in my old Cure concert programs, Calvin and Hobbes books, and such? Not at all -- instead they took an ancient crock pot that may not even work, and an old stock pot, which isn't broken, I just never used it. Go figure.)

Did I forget to mention I'm also doing laundry? I'm going to be dead by five o'clock.

Well, I unloaded my tv and dvd player on my upstairs neighbor, so for the first time in years this is a tv-less household. I will eventually buy a new one -- I'm looking at one of the smaller flat screens, and I'll grab up another cheap dvd player eventually. But the need isn't urgent -- as I've said ad nauseam, I so rarely watched the box that it was basically just a large paperweight, and the thought of lugging it to a new place interested me not at all.

There is the Netflix account, but I hadn't been making much use of that either. I returned the last two dvds I got back unwatched -- I just wasn't interested. I've done this no-tv thing before, by the way; when I was in junior high, I stopped watching television for a few years. It was easy back then, of course -- we only had one tv that worked, and my sister monopolized it. Her tastes in television and mine, needless to say, did not coincide -- she glommed on to those awful sitcoms that came out at the time that were all spinoffs of Happy Days and all seemed to feature shrill, stupid young people screeching at each other and getting into situations that real live person with Down's Syndrome would easily avoid. (Also, he'd be pleasant to be around, unlike the obnoxious people on the little color tv screen of my youth.)

I am exhausted, but I am a lot nearer being fully packed than I was. However, I have run out of boxes. I would have gone to the store but the sky was full of smoke from the giant fire in Georgia, and it was also hot and stuffy, and my sinuses said "you're not going anywhere." I was going to move all the untaken stuff on my patio out to the dumpster tonight, but I think I'll leave it until tomorrow. People may feel more free to take the free stuff if it's by the dumpster rather than on someone's patio, but I'm too tired tonight.

I can't wait until I move and can start being interesting again.

I really like the design of Sheryl Crow's website. Well, except for her uninspiring mug and the stupid ideas. But the artwork is nice. It reminds me of the better pop art from the Sixties and Seventies. (Yes, there was some wheat among the chaff.)

So that's what Udolpho's been up to. I will admit to disagreeing with him on one item: I laughed myself sick when I first saw PCU, and still do so every time I've seen it since (just a couple of times). There's just something about the way Jeremy Piven says "Sanskrit?" I am sick of Animal House, though. But I admit I have a taste for low, stupid comedies. So now you know, and you can lower your opinion of me accordingly. Well, at least now that I've gotten rid of the tv, and am about to suspend the Netflix account, you'll be spared my review of the entire first season of Banacek.

I really hope my new job starts at a more reasonable hour -- this 8 to 5 garbage is ridiculous.

INTERNET, what have you done to me??? (Good Lord, that Windows Vista ad is the weirdest thing I've seen in years. And I can remember "The Wethead is dead!")

(Link to Maddox via Udolpho -- even though I have The Best Page in the Universe bookmarked, credit where credit is due!)

No, I don't really want to pack anything else tonight.