Victory Soap v. 2.0

Dominick Dunne is apparently a talented writer, but he sure has wasted most of his life being a pathetic jerk.

(Via Tom McMahon.)

Does anybody but me get the feeling like our new, fun "business partners" in China are trying to find new, stealthier ways to kill us? Here's a review: first it was pet food, then it was chicken, and now it's toothpaste. You know, the word "business partner" is often another way of saying "enemy." As another song about backstabbers (besides the one I got the title from) says, "your enemy/won't do you no harm/'cause you'll know where he's coming from." But a smiling face often "don't tell the truth." Our frantic desire to be the world's Bestest Friend coupled with our need to make more and more money is going to kill us all.

(Via KiSP.)

Added: I found this list. Wonderful. At least some members of Congress seem to have found part of their spines -- probably because they eat out so much, and who knows where restaurants in DC get their foods.

You know, I'm going to disagree with the anti-nanny-staters over at Dr. Helens on their conclusions about this napping babysitter story. The comments are all along the lines of "these things happen" (toddlers escaping from an adult's care and getting injured -- or in this case killed -- before the adult was even aware that they were gone), and that society has become too overprotective about kids, yadda yadda. I agree that society has become too neurotically overprotective about kids, at least about anything they may do that makes grownups feel bad (drug your kids to the eyeballs so you won't have to worry that their poor performance in school and discipline problems are your fault, wrap playgrounds in foam rubber and then keep the kids inside anyway, etc.); I disagree that there was nothing wrong with the babysitter taking a nap while two toddlers were in her care.

It would be one thing if it had been the mother. Mothers of toddlers get a pass because they haven't slept since they've given birth. However, if you aren't the parent of the child you agree to take care of, it is generally understood that you have an extra layer of responsibility -- and that since you don't tend this child 24/7, you should have had enough rest to be able to handle your responsibilities. The news story gives very few details, so we don't know if the girl (who was eighteen, not all that young) had some compelling reason for being tired -- such as she was working other jobs or studying for a test, or the parents of the children had been over-using her services. But that still wouldn't absolve her of the responsibility for the children, and no matter how much she may have needed the money if she was too tired to stay awake she should have called the parents, and if she was already working other jobs etc., she should not have been babysitting in the first place. I don't know what sort of charges should be levelled, but let's not start blatting on in a kneejerk way about "the nanny state" in this case.

(Via a rather misleading post of Instapundit's -- he made it sound as if someone got in trouble for letting some kids take a nap.)

I admit: I am not really interested in guns. Not that I'm not thinking of getting one right now... okay, okay, I guess it would be rather beyond the bounds of misanthropy to shoot the guy who is having an Important Hispanic Cell Phone Conversation in the stair well outside my apartment windows. But anyway, this is a really cool picture, and I wants that thigh holster, yes, Preciousss... (Though they probably don't make one in my size -- which is rather more than zero. Oh well.)

(Via It Comes In Pints?)

Am I the only person on earth who isn't just thrilled to pieces with Firefox's tabbed browsing thing? I hardly ever use it, and then usually only by accident. Whenever I do try to use it (or more often, find I've accidentally opened a link in a tabbed window instead of a new window because the options are right next to each other in the right-click menu) I always lose the tabs, or forget there are tabs open not separate windows, and then I try to close the (I thought) window I was reading, and I get the annoying "you have more than one tabbed window open do you really want to close all the tabs" message. I would rather just open separate windows and not have to hunt around for the tabs. I'm not sure what the purpose of tabs is anyway.

The new version of Firefox (2.4) has moved its tabs too. The "x" that closed them used to be located at the far right, now they are on the tab itself. At least I think they used to be on the far right of the browser window -- I told you I don't use the damn things. And one more thing: the new version had been set to automatically open new windows inside a tab, so any website that was set up to open links in separate windows would open inside a tab, which played hell with my blog QuickPost thing (I would pick "view site" after making a post, and my website would squeeze into my tiny QuickPost window). It was easy enough to find where this annoying option could be turned off, but I was not pleased.

Why are people so fucking stupid these days? Yes I am irritated today -- I woke up in a bad mood, and this sort of thing doesn't help. This is an addendum to this post of mine, on that babysitter who apparently (the brief news article didn't give a whole lot of details) decided it was okay to go to sleep while overseeing two toddlers, because see, she'd put them to bed and everyone knows that toddlers don't wake up when other people are sleeping.

Anyway, Brendan Loy has jumped on the "oh, it's just a tragedy, not anyone's fault" nannystatism blah blah bandwagon. Meanwhile there are two dead kids and the entire subject of job responsibility is left pissing in the wind. Hey, okay -- from here on let's not get upset if pilots show up drunk on flight days -- after all, they drink at home, why not on the job too? And I think I'll just go to work in my pajamas and sit at my desk all day reading blogs on the internet, because there's no reason to hold anyone at their job to any higher standard.

Let me spell out my objections in simpler terms for you tragedians: a babysitter has been hired to work, not invited on a sleepover. Just because it's only a couple of children and she was in a house didn't mean she didn't have to take as much care to stay alert as airplane pilots or truck drivers or even us office flunkies have to be at our jobs. It's about job responsibility, not sticking it in the Man's eye and letting kids be kids.

As for a fitting fate for this babysitter, I don't know if she should be jailed, but she should certainly be blacklisted from ever being hired to watch anyone's kids. Too bad if that hurts her feelings. She's at least alive to feel.

As regards the new fad among some bloggers I like (and bloggers in general) for podcasting and blog-talk radio and the like: sorry, guys, I'm not buying. I don't like the sound of the human voice in general -- I have to listen to people yammer at me all day at work, for one thing. For another thing, I've always been this way -- I hate radio news, I hate commercials, I hate deejay patter. Shut up and play the fucking song already. (What's worse is, they play the song, then jabber for ten minutes, and never say the goddamn title and artist of the freaking song. Who gave deejays the idea that people wanted to listen to them say anything? Whoever did should be forced to listen to old Howard Cosell tapes until their heads explode.)

Anyway -- sorry, podcasting blogtalkradio-ing bloggers, I'm not going to listen. I READ. Write something. Yeah sorry that takes a little more effort, too bad so sad.

Yes I am still in a bad mood. It will pass. But the hatred of talk radio (and the internet equivalent) is perpetual.

Old hippie vs. new hippie: this is hilarious on so many levels:

From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.

The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."

But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.

Of course he's never seen anything like this crowd. Denial is a river running through Hippie Heaven. Looks like the SS What Goes Around Comes Around just docked. All aboard!

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

I don't want to go to work ANY MORE.

Really, why do we do this to ourselves? Are all the sitcoms and cubicle jokes worth it?

My globular physique, anyway -- I've got some kind of fever, after feeling creeping suckitude coming upon me all weekend. Yesterday I felt better once I got home from work, but today is another story.

Anyway, I am dosing myself with chicken ramen noodle soup into which I put the rest of a bag of mixed vegetables, orange juice, and aspirin. I hope I feel better by the morning because I can't afford to take any more time off work.

Well that was your thrilling blog post of the day.

Question: what is it about politics that contributes to the formation of some of the most hideous words in the English language? I'm talking here about the word "cloture," which sounds like something to do with congestive heart failure, not whatever petty bit of political machinating it actually refers to. And how the hell do you pronounce it? "Clot-yer"? "Cloe-toor"? I refuse to turn on the tv or click on the video link to find out. Because I don't really care, I just wish it would go away.

Other ugly or stupid words often used when speaking of goings on in DC: filibuster and gerrymander. The first sounds like it describes a fat man blustering foolishly (and so at least sounds like what it is), the second a variety of slimy amphibian.

Just for the hell of it, this hilarious comment thread over at Ace's. It's almost totally unrelated to the boring political post it's attached to. Sample quote:

This is good. I am drunk and eating bacon. I challenge you to find a way that it is not good.

Also the interesting information that in California they are trying to give squirrels birth control pills, to control the population, because squirrels are a protected species in that state, is conveyed.

Massive storms and floods in Australia. The accounts of many on this thread are noticeable for one missing element: cries for Australia's government to "do something!" I wonder why that is... Readers, can you help me out? It's so strange, quite beyond my experience.

Well, another Monday rolls around. You know, I really miss the job I had in Miami -- well, not the job, it sucked, but the hours -- 10:30 AM to 6:30 AM, with half a day on Saturday (8:30 AM to about noon, whenever we got tired of being there). I got to miss the really bad traffic, and only had to deal with the bad traffic, but best of all I got to wake up a little bit after the crack of dawn instead of in the wee hours. I need at least two hours to really get myself going and this 8 to 5 thing means I have to get up at five am at least. I can barely think.

....

Be that as it may, I dragged myself out of bed late this morning so I'm going to be late to work -- to get there on time I have to catch the seven o'clock bus. That's better than what I used to have to do -- walk two blocks and cross a six-lane highway to catch a six o'clock bus. Since Orlando is getting as crowded and as full of crazy drivers as Miami this was not fun.

Okay, enough about me, here's more about me! While I am waiting for the next bus. Since this past weekend I've been broke (down to my last two dollars), I did laundry. I couldn't say that at the last place -- but I did it in my own (well, rented) washer-dryer in my own apartment. That's it for exciting apartment news. I also went to the post office to get a certified letter from my last landlord (just confirming that I forfeited my security by moving out early, ouch). As it was a walk of several blocks I tried to leave early in the morning, but it was already blazing hot and by the time I got home I was wilted. I still had cabin fever, however, so I decided to take the bus to the fancy mall. I should have stayed home... I was still tired out from walking in the heat, and the Millenia Mall is all the way across town (only two buses now but they are long rides). I just walked around the mall (I am broke as I said but I can't afford anything there anyway -- to me the place is just a sort of girly museum), but it was crowded with tourists and despite the fact that I was wearing a tacky orange and red shirt I was also apparently wearing the Middle-Aged Woman Cloak of Invisibility. This is the sort of thing that feminists rant about all the time these days, but I usually find being invisible a bonus; I certainly prefer it to my youthful experience of being the target of leering, drooling male desire. (This is apparently a South Florida phenomenon -- men up north and out west must be models of glacial emotional coldness to have produced so many needy, frustrated women who can't find dates or get men interested in them; I once knew a woman from New York who confirmed that the only way to be noticed in her city was to be totally glammed up, and she was shocked to find that in Florida sitting on the beach huddled in crappy old clothes -- which she did to paint, she was an artist -- was no protection against being propositioned by every passing male no matter what their age.) Anyway, I usually prefer being invisible, but not to the extent that people bang right into you.

So my trip out to south Orlando was some time wasted I could have spent thinking up interesting things to write on the blog, instead of this dreck. On the other hand, I got to see It: the Ikea sign. They are building a new Ikea out there. I can't wait -- I want my cheap Scandinavian furniture and I want it now.

In a show of unplanned solidarity with the flood-sufferers down in Oz, I was nearly washed down the road by a late afternoon storm. I arrived at the bus stop just in time for the major wind and rain to hit. If there wasn't a tornado nearby I'll eat my umbrella. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.

More exciting posts about my life (I clipped my toenails! Oh look, a new pimple!) later.

I don't know why I'm not Supreme Dictator of the World yet. Probably because I'd end up killing all the idiots who put me in power, because their rank, pathetic stupidity would piss me off, and then I'd have to start all over again. Much better to simply show that even though I am no intellectual heavyweight I can at least be proud of the fact that I am a tad smarter than both the pinheaded conspirators behind the inept Rathergate memo farce and the anencephalic cue-balls who still believe in them. A couple of these paragons of devolution appeared in the comments to this post, which made fun of the fact that today's smart liberal doesn't know how to do simple research before he opens his yap. Lord knows rightwingers have their favorite quotes that they repeat ad nauseum (if I have to read that Orwell "rough men" passage one more time), but at least when someone corrects them if they got the author wrong they say "thanks, I didn't know that"; they don't start going off into tangents about how All you humans and your stupid, stupid minds! How dare you contradict me! Old debunked "revelation" about George Bush that no one who has a full-time day job even remembers, much less cares about anymore, etc.

Anyway, here is how I would have kept the press in a tizzy of happy accusation, the Bush administration looking more nonplussed than ever, and the rightwing blogosphere in a state of perpetual (well, more than usual) irritation from knowing something was wrong but being unable to prove it -- from my comment over at WILLisms:

...all the so-clever minds behind this stupid human trick had to do for the truth of the matter to remain forever in dispute would have been to pick up an old manual typewriter (which were still in widespread use in the early seventies -- the typing class I took in junior high used manuals) at a garage sale or a thrift shop and type the memo up on a piece of old paper using an old ribbon.

So easy a cavewoman could do it. But not the Big Brains at Evolved Progressive Humanoid Central.

Update: I check in later, and find this incisive, brilliant response to my comment:

MS Word was developed to produce documents that were identical to those produced by the IBM Selectric.

Right -- before MS Word came along the programmers and users of older wordprocessing software like WordStar and Wordperfect could only weep in jealousy at the beauty of documents produced using electric typewriters.

I decided to pick a new look from this archive of styles for Movable Type. This one is called "Newsline." I like it -- it's old-fashioned, plain, hard-looking, and rather cruel. I've been looking for a severe, unornamented style that nevertheless doesn't screech "Web 2.0!" like all the other blogs.

Perhaps some actual content will be in here later.

Cover it all up with ugly, gaudy diamonds.

I must be the only female in Christendom who thinks diamonds are uninteresting. Give me emeralds -- much harder to find in a flawless state -- give me rubies (though I really prefer garnets -- a much deeper, more pleasing, at least to me, shade of red, and much easier to obtain), give me interesting stones like tanzanite, tsavorite, iolite, or alexandrite. Now those are some rocks.

Look who's back. What's next, Steven Den Beste starts blogging about something other than anime?

Link to A Big Victory (previously "A Small Victory" of story and song) and Red Sugar Muse via Matt; link to Rachel Lucas via several people -- I just forgot to say something.

Update: or perhaps, someone else will start writing again...?

WTF? This Conservapedia comparison of their services to that of Wikipedia chugs along just fine until the very last item:

16. We do not encourage anti-intellectual editor names that are attracted to Wikipedia. For example, the Wikipedia administrator who initially deleted the entry about Conservapedia uses the name "Nearly Headless Nick." The Hartford Courant observed that another editor posted under the name "The Ostrich." These names send an inappropriate anti-intellectual message for an encyclopedia.

Well, the first nickname is a character in a popular children's book, and so perhaps not indicative of the high intellectual mojo that this Conservapedia site obviously wants to demonstrate, but I am not sure why "The Ostrich" is supposed to be an anti-intellectual nickname. I could understand a nickname like Bubba69, or JessicaSimpsonsHooters, but "The Ostrich"?

(Via Tom McMahon's news feeds.)

Democrats are stupid! And their mothers dress them funny.

(It's a precautionary measure, so I don't get linked by CNN.)

Please rescue me from this quagmire-like discussion of cheesy Eighties tv.

On second thought (having considered the 70's-style crime-'n'-disease downers that dominate tv today) -- don't.

The again, considering what wankers so many of the descendants of those Irish immigrants turned out to be, maybe we should have put them all back on their boats. (This is what happens when people try to use cheap sentimentality to tug at my "heartstrings." Via Kathy Shaidle.)

I would like someone to build me a computer. I mean, really build me one.

(Via Ghost of a Flea.)

Or thereabouts. I've been in a kind of uninspired funk lately, as should be obvious from the quality, or lack thereof, of my posts over the last few weeks. Be that as it may, a thought still does surface every now and then in what is left of my brain. Sometimes I am able to lasso these thoughts and tie them down long enough so as to compose an actual nubbin of an idea around them. I will demonstrate:

Several rightwing (for want of a better term -- many of these people are actually about as "rightwing" as Angela Davis, the definition having been applied to them solely on the basis of their not wanting to submit to Islam right this moment) bloggers have been spouting off on how they regret voting for Bush, he isn't what they thought he was, and they are even having second thoughts on the War on Terror. The reasons for this seem to consist mainly of 1) the immigration thing, upon which Bush and Co. are admittedly obstinately wrongheaded (is Bush really that afraid of his Mexican sister-in-law?), and 2) many of these bloggers really do seem shocked that a war in the chaotic Middle East, which P.J. O'Rourke called "God's monkey house," would get a little messy.

But I don't really care about all of that. What stands out for me are all the former Bush supporters who say "I regret voting for him." Well, really, what does one say to that? It's hard to qualify the depths of idiocy... Does anyone but me recall the special crew running against him? It's not like we had anyone better. Anyone that had a likelihood of winning, that is. In the first contest it was basically Bush, or Gore. Just say to yourself "President Gore." Hurts, doesn't it? And then there was the second go 'round, where we had a choice of Bush, or John "Seared! Seared!" Kerry. We literally had no choice but to vote for Bush. He's no oil painting, but he's not completely insane like the other two. (Though at least Kerry has kept relatively quiet, and hasn't gone about the country selling disaster-porn snake oil like Gore has.)

Spare me the mea culpas. I'm not impressed. You all knew what you were doing.

Update: here's more from Mark Steyn:

Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever.

In almost all respects Bush is really a Democrat, old-school style. In fact, if it hadn't been for the World Trade Center attack, what would have distinguished his administration from Clinton's, except for more decorum? (Bush seems to have well and truly left his frat boy days behind him, at least, and also doesn't give off that skirt-chaser vibe that makes Clinton so bad-boy attractive to women and men alike -- in fact I'm beginning to think that a major reason so many liberals despite Bush is because they aren't sexually attracted to him.)

It looks like up north it's black people who are the fattest -- down here in Dixie it seems to be more white people are porkers. I'm not sure why that is. But though I've railed against life-controlling food nannies before, I can't but admit that more and more Americans are turning into giant, grotesque blobs. Including yours truly -- well, okay, I'm not so huge I need to be weighed on a loading dock. But I've definitely got that middle-aged spread thing going. A lot of it really is, I think, the fact that we literally eat more. When I was a kid you didn't get the four pork chops "stacked like pancakes," that Kathy experienced in one of our restaurants. We got one pork chop -- another was "seconds." And that was at home -- if we ate out we might get two, but one would go home in a bag. Though of course we didn't order something so mundane as pork chops when we ate out -- us kids ordered chicken (a treat in my red-meat household) or spaghetti (which wasn't as good as that my parents made, though). My parents ordered steak if we were at a steak place, fish at a fish place. Sometimes as a treat my mother would eat lobster, but I didn't (and still don't) like lobster.

But anyway -- even back then portions were smaller. People just didn't eat as much. Fast food wasn't very good, and mostly for kids -- but as a very occasional treat, not as a necessary part of a balanced diet. Also, burgers and fries were small -- smaller than the "small" portions they serve today. There was no such thing as a large anything except sodas or shakes. And at restaurants, you got a meal on a plate the same size as your plates at home, not gigantic platters piled with enough food to feed an Ethiopian family of ten for a week. On the one hand, the huge portions are great because you can take some home -- but then that depends on how appetizing you find congealed food reheated in the microwave the next day. (And then there is the fact that just about every time I eat out I end up getting the runs, but my rant about dirty, dirty Orlando and the unwashed hands of its transient restaurant worker population will have to wait for another day.)

Anyway, I had already decided that dinner would be salad and a cheese sandwich (one slice of cheese on whole wheat bread). Fortunately my lack of money is helping my diet. Help me lose weight! Don't donate! (Aw, just kidding...)

[Update: numerous grammatical errors have been cleaned up. My soon-to-be-ex-job is eating my few remaining brain cells. More on that subject someday, if I can bear to write about it.]

Full disclosure: I suddenly realized that I have been thinking, ever since my birthday back in May, that I turned 45 -- when I am in fact only 44. (I was born in 1963.) No, I have no idea why I have been thinking of myself as being one year older than I actually am -- I have never done that before, so maybe I have at last reached Stage 1 of Alzheimer's. (Stage 2 is sending a fax with incorrect information, finding out, cursing, making the correction, re-sending the fax, and then looking at the second fax and seeing that you corrected the wrong damn item. I blame global warming.)

I am still in a creativity-free downer, and when I'm depressed I always find myself listening to my old Eighties obsessions, so here is one of them: Simple Minds doing "Hypnotised." This video -- which I had never seen before -- gave me the creeps, by the way, not because it's apparently set in some sort of opium den, with the guitar player (whose name I now forget, Charlie something) wearing the most horrible suit in creation and having a very weird relationship with a pre-adolescent girl, but because in this video the lead singer, Jim Kerr, looks almost exactly like my ex-fiancé did back when we were together. All together now: EW EW EW EW. Life should not do this to me.

Ugh. Not feeling well. Came home early. Could it be the job stress? Completely empty bank account? Some weird virus? Stay tuned! (Note: if lots of nice donations hitting my begging bowls *cough* *cough* make me feel better then it was number two. If not.... well, doctors aren't free, not on my insurance!)

Gah. Off to take an afternoon nap. Maybe I just haven't been sleeping well.

Well I couldn't rest -- tossed and turned, though I felt crappy and tired, and then I had to get up and feed the cats. So I decided to feed myself too, to see if that would make me feel better. Ramen noodle soup and toast. The jury's still out...

Anyway, I'm bored, so here are some confessions about me:

Music: could someone tell me what is so special about the Clash? No wait -- on second thought, don't. It seems that every discussion about how modern music sucks has to have that inevitable disclaimer "except for the Clash" tacked on to it. What I can't figure out it why. So they made fun of some fictional Arab guys in "Rock the Casbah." So they were English. So what? They were communists or something, and their music sounded like someone throwing empty oil drums down a flight of cement steps. Screeching and howling like roosters on crack isn't singing. The band members were all ugly, but not in that ordinary next-door neighbor kind of way, but in a frightening, vicious drunk with broken teeth who doesn't like the way you're looking at him kind of way. The Clash sucked and I've thought so ever since I saw them on late night tv in 1979 or so.

TV: I miss tv and I want it back. I already have one picked out, I'm just waiting to have enough dough (and no bills). I'm going to get cable. And I'm also going to revive my Netflix account and rent out Season 1 of Banacek. Because George Peppard was the epitome of coolness in his pre-A-Team days. Also his girlfriends in that show were always liberated career women before "liberated career woman" meant someone who would throw her grandmother under a bus to get Bill Clinton's autograph.

Books: I haven't been able to concentrate lately, so I have a huge pile of unread books, some of which kind readers have sent me. This makes me feel guilty, which doesn't help my concentration.

My taste in decor: I have next to my bed, the way some people keep the Bible, a copy of James Lileks' Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes From the Horrible 70's. Most of the homes therein depicted are truly hideous, but... there are a couple that have, well, elements that could work. At least, that's what I've been thinking lately, especially as I note that some of the furniture in the photos is obviously mid-century modern stuff that only needs good upholstery and the removal of the nasty 70's-colored paint to be new again. (Observe the Thonet styling of these chairs. Think of how much nicer they'd look if they weren't the color of Tang.) That lucite furniture, however, did not work and still does not work.

But to continue, there are a couple of room scenes he mocks that I find rather less than half bad. One is a sort of sitting room/library that has a mezzanine -- it's a loft-style room with bookshelves that go all the way up, and there is a railed-off ledge for the upper portion of the shelves that you reach with a ladder. I have always wanted a room like that, though of course I'd replace the ladder with a nice iron spiral staircase.

Anyway, that's the end of confession time for tonight. I am basically waiting until I can take more Tylenol, and then I may go back to bed.

I'm still feeling overshadowed by some kind of bug (actually I feel hot and nasty and I've been sneezing and coughing), so there won't be any brilliant posts tonight. (I'd like to thank the person who donated to my Amazon tipjar, by the way, even though a corresponding sense of physical well-being didn't result.) Here are a few links to other things:

You have to shoot them in the head.

Our tax dollars working for us. The lamest insults money can buy, apparently. Not to mention the piteous cries: Stop emailing! Stop calling! Stop writing letters! Stop making us do our job! Bonus 500,000 Photos For Your Website! CD oopsie. (Via Grim.)

Indoctrinate U -- among other things, the inevitable result when you decide that everyone has a right to a college education. There's a petition being circulated to get this movie into as many local theaters as possible. Though I have no intention of seeing it in a theater, or any other movie (I've stuck to enough soda-encrusted floors, had enough Big Hairs sit directly in front of me, gotten enough Theater Arthritis from those damned chairs, had enough tots wailing and kicking the back of my seat to last several lifetimes), I'm passing this along in the hopes it will discourage more parents from sending their average, unimaginative, minimally talented offspring to the halls of academe instead of to vocational school or marriage where they really belong.

Kathy Shaidle has had it with ecclesiastical bureaucracy shell games. Well, I say congratulations. I wish I could buy a wedding present but I still don't have a new job, they aren't going to give me my severance pay until the end of July, and I am trying to figure out how to make three dollars last three weeks.

Well that's all for now. Off to find something to eat, and then perhaps I will collapse.

I was going to put this in a comment on Hog On Ice, but Steve H was having problems with his server or something. Also he has a tendency to remove posts if he thinks they will get too much attention of a certain kind. Anyway, he states that there is a lot of hostility towards conservative pundits. No kidding. But he seems to accept Dennis the Peasant's claim that it is because there are so many awful lady conservatives out there. If only we were cuter, and had nice manners that deferred to big, bitter men! Or something. Anyway, here is what I was going to say:

Dennis the Peasant isn't funny anymore. I guess his bad past experiences have embittered him -- I sympathize, but that doesn't make me want to read his blog. It takes real talent to be nasty and readable -- just slamming out the insults one after another gets kind of wearing after a while; you start to think "Well, okay, what does he approve of?" Oh well, c'est la vie -- he has lots of other readers who can't get enough of him complaining about some woman blogger with big boobs.

That being said -- Fox's crop of female personalities does seem to be mostly barrel-bottom scrapings, though I don't know that it's just Fox who does this. At work our break room has a tv that will only play CNN (because that's all our cheap company will pay for) and the female anchors and reporters they have are no oil paintings either. And what is with the cawing, ear-grating, hectoring voices all these females have? Whatever happened to "tv voice" -- learning to modulate your tone and delivery so that it is pleasing to the audience? Or have we all become inured -- or heaven forfend, even fond of -- the accents of trailer trash and New York street talk? All these women sound like they were raised in an alley among the cats, and the men aren't much better. And it cuts across ideological lines. (By the way, Michelle Malkin, despite what Dennis says about her, is one of the few that still has a rather pleasing voice, or at least it isn't so hideous on the ear as some of those other women. And she doesn't put on a pound of frosted blue eye shadow --!-- like Debbie Schlussel does. (See the picture on Dennis the Peasant's site -- ::shudder::.)

Anyway, I haven't willingly watched the news in years, except for glimpses, so I have no dog in this hunt. I also don't care to become a "conservative pundit" -- whatever that is. Most people with that label seem about as conservative as Hillary Clinton -- scratch most consie spokesbeasts and you get someone who shrieks like a scalded female anchor at the very idea of being deprived of internet porn -- "let the Free Market™ decide (please god no i need my hotsexxybergenbelsenguards.com)!" -- or sees nothing wrong with human cloning or pipe-dream schemes to extend human life (those who can pay for the process anyway) indefinitely. Or else they are sour isolationists who don't want any more of that furrin' stuff on our shores (the position most attractive to me, I admit); or else they are from the Happy, Unthinking Protestant contingent of Christianity, who reject all facts that threaten their pink-and-gold worldview of Jesus as a sort of Extra-Strength Cleanser that will get your whites brighter. I must admit to disappointment in most "conservatives" today -- especially when the klieg lights hit them, they turn into just a different shade of liberal.

Hi folks! It's time again for a commercial interruption, as I shamelessly beg for money even though I don't have twenty-two thousand episodes of Antique Roadshow to threaten you with. I could always threaten to shoot my cats (and eat them), but I get the feeling that would only bring me applause and recipes...

So anyway, I've got three dollars in my pocketbook. Let's make it four!

More posts about real subjects waiting in the wings. I promises...

Update: well, I should have known better than to schedule anything on a weekend, when the Blogoverse just shuts down. Hey people, this isn't work, it's pleasure... Of course, not everyone lives in Florida; I've heard there are some places where you can actually go outside in the summer.

I've got a lot of stuff to do today, so posting will have to wait until later. The fundraiser is still on -- this is going to be a tough month until my grasping soon-to-be-ex-employers release my severance pay at the end of July. Which they are going to mail to me -- and the post office in these parts isn't to be counted on (they get bills and notices of overdrawn accounts to you in jig time, but checks and new debit cards are delivered at a much more leisurely pace). I do actually have some things I want to post on that aren't about my boring life, but they will have to wait.

Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings has a few trolls who are real pieces of work. One of them had been busy slamming Southerners. The discussion was actually about the Democrats' current complaint -- that calling their party "the Democrat Party" instead of the "Democratic Party" was an insult. This reminded me of the way Arabs are always screeching about the most ridiculous things, that no normal person would get insulted over:

So are you saying that Democraticistics are as anal-retentively touchy as Arabs are?

Mr. Clever Troll responded with:

As opposed to Southerners?

Here is what I said in reply:

Oddly enough, both cultures are honor/shame cultures. Florence King pointed out that the South had such a checkered past that it evolved cultural attitudes to compensate for its basic lawlessness -- sure, there was slavery, so the way to be a good person was to be kind to slaves. And so on. So despite the fact that you meant it as an insult, I do acknowledge that there are elements of Southern American culture that are similar to traditional Arab culture.

Which is why, considering how much compassionate, progressive, liberal Northerners hate the South and use it as their all-purpose whipping boy for everything that is bad about America, it is so odd that* they are willing to give Arabs (and other Muslims from similar cultures) a pass on their behavior.

If only American Southerners were all sexy exotic foreigners instead of lumpish, Northern-European-descended white people. Oh, and no blacks ever seem to actually live in the South and participate in the culture here; they're just trapped in "virtual" slavery, what they all really want is to move to cool, non-prejudiced places like New York where the n-word is unknown and they can live in peace and equality. (I had earlier pointed out that the most egregious examples of racism I'd ever seen had come from people from up north. Troll didn't like that much.)

Okay, I'm really out of here now. Don't forget the fundraiser!

*I forgot to put that in the original post too. Oh well, it's an old post.

Did I say I'd put up more posts later? Ha ha, I didn't say how much later! Seriously, I am that exhausted -- I went to the grocery store because I was down to one packet of ramen noodles. How much did I spend? Let's just say I hope that they put that kidney they removed to good use... So I'm a little sore. Seriously, I have a sinus headache from hell, obviously I'm not entirely over whatever virus I have been fighting off, or maybe it's from the heat -- I stopped by Target to see if their merchandise was as hideous as it's been for the past few years and if their clothes are still designed for tiny stick women (answer: no and yes), and I went through the plant section, which is semi-outside under a mesh-roofed enclosure, and I swear it must have been over 100 degrees in there. The plants they had for sale were visibly wilting as I watched.

Anyway, I'm exhausted, and tomorrow the next-to-the-last full work week starts, so off to bed I go. (Still having the fundraiser -- thanks to all who contributed, I was able to buy food with your help. And not just cat food either.)

She wants me to choose!

Personal update: I've got some kind of fever again -- all day I felt like I've been in an oven set on, oh I don't know, the lowest temperature, but still much hotter than normal. And I spend most of my day in our freezing office, so it can't be the Florida heat -- unless as I age I am losing my ability to adjust to it. Either I've got a virus or I have been having some sort of extended hot flash. Tylenol doesn't seem to help at all. I've also been very thirsty, and drinking tons of water. My boss has been out sick for the past two days with something, so maybe I caught it.

(PS: thanks for everyone who has donated to my fundraiser. Only thirteen days to go before I am on the (job hunting) road again!)

I WANT it. Please, please can't I have it? It's just big enough for me and the laptop, and the cats can each have a bunk of their own. Now, all I have to do is come up with I guess a zillion dollars. Drool...

(Via a commenter on The Other Side.)

Well, this Friday can fuck right off.

Glenn Reynolds gives a normal, non-partisan, even-handed and cogent interview on the benefits and liabilities of the political use of the internet to Mother Jones magazine. Mother Jones' comment hordes react like a cage full of monkeys to the sight of a rival monkey. These are people who think that you're a fascist if you... agree with them on most things, actually. The difference between Glenn Reynolds' libertarian tolerance and the nutty ideals of the moonbattish left is only a few millimeters thick. Maybe he wants less government interference than the left does; at the end of the day they are still shoving us down the same slippery slope. Still, I'd rather have Reynolds' ilk running the country (at least no one will be forced to get the immortality implants and the titanium genitalia) than the drooling retards who have taken over the Democrats. (The fact that these idiots are also calling Reynolds "racist" is so hilariously stupid it's not even worth commenting on.)

(Via Mr. Bingley commenting at Coalition of the Swilling.)

A random blast from the past: I could never understand what product or service Enron was pushing (I still can't, and I don't understand exactly what they did wrong either, and please don't explain -- the subject just makes my head hurt), but I do know that I hated them forever because of this fucking annoying, incomprehensibly weird commercial.

I'm still trying to raise funds. The situation has become slightly more acute owing to the fact that a certain loan shark financial institution chose to renege on a payment agreement and cash a check that I couldn't afford to come out of my bank account right yet, with the result being I will have to pay my rent late. Also, it looks like my plans to take at least one week -- one measly little week -- off have been trashed. Of course, this assumes that I will be able to find a job right away...

Anyway, any help you can give, blah blah blah. I need to get working on that Best-Selling Novel...