Victory Soap v. 2.0

Test.

While the blog is being restored (some links to my September posts got stuck in transit to a new server), please go here for new posts.

Hi kids. I'm still posting (well, more or less) over at the blogspot site. I'm working on something new for this site. Or I will be, as soon as I make a few decisions (as soon as I am able to make decisions -- it's that Time O' The Month and I'm incapable of thinking right now).

Anyway, I'll make an announcement when I have something ready.

Charles is posting like a madman again.

I'll just put the fact that I didn't get my last paycheck in the mail today like they said I would so I am virtually penniless right up here, because those of you with delicate systems may not want to read the rest of my post. I have a new account at a nearby bank that has Saturday hours but if the check comes tomorrow I'll bet you the mailman won't show up until after the bank closes.

The day started off okay. I went to the old office building for the second session of the resume & job-hunting seminar my ex-employer paid for. That went okay. It was everything else that fell to bits.

First, I decided to go to Wendy's for lunch. The Wendy's is about a fifteen minute walk from the office. When I stepped out I realized it had just stopped raining. Everything was sopping wet and the trees were still dripping. But the sun was shining through the clouds already so I figured it was all over. Anyway, I had my umbrella. So on I went. Five minutes later it started to rain so I pulled out my umbrella. Then the wind started to blow. Like a tornado or something -- anyway, it was horizontal rain, and the wind kept turning my tiny little fold-up umbrella inside out, so by the time I got to Wendy's I was soaking wet.

Then my Paypal debit card was declined. Oops, thought I had at least two dollars in there. When I checked later I found out I was actually twelve cents in the red, because I forgot something I'd paid for recently. So I transferred a dollar from my new bank account -- I haven't got the new debit card yet, so it will take a few days for the funds to transfer...

Anyway, I scrounged up two dollars from my change purse and got my food. I had forgotten to tell them to take the mayonnaise off the sandwich but I was so tired and hungry I didn't care.

Anyway, I squelched back (it started to rain again when I left Wendy's, though not as hard, but that meant I didn't dry out on the walk back) and back to the FREEZING conference room where the seminar was being held.

Gross stuff starts down below...

Then, just as we were being let out, my bowels let it be known that they were experiencing an outrage. I don't know if it was what I ate at Wendy's or the bagel with veggie cream cheese and the cranberry muffin top that I had had for breakfast, but I made it to the bathroom and crapped my guts out. Seriously, I'm hollow, or at least I'm sure I've gone down a pants size. Also the hairs on the inside of my nose got burned off. (Note to self: avoid both Wendy's and Panera's from now on.) At least I had some Immodium. Oh, and of course it's also THAT TIME OF MONTH and since my undies were soaking wet the maxipad 1) wouldn't stick to the wet cotton, and 2) had rolled up into a cylinder that got jammed in my buttcrack.

I am not a fan of thongs so you can imagine how comfortable I was.

Then, on my way to the bus stop, my goddamn cell phone starts ringing. I have been having this little... problem with my internet service provider, BRIGHTHOUSE CABLE. See, they called me after I got my service started to ask me how everything went. Fine, I said, and went through their little survey thing. That was a few weeks ago, after I started my service with them. Then for some reason they called me a couple of evenings ago, to ask me how everything was going. I was in a good mood so I endured the spiel and went through their little survey again and told them everything was fine.

Then yesterday, I start getting call after call on my cell -- which is now my only phone -- from the same number. I was in the seminar and had the phone on vibrate and I only noticed because I happened to pick the phone up when it was vibrating and saw that I had "missed a call."

I tried to call the number back but it's the sort of number that doesn't "work" for call ins. (A recording comes on and says "You have reached a non-working number at BRIGHTHOUSE." That's it. No other number to call, nothing.)

So anyway I called them and spoke to someone who said they'd have the call-in turned off because I had, as I explained, already gone through the spiel.

But I got another call from that number. And another one... this afternoon, when it called, I tried to answer. NO ONE ANSWERED. THERE WAS SILENCE.

This was annoying. I called BRIGHTHOUSE CABLE again and got someone on the phone, but this time instead of someone who at least pretended they knew what to do I got a condescending jerk named DENNIS who took forever to finally admit that I had reached the "national billing department" and that they couldn't turn off the automated service and that I would have to call the local office. When I explained (through my teeth) that I had dialed the local number he breezed "it's the luck of the draw" whether I'd actually get the local office or not by calling them. By this time I wanted to climb through the phone and strangle DENNIS at BRIGHTHOUSE CABLE but I was still damp, my maxipad was still jammed in my ass, and the bus was on its way.

By the way, BRIGHTHOUSE CABLE has followed the hideous stupid trend of making the automated voice menu system even more obnoxious, useless, and time-wasting by making it "friendlier" -- it now asks you to say things and won't give you an alternative set of numbers to dial if for instance you don't feel like "talking" to a machine. Also all the menu options are now listed in this fake friendly voice that takes twice as long to say things ("we'd really like to help you but some of our options have changed" instead of "please choose one of the following menu options") because of insecure, in-constant-need-of-affirmation, no-life morons who kept complaining about "cold, unfriendly" voice menus. ARE YOU SATISFIED NOW, YOU HUG WHORES, NOW YOU HAVE A MACHINE THAT WON'T SHUT UP AND GIVE YOU THE GODDAMN MENU CHOICES UNTIL YOU'VE LISTENED TO A PARAGRAPH OF REASSURING PABULUM. And then it won't even recognize your choices when you say "yes" and "billing" and so on.

So anyway, I have had a rotten day and no paycheck in the mail. I was able to get to the bank and make a withdrawal of a few bucks so I could at least get the cats some food. As for me, I am hungry again but I'm afraid to eat, because I don't want to spend the rest of the night on the can.

The crazy people I used to work for just direct-deposited my entire last paycheck and severance pay into my old bank account even though they said they were going to mail everything.

Jesus. I was going to close that account. Thank God I hadn't gotten around to doing that yet... Now where the hell did I put that old debit card....

(Note: this isn't really a good thing. This bank fucked me over with about ten extra charges for overdrafts... one of the many reasons I decided to dump them, along with the fact that they have no Saturday hours and no branches near me. Also the checking account I had with them cost five bucks a month. Argh argh argh -- if I had known this it would have saved me some hysteria. The company I used to work for changes its mind and its methods every five minutes, so glad I'm out of there...)

Update: actually, I think it was just the severance pay check that was deposited. I am pretty sure they are going to mail the last actual paycheck. We'll see. I can't get the last deposited amount from the online account or the phone system -- they haven't updated the recording, and their call center isn't open on weekends or after business hours. I have to get that money transferred over to the new bank -- the bank it's in now is charge happy and I don't want them to get any more of my cash.

One more update: as I am no longer penniless for the time being (though Uncle Sam did take a kidney and a half out of the severance) I have taken down the "HALP NO JOB" bleg message from the side.

Well, I just filed my unemployment claim. It will take weeks for any benefits -- I'll probably have a job by then. I hope.

My current, tentative plans are to get a job in Florida for now, and slowly work towards my eventual move out of here. I have until May to do that (well -- March -- I have to let them know 60 days ahead of time whether I'm re-signing the lease or not -- but May to actually have somewhere to go).

In other news, I can't figure out if they merged my last paycheck with my severance. From my primitive figuring I don't think they did. But there was no paycheck in the mail, so who knows. In any case, with all the bills I have to catch up with the money is vanishing like ice on a griddle, so my fun party "severance pay vacation" isn't going to last very long.

The shock of the secular elite over the idea that Christian saints -- and any other members of that faith -- can ever feel doubt or pain is based, I am sure, on the common misconception that religious faith is kind of a cure-all for life's problems. Most of us -- whether we are Catholic, Protestant, or neither -- have bought into the idea that if you proclaim yourself to be a Christian then that means you should always be a grinning maniac of good cheer, or you're a hypocrite. Even atheists believe this -- witness Christopher Hitchens' gleeful "I told you so." A lot of Christians seem to believe this as well, unfortunately -- their clownlike turned-up-to-eleven happiness has certainly turned me off going to their giant video churches.

The idea that believing in God won't make everything "all right" in our personal lives strikes right to the heart of our belief in our own ability to conquer nature. Too many people approach God as if believing in Him will make Him our buddy -- "Me 'n' God, Best Friends Forever!" Then the light bill comes, or the car breaks down, and you're wondering why life still sucks. "But I prayed and everything!" It doesn't work that way -- God, if He exists, surely isn't a being on the level of a teenage crush or a sugar daddy.

(Via The Anchoress.)

Hm. Got lots of housework to do today. Yep. Lots of housework. I should get started.

Say, let's see what's going on in the world of blogs.

* * *

Come on, people, help me out here!

At the very least... It comes from Mark Steyn, who speaks here of "...the dismal curdled relativism" of the Flight 93 "monument" (nauseatingly called "the crescent of embrace" -- I feel my coffee and toast wanting to come back up just reading that), as well as the whole lawyer-strangled approach to "fighting" the people and ideology that brought down the World Trade Center. That "dismal curdled relativism" in fact explains most of contemporary Western life, choking as it is on cloying political correctness and the inability to name anything for what it really is. This is no way to confront our enemies, and our enemies know it.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

People are up in arms (no pun intended) at the way Glamour magazine apparently photoshopped actress America Ferrera's normal Hispanic curves out of existence. Well, what do you expect for a cheap makeup-'n'-celebrity-pushing magazine like Glamour. It's silly, because not only do Latins like their ladies to look like they've eaten three squares a day -- the tits-on-a-stick look is not popular south of the border -- but it's not even a very good Photoshopping job. As many irate fans pointed out, the arms in the picture look like plastic, and the neck is bent at the wrong angle. I suppose all they did was paste her face onto some other stock body image they had.

This is SOP for fashion mags. They've been doing this at least since the nineties, when Vogue attempted to make Bono from U2 both taller and thinner than he is in real life. As you can see here, the effect is incredibly bizarre, transforming him into a kind of Irish Gumby. But comfort with the real bodies of human beings does not make the fashion world go 'round.

Sometimes all you can do is stare in wonder at the moral voids some people inhabit. Behold one Bill Richardson, Governor (!) of New Mexico and candidate (!!) for president's claim that the US leaving Iraq right now will make everything hunky-dory, sunshine, unicorns with baskets of chocolate... How does he know this is the right move? Well, he's "negotiated successfully with many regional leaders, including Saddam Hussein"! Well, isn't New Mexico where they have all those bizarre New Age places? It just goes to show you that crystals are bad for your health. (Ably fisked by AOG, who has a lot more patience than I do.)

Kathy Shaidle has a new site. It promises to be awesome.

As for me, I've decamped to the house of a friend, who needs my help this week. I have my computer with me though, so I can continue watching the internet like some kind of omniscient vulture goddess.

I have a suggestion for the next time some "unexpected" attack on our country ends up with a swath of devastated urban area and dead bodies: don't clean it up and make it all tidy like we've done to the World Trade Center zone and the Pentagon. Instead, leave the ruins and corpses where they are so that every day we will be reminded of the atrocity committed against us. I'm serious -- apparently the rush to let us get back to "normal" after September 11th has worked a little too well.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Update, 9-12-07: or perhaps not. Still, this doesn't change my theory that our instinct to clean and tidy things up right away is counterproductive. You can see it in the bored, irritated reaction of too many people to the idea that fighting our enemies means we'll have to get our hands dirty. (Also via.)

In England at least, not any more. Personally, I always thought the metric system was for people too dumb to divide by 12.

Hi folks. I'm back in my apartment. It turned out I didn't have as much time on the internet as I thought I would this week. And then last night there was a storm over the friend's apartment where I was staying that kicked out their internet.

I did, however, get to drive my friend around in their brand-new car. This was the first time in nearly four years I'd been behind the wheel. I was afraid I wouldn't remember how, but it was just like hopping back on a bicycle. Better even -- I wasn't afraid of falling and scraping my face off on the pavement. I also was reminded how Central Florida is a sucky place to drive in.

So the next thing to work on is a car and a job. Of course, I either have the first cold I've had in ages, or a really bad allergy to something. Hopefully I won't still be stuffed up on Monday, when I've got to go take my resume and pound the pavement. So much for my "severance pay vacation."

Eat me:

You Are a Ham Sandwich

You are quiet, understated, and a great comfort to all of your friends. Over time, you have proven yourself as loyal and steadfast. And you are by no means boring. You do well in any situation - from fancy to laid back. Your best friend: The Turkey Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Grilled Cheese Sandwich

To all Grilled Cheeses: pickle spears at dawn!

The Sudden, Explosive Sneezing stage of a cold is so tiresome. Especially when you are eating chocolate chip cookies. (They do so cure colds!)

Mine, however, is sort of a pale gray-taupe. (The title is a phrase in the lame song that just came on the radio -- I have no idea who sings it*, having lost track sometime in the 90s of who sings what on rock radio.) Anyway, I'm limp as a bizkit (snerk) right now. The cold is reluctantly leaving my system, the worse of the symptoms being kept down by Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus, but I'm kind of tired and lacking in motivation. I have to go to bed relatively early because I have decided that tomorrow I must start job hunting seriously. Well actually my unemployment benefit schedule pretty much dictates that I am going to have to have some interviews, at least, under my belt this week. I don't really want to depend on the unemployment check, though; I'd rather have a real paycheck. I hope I'm not still horking up tons of gunk tomorrow -- that's kind of off-putting to employers, or so I would imagine.

*It was 311 (is that "spelled" right? who cares) -- the deejay actually announced it. Well I won't be running out and buying that cd.

I like to save up the fortune cookies I get from the Chinese restaurant until I have a small pile, and then eat them all at once. Today I had five, so I ate them with my coffee. Here are my fortunes:

-- Today you should be the leader. Things will go your way.
-- Look up in the sky tonight. Have a moment for yourself.
-- The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
-- Do not demand for someone's soul if you already have his heart.
-- The Tao that can be described is not the everlasting Tao.

Speaking of that which cannot be described, I received the following ambiguous spam in my email box: subject-lined "gkazfp," it read:

Seized from creation by nonentity,
Dismal, endless plain?
and the numbed yards will go back undercover.
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Left and Right, and far ahead in the dusk.

Well if you say so.

The problems with this puling, lackwitted sibling complaint disguised as an exposé of the shocking fact that the Naval Acadamy at Annapolis is -- gasp! shock! -- part of the military, start with the very first line:

I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, “Wow, you must be smart.”

Me me, I I, me me, I I. And it goes downhill -- if that's possible -- from there, continuing in the vein of "I was uncomfortable" with her brother's decision to enter the academy, and "I allowed" her brother to make his own decisions about his own life. It's always about them, their feelings, their ego, their overwhelming need to be the center of attention at all times, the alpha and omega of existence. This is the end result of decades of self-esteem culture, as is the kindergarten-level grasp on reality and fourth-grade-level writing style. (Not to mention one glaring mistake that I can't believe made it through the editing process without being vetted: "...everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was." If one must use this gossip-column cliché, at least use it correctly: it's "oohed and aahed.") This paragon of our educational system is majoring in Political Science, a.k.a. "all you have to do is watch CNN and read TIME and Newsweek." It's Journalism Lite, today's MrS degree for girls who want to be known as "real smart" and "up on current events" at their future doctor husbands' dinner parties.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

Update: from Ace's comments -- I swear I did not read this before I wrote the above. What can I say, great minds think alike.

Robert Jordan, author of the neverending "Wheel Of Time" fantasy series, has died before wrapping things up. This will cause widespread frustration across the land. As for me, I couldn't get through the first book -- I could see the writing on the wall, so to speak, and it said "All My Magical Children," with Susan Lucci playing all the female parts. I'm not a big soap fan.

Well, this day was a bust. This virus got me down more than I thought it would. I am pretty sure I know what the culprit was too -- I had just started using Nasonex for what I thought was allergy-caused sinus pluggage. Well guess what one of the major side effects of using Nasonex is? Yup -- viral infections. (Warning -- pdf file. An exact copy of the paperwork that came in the Nasonex box, actually.)

Anyway, I went out to get the cats some dry food and bring my driver's license to the bank so they could copy it (they had forgotten to do so when I was there last time). This was a walk of only a couple of blocks and back, and today was the start of a "cold" front (highs in the 80s instead of 90s), but by the time I got back I was exhausted. And then I decided to vacuum...

Well, cold or no cold I have to start looking for a job tomorrow. I have to at least go to the placement agency that got me my previous job and let them know I'm alive and available. My money is disappearing like ice cream in the sun, except with no sticky residue, so I can't keep on this way.

Wash your hands. This, by the way, is one of the reasons I don't want to get a job in a hospital or doctor's office. I don't care how much money medical receptionists make; those places are filthy hives of unkillable germs. One of the things I did last week was ferry my friend to doctor offices all over the place; I wonder if that also contributed to this (fortunately mild) cold of mine.

My rental washer/dryer has a spin cycle that sounds like a cement mixer. If it were not crammed into a tiny closet just barely big enough to hold it, the machine would have walked itself halfway to Tampa by now. (My apartment faces south-west.) Anyway, the noise has gotten worse and worse, so I finally broke down and demanded they send someone out here to see to the thing. They're probably going to tell me I shouldn't wash a load bigger than a couple pieces of underwear, but that's not what I'm paying monthly fees for. I do think that the basket shouldn't be so loose that just breathing on it makes it bounce around inside the tank.

Hm...

Starter kids, so you can see if the whole parent thing is for you:

"I was a Mom for like, two seconds." That's what Andi says to me today, her enormous kohl-rimmed blue eyes crinkling as she recounts her drive-through parenting. "It was literally an entry-level child-raising."

Her own parents raised her until she was 20, and she didn't want to condemn another generation to that hell. Andi returned Parker to the maternity ward almost a year to the day after she had given birth to him and vowed to be his mother forever.

"Oh, my God, it was so easy," she says, exhaling loudly. "I realized, I can get out of this, and he can get out of this, and we can get on with our lives.... It's true. I wouldn't have had him if I didn't think I could get out of it."

Parker was unavailable for comment.

This is just a test entry. The site theme folder seems to be screwed up somehow. I need to work on that. I just want to make sure I can still write a post.

Did you think that one of me was too much? Well... As suggested by an article on Monster.com, I decided to Google my name to see if anything damaging came up. I'm more talented than I realized. No wonder I'm so tired all the time.

Seriously: the links to my blogs are there -- I really need to quit using "-ass" so much ("fancy-ass," "lame-ass," and so on). But I just want to let my future (I hope) employers know that I am not an expressionist artist, an owner of Minerva Solutions, whatever that is, a wedding photographer, an actress, and I've never been to Seattle, though I could do to lose some weight.

If I had opened my door this morning, I would have found the announcement telling us that the water was going to be shut off today so they could fix a water main break. But I didn't, so when the turned on faucet resulted in nothing... thank goodness for hand sanitizer, that's all I can say.

Well, I really should go to the grocery store. Unfortunately, all I really want to do is lie down and take a nap. I hate viruses.

By now everyone has heard about the antics of UF professional moron Andrew Meyer and his starring role in Dances With Tasers. Must be something up there in the water in Gainesville... Anyway, here's my favorite take on this latest crushing of free speech, courtesy of Dennis Miller.

(Via a commenter on Ace of Spades.)

Update: not a whole lot of sympathy for the Tased And Confused One here. So far my favorite comment is this one: "Alpha males and Beta males have monopolized Naomi Wolf's attention for far too long. I'm glad she's finally considering the plight of the Delta Minus male."

More: Steve H. has added captions for the hearing-impaired. Also he has a radio show tonight -- I might listen, because this virus has weakened my will.

Apparently it's "Talk Like A Pirate" Day. So what. Pirates were thieves, rapists, and murderers. Why the hell should I want to imitate them? I'd rather talk like a British Navy captain.

Do I have to be conservative all by myself here?

I say build a chain of bacon strips and wrap it around the whole site. Then dare him to cross.

Or: will anyone have the stones to make a citizen's arrest? It's time.

Update on My Life In Bearded-Spock-Land: former Hah-vahd president Larry Summers was shooed away from a speaking engagement at Columbia U by frightened, delicate females... excuse me, stalwart guardians of the Rights of Women to Complete And Total Equality With Men, lest he make some poor woman burst into tears (or throw up). But they're going to let Ahmaninejad speak. For some reason I don't think the fact that he runs a country where women can get arrested for showing a bit of ankle will be mentioned. (Via Tightly Wound.)

I have this sudden urge for a huge basket of fries.

Bennigan's is right up the street.

{{struggle}}

I'm exhausted, as I went on a job interview today that necessitated walking long distances in the hot son.

{{struggle}}

FRIES FRIES FRIES WANT FRIES

No, Al Gore hasn't invaded my computer. But something just as persistent and annoying as the Goreacle has invaded my sinuses -- the cold I had at the beginning of this past week is trying to make a comeback. I had beaten it down to a mildly stuffy nose, and then this morning I woke up with itchy sinuses, sneezing, and dribbling nostrils. Needless to say this pisses me off.

I think I might actually wander over to Walgreen's and get some of those zinc lozenges everyone talks about. I need to not have cold this week for a variety of reasons. Those being:

-- I have two job interview scheduled.
-- I am going out of town Thursday night to pick up a car!

The car is in North Carolina, so I am taking the Amtrak. I've already bought the ticket and arranged for my friend to come by and administer food & meds to the cats. I can't be sick this week.

It came as no surprise to me that lefty-liberal Bush-mockers didn't understand what Bush meant by his "Mandela is dead" statement, since the only labored metaphors they understand are their own. But something did come up that started me thinking. This poor BDS-sufferer lists in the comments to his own post (further down -- there are no individual comment links) part of a list of supposed malaprops by Bush garnered from this site that is supposed to prove what an idiot Bush is. One of the first ones on the list was this one, supposedly a huge gaffe by the "pResident":

"As John Howard accurately noted when he went to thank the Austrian troops there last year..." --George W. Bush, referring to Australian troops as "Austrian troops," APEC Business Summit, Sept. 7, 2007

Ha ha, he said "Austrian" instead of "Australian." Or -- did he? One thing I've noticed about Bush is that he has a way of slurring sound combinations that are difficult to say. But so do many other Americans. I do it myself, or used to -- I grew up in Miami, where the prevailing accent is a sort of Southern/Latin mumble. I have tried my best to train myself out of it, though I'll never have the precise accent of people from California, for instance. Anyway, it could be that Bush actually did say "Australia," but he pronounced it the way a lot of people do, as "Austray-a." That "lya" sound is one of the more difficult combinations to pronounce properly -- and not just for English-speaking people. In Spanish it's rendered as "ll" but a lot of Spanish speakers pronounce it as "y." In my high school Italian class we learned the equivalent sound was spelled "gl" and the teacher had a devil of a time getting the Hispanic kids in the class to say it correctly, with the "l" sound included. So it doesn't surprise me that Bush would have elided over the "l" sound in "Australia." In fact a lot of Australians do it too, the word coming out sounding something like "Orstraya." (The middle "a" long as in "father.")

The way to avoid this, by the way, is to say each of the syllables distinctly: Aus-tray-lee-a. But in every day speech most people don't bother speaking so clearly. In any case, it's possible he did stumble and say "Austria" -- the way we'd know this is if he emphasized the first syllable, which you would if you were saying "Austria" instead of "Australia." But this is such a petty thing to laugh at, as are most of the so-called "Bushisms" listed here, some of which are standard self-deprecating humor and others of which are simple statements that coming from an ordinary person wouldn't even be remarked upon. There's nothing really awful, which supports my theory that the exaggerated hatred Bush has garnered has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the neuroses of his haters.

Yeah, I just watched most of this flick (I came in about half an hour into it) because it was on the SciFi channel and I've been whacked by cold medicine all day. I pretty much agree with the review, though it didn't say anything about the "WTF? Was that?" dud of an ending. I generally don't like zombie movies -- though there is something interesting in the way there's been a big run on them in the past few years; more liberal projection?* -- and I think Clive Barker** is overrated(I tried to get through Weaveworld, but after a promising beginning it got bogged down in the middle and then rushed up to an ending that was both chaotic and anticlimactic). But whoever actually wrote and directed the movie could at least have made sure that the non-zombie characters at least behave in ways somewhat congruent with actual human nature. (For example: when the characters are just about to be able to escape, the movie has one of the female characters decide to run back into the nest of murderous zombie kids so they can steal their guns and kill them all. That's one of the the clumsiest block-all-escape segues that I've ever seen.)

*If you want to see a zombie/demon/mutant creature in real life try saying something favorable -- or even neutral -- about President Bush to your liberal friends. Then sit back and enjoy the green-pea-soup spewing, head-spinning levitation, and blank angry-zombie glares.

**Apparently just a producer, but he lent his name to this project, so he gets at least part of the blame.

Update: oh, reality, you shouldn't follow my thoughts so closely. See what I mean? When are these people going to quit merely having bizarre seizures and go into full-on brain-eating mode? (Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Call me Sneezy... I am really regretting my decision not to pick up a bottle of Nyquil, because I'm at that stage of my cold where I really need to shove a pipe cleaner -- or maybe a bottle brush -- up my sinuses. And my left eye is watering almost continuously. It's all about the 10% alcohol, bay-bee.

Then again, I do have some wine in the fridge. I could toss down a couple of antihistamines with a glassful...

"Breaking News: Florida Woman Found Comatose Face Down In Cat Litter Box."

Or maybe not.

Achoo!

Article, blog post, whatever -- this is hilarious. Anyone who has worked in a cubicle farm with a terminally perky boss and/or has had a surfeit of September 11th media cry-fests should be able to relate.

My eyes... one of the minor irritations of my life has been the difficulty of finding a purse that is practical (as in, having a number of both large and small compartments that are easy to get to), comfortable to carry, and tasteful. Since my requirements are rather exacting I tend to carry the same bag until it wears out. Then I have to go looking for a new one, which means I find myself confronted by monstrosities like these. (Or rather, their lower-priced knockoffs, as I would never spend that much money on a sack.) Now I have one question: why on earth do women find these things so desirable? They are all, without exception, hideous. I wouldn't have these in my house even if I could afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a bag.

I singled out Coach because the ugly purse phenomenon seems to be especially egregious in the more expensive end of the lady-sack industry. Gucci is another brand that turns out creations that look like syphilis in purse form. Most of my purses end up coming from places like Walmart. Yes! Walmart has a more tasteful and dignified inventory than high-arsed places like Nordstrom's -- there, I've said it.

I mentioned my plans in this post, but here are more details: this Thursday afternoon I am getting on the Amtrak and going up to Raleigh, North Carolina, and getting a car that a kind person has offered to me. Then I am going to drive back home to Central Florida. This is possibly a crazy thing to do. The car is not new, but it is in drivable condition, which is all I require. It's also a manual shift, which I'm not used to driving, so it may take me a week to get back as I drive down tiny country roads in first gear.

Just kidding.

Anyway, back when I lived in Miami I would never have done such a thing. I'm not sure how I got that "incompetent, needs keeper" stamped on my forehead but I had become used to being told that I shouldn't even consider doing this or that because (insert disaster scenario), so I ended up doing nothing on my own. Finally I realized the trap I had fallen into, and commenced doing a number of things that the rest of the country considers normal but my so-called friends considered insane, such as getting a boyfriend, moving out of Miami, breaking up with the boyfriend, moving out on my own, buying a new car on a part-time salary (not such a good move as it turns out but that car was sweet while I had it), driving up to Kentucky to see a rock band just because I wanted to, etc. Also I found some better friends.

Anyway, I'm going to catch the Amtrak on Thursday. I've already got my ticket -- it wasn't necessary to pick it up but I wanted to hold it in my hot little hands -- and I went ahead and set the insurance up. A friend is going to come by to feed and dose the cats. All I have to do is drive back. I'm hoping to get back Saturday evening (I'll find a hotel room Friday night), but if I get too tired (I'm not used to shifting gears, so I may wear out sooner than I do in an automatic) I may have to make another stopover.

I don't think that Christopher Hitchens comes well out of this.

And oh, yes, he's an alcoholic all right. If, as a commenter claims, Hitchens drinks because "he finds people boring," instead of for the enjoyment of the drink itself, that's classic alcoholic behavior. Alchy's usually get religion in the end unless their brains go first (well, it must be admitted that sometimes both things happen), so Fr. Rutler wasn't proselytizing or uttering clerical wishful thinking, just common sense.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Someone by the name of Mike H(f)uck(head)abee is apparently running for some kind of political office. His campaign is apparently aimed at people with the IQs of paste. I just removed an off-topic spam comment on one of the blogs I maintain from some void-skull who pasted a link to this Mike Hu(nt)ckabee's blog. Then I wandered over to said blog and left the following comment:

You know what. Spamming random blog comment sites is not the way to get votes. I will ban the IP address of anyone who leaves any of your links in any of the comment threads of the websites I run, and I will pass the word far and wide that your campaign is inept and your followers incredibly stupid.

It hasn't shown up yet so they'll probably delete it from their moderation queue (all the other comments were fawning fanboy offers to give him blowjobs and have his babies). Anyway, you have been warned. I wouldn't vote for this guy -- the five seconds I spent on his site assured me he is just another bland cardboard cutout in a suit.

Home at last. My cats still recognized me. I have seen more of North Carolina than I wanted to see -- quite unintentionally. Let's just say that four years of not driving were much too long, and I have lost much of my "driving brain." I suppose it didn't help that I had to concentrate on gear-shifting, after about twenty-five years of avoiding all such activities. To anyone who wants to learn to drive a stick-shift: I can tell you the driving across (well, back and forth and back and forth) several states method does work. The cattle-prod method may also work but as I drove alone there was no one to manipulate the prod.

And now I have a car. Details coming up.