me and my little iPlod

Like a mole in the tunnels, I'd been walking for a year-and-a-half before I had any rhythm, I mean, music. I don't mind walking to the thoughts in my head but they take a lot of taming and can't keep a beat for shit.

For Jesus' birthday I got one of those Apple things, you know the cute ones with the silhouette marketing campaign? An iPlod Shuffle. Yes. The people at Apple can thank me anytime. Because when you return from the holidays, logy, sated and out-of-practice, those first few weeks of The Return to Walking are not, um, peppy. Or strident. Or bouncy. They fall somewhere between a plod and shuffle. Suddenly I'm in that verdant valley between vocabulary and...v's be damned, design. Ah.

It's been 2 months or so since iPlod has been clipped to my bosom. I love iPlod dearly. (The accompanying ear duds, not so much. Don't fit my ear swirls quite right.) Anyway, I have been thinking about walking and musical beats. Like which time (4/4, 3/4, etc.) best matches my epiphenitan gait? Nike & Apple have come up with one fascinating, albeit expensive solution.

I, on the other–more frugal–hand, have begun to adjust my stride. It doesn't work with every song but works with quite a few of them. And musicians? Don't keep fucking with the meter within a song, I'm trying to not to look so white here.

The adjustment probably makes me walk funny anyhow but you know how much that's going to keep me up at night...iPlod, however, is going to have to learn to deal with embarrassment.

P.S. This is the second post in a week that talks about exercise. I will not go on again about this for a while. I find excessive references to exercise/diet tedious as all hell. This is borderline excessive. It's why my bloglob is not about one issue. I find it 2-dimensional; it bores the precious. So enough with the tunnels. On to glass-blowing or blow jobs or nose jobs or snotty noses...

sufferin' succotash

Okay, all I have left are the carrots and corn. I always eat those chalky lima beans first to get them out of the way.

An epiphenita, then: it seems that everyone around me is on anti-anxiety meds. Not judging, just noting. So when I start to torque out about something that seems...you know, like normal shit, I look around and everyone else seems so...fucking Calm. Placid. Unruffled. Being around people who have their anxiety medicated out, makes me feel a wee bit crazy. How's that for a side effect?
--------------
Oh, look a stray pea: my coworker shared this with me a while ago and I've forgotten about it until now. If you do a book review of the Bible, don't forget to include this (but space down below the fold so you won't ruin the ending for those who haven't read it).

NEW TESTAMENT SPOILER ALERT: Jesus dies on page 43.
--------------
I always feel like I have to apologize reassure people that my stress over the last couple of glob posts is nothing to worry about. There are things that I have been doing and things that I haven't been doing that contribute. One of the main ones is that I haven't been doing my daily must-control-fist-of-death walk. It is an unexpected form of therapy for the exercise-hater than I am. It also gets me away from that mind-numbing cube with the staring dual computer screens. Like big rectangular eyes boring into my soul...ha. Kidding. I can outstare them on my worst days.

Anyway, I resumed my constitutional today and have two observations (and feel much better).

1) I am the poster child for exercise discouragement. I do this walking thing five days a week (when the rare meeting or vacation doesn't interfere) and return to my cube in a lather. Seriously, be grossed out, I don't care. I'm a head sweater and I really push myself. And almost two years later, I don't look significantly different. Call it phantom metabolism. It kind of makes me smile. Because losing weight isn't my goal but I can see it is the only goal in the faces of the other regular walkers...damn, she's out here every fucking day and she's as big as she was 18 months ago. Aw. They noticed.

2) When I changed the clocks for Spring-Lose-an-Hour, I wasn't worried about extreme accuracy. What's 5-10 minutes difference on a Sunday morning? But, there was The Workday, tapping its schedule planner impatiently. So I started looking around for a clock while I walked so I could adjust my watch. The tunnels are a retail haven so I figured there would be clocks.

No clocks hanging anywhere.
Really, no clocks.
And that seemed odd.
Until I put my manipulative marketing hat on.
No merchant wants to remind patrons that time's awasting! Particularly during the work day. They want you to Mosey. Linger. Take a few more minutes. It's so subtle I never really paid any attention to it. It creeps me out that such a quiet, concerted effort to con the passerby is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, we are complicit in this shit. The merchants aren't duping the innocent. We choose buy shit we don't need or tarry when there's nothing we're really interested in.

Still. Marketing is eveeeel.

leftover succotash

My little craigslist listing [with addendum] has netted what seems like some promising tenant applicants. More on this when it actually pans out.

We're about to refinance our mortgage and that makes me...a little stressed. Not that I haven't researched it to death, kept tabs on the interest rates like a jealous lover and not that I don't have my neurotic ducks in a row. It just stresses me.

We're flying to Florida to visit family in a couple of weeks. I love seeing my parents and my sister and her kids. I feel guilty for only getting down there once a year, my folks are in their seventies and well, I want to see them more often. Family is supposed to make you crazy. And mine doesn't usually have quite this affect on me. So why am I all whacked out? I need to figure out a way to calm the fuck down. I am wound like a proverbial top and it's disproportional to my current experiences. Yes, there are stressors. There are ALWAYS stressors.

I'm just going to go to bed later and grind my molars down for awhile. That always helps...

succotash

I'm not a big fan of succotash (it's the lima beans. blech.) but if you did a CAT scan of my brain right now, sweartogod, you would see succotash.

I'm scattered. And that doesn't cover it.

A few items to mention: we finally saw Milk and we watched the documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk the night before. Sean Penn and the cast were able to accurately portray the characters (almost eerily spot on) without being imitative or wooden. Incredible performances. This is an activity that I usually avoid: watching an entire movie knowing that the whole thing ends in tragedy. I am a cinematic wimp. But we went anyway. The movie did what good movies do: it engaged me and drew me to the characters...humanizing even Dan White, who murders Harvey Milk in the end. It made me cry. (Which seems to be this month's theme song.) I hope my family will see the movie. Maybe when I go visit them I can talk them into going. (Not easy. As it involves 1) spending money 2) "wasting" 3 hours 3) sitting still and focusing.) There is power in understanding any political/cultural struggle. The abuse that was considered routine 30 years ago is chilling to watch today. Just like the Prop 8 struggle will be 30 years from now. I hope.

Last night we attended the reading of our dear friend Eric's play, Stop, Traveler at Stages. It was enjoyable and difficult because after the reading there was a critique of sorts with the audience. Led by a dramaturgist. No, seriously, the guy running the thing asked if there was anyone trained in dramaturgy in the audience. It's not a new word (meaning: the craft or the techniques of dramatic composition) but neither is drammock (meaning: an uncooked mixture of meal, usually oatmeal, and cold water) but I wouldn't make the assumption that everyone knew the word–even among foodies, the latter is likely to draw blank stares. Community jargon can be so insular. Remind me of that next time I'm waxing poetic about typefaces.

Eric's play is good. About a third of the criticisms were worth hearing, though not all the suggestions would be worth taking. Being the focus of such a critique is daunting. I am impressed that he voluntarily goes through this process repeatedly. If your craft involves presentation to an audience and you want to hone it, I suppose it is necessary. Other artists can create their sculpture, paintings or stories in solitary style and care far less what the general population thinks than a playwright who needs an audience to complete his work. However, good feedback is valuable for the most hermetically sealed artist. The "good" qualifier is the hard part. There were a couple of wingnuts in the audience (it was a free reading, after all) who were stunning in their idiocy.

again with the rudeness

Those of you who know me know that I can push the edge of the rude envelope from time to time. I call it assertive. I call it standing up for a cause. I sometimes call it chutzpah because I have Jewish-culture-envy and like to use Yiddish expressions as often as possible.

However, if you make an appointment with me and just.don't.bother.showing.up. then I feel that, unless you're making some bigger statement or have been maimed in a 18-vehicle pileup on the interstate, you're just a mouth-breathing cretin. Dirty Doodles never showed. It's not like I really thought this interaction was going to net me tenant-of-the-year but after emailing DD several times with address, phone numbers and a reminder that he had an appointment and that if, for any reason (hangnail, clouds, disconcerting horoscope) he couldn't make it, just contact me in any one of four ways to cancel.

Fucker.

I reposted on craigslist today with this little addition:

NOTE: If you have responded to this ad recently, made an appointment to view the apartment and never showed up nor canceled ahead of time, please don't respond to this ad again. We are very reasonable landlords. This isn't our business, it's our backyard, so we're pretty sure that if you're not courteous enough to keep an appointment you made, we probably won't be happy with you as a tenant.

Does that sound snotty? Self-righteous? Pissy? Good.

it's true. this man has no dick.

David Gibbs against robot love

At an anti-gay marriage rally Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, David Gibbs III, the Christian fundamentalist lawyer who fought to keep brain-damaged Terry Schiavo on life support in 2005, publicly expressed his deep-seated fear of machine love. From the News & Observer:

(Gibbs) told rally participants gay marriage would "open the door to unusual marriage in North Carolina.

"Why not polygamy, or three or four spouses?" Gibbs asked. "Maybe people will want to marry their pets or robots."

via boingboing

Robot love. The love none dare to name.
Btw, isn't "polygamy" and being married to "three or four spouses" the same thing? Wait. Let me go look that up...

po⋅lyg⋅a⋅my
[puh-lig-uh-mee] –noun
1. the practice or condition of having more than one spouse, esp. wife, at one time.

Yup. That's it.

And who knows? Gay marriage could lead to: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"

the things people say, part 2

We've been interviewing tenants for our garage apartment. We almost rented it to the biggest asshat ever...let's call him Biff or Skip or something equally bourgeois, pretentious and upper middle classless. So Biff comes to see the apartment, fills out the application and since I don't have to be in love with the tenant*, I figure he will do. His credit rating, which he spouted off during our first doomed meeting, (red flag noted) was good, he was gainfully employed and spoke in full sentences.

Well, long story short, Biff began to send me bulleted emails about changes he wanted made to the very standard rental contract we'd sent him. Next, he challenged the move-in schedule like he had just been put in charge of Epiphenita's Franklin Planner (no, I don't). Then, fatefully, he began enumerating what he wanted cleaned and how. Finally, god help his fucktarded polished penny loafers, he requested a lease change so there was "some sort of option to sublet or re-lease the place, given the quality of tenant is no less than myself..."

I'd say what balls he has if I thought he was the least bit conscious of how insufferable an asshole he was. "...the quality of tenant...no less than myself" Are you fucking serious? I am not a violent woman. But if I had to spend any time at all around Biff, I swear on everything demonic, I would haul off and pummel his neatly coiffed arrogance into a pile of whimpering apology.

Most of the other applicants have been flakey or unable to grasp the stated square footage limitations inherent in 1950 garage apartments. We are showing it again this weekend. To a guy whose screen name is "Dirty Doodles." I ask you, does that alias seem like a great idea when you have no idea if your potential landlord is skittish or a sociopath? I don't really care...it just doesn't bode well.

Have I mentioned that the last time we advertised for a tenant, I made a comment on the neatness of one applicant's printing (I'm old-school drafting-lettering trained; so zip it.) and he chuckled and said, "Yeah, it's like a serial killer's handwriting!" Wow. I like good psychotic murderer humor as much as the next girl, but we've only just met. Let's see how fast I can scratch your name off the list of potential renters, okay?

*I tried to resist this. Really. It's been days since this post and in my compulsive re-editing mode I keep wanting to add alternatives to the descriptor: since I don't have to be in love with the tenant. Here goes and my apologies to those that don't enjoy a good dead horse beating:

• since I don't have to wipe the tenant's ass
• since I don't have to clean the tenant's ears
• since I don't have to hold the tenant's inner child
• since I don't have to read the tenant's palm
• since I don't have to pray with the tenant
• since I don't have to tuck the tenant in
• since I don't have to pay the tenant's porn bills
• since I don't have to entertain the tenant's mother
• since I don't have to trim the tenant's cuticles
• since I don't have to suck the tenant's dick

I only wish that I were done with this.

the things people say, part 1

First off, people, you need to know I've been taking hits off a flask of Haterade® all afternoon. This was one of the those weeks that you take out behind the building at 5pm on Friday and beat to death. That's all the disclaimer I've got.

You know that fabulous website overheadinnewyork.com? Well, it's possible that some of those quotes are the product of a few creative minds. I don't know. If they're funny, I don't really care. Point is, the quotes I'm slinging here, are ones that I have heard with my own disbelieving ears. If ears have beliefs.

Evidently I was in rare form this afternoon. My coworker made a remark insinuating that I had something in common with the snarky audience in Mystery Science Theater. A metaphor: I like percussion instruments as much as the next music lover but on Friday afternoon at 4pm I don't want to hear a fucking cymbal solo in the next cube. It's jarring and sucks out what little remains of my soul...troglodytes.

Earlier today, one of the relentlessly enthusiastic sales types said about the same successful transaction: "You really boxed him in!" [Breath.] "Man, you squeezed him out!" Okay, which is it? Boxed in or Squeezed out? Because if you do both, you need to see a digestive specialist. Or you're in labor.

In the same vein, I was in church some months ago. [Pause.] Yes, I go to church for weddings, funerals and whatever inane rites my loved ones choose to celebrate with invitations. I go to church but trust me, I always breathe a sigh of relief that I am leaving as me and not a zaftig pillar of salt. Anyway, I was listening to the preacher wax folksy about one thing or other when he read a passage from the bible and said of the quote, "when I first heard this scripture, as a human..." Seriously. He referred to himself in the past tense as being a human, as if something transpired since then to change his status.

I hear this shit and look around at the placid, unaffected faces of the people around me and just know that I am either hyper-aware or demonic. (Why am I so black and white about it? I could very easily be demonically hyper-aware.)

wordtherapy

Some people drink when they're depressed. Some sleep. Some write limericks.
laconic
la⋅con⋅ic /ləˈkɒnɪk/ [luh-kon-ik]
–adjective
Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise: a laconic reply.

Still waters they say, quite ironic,
run deep 'neath the quiet laconic.
Rejoinders so terse
might intimate worse:
like someone who's 'most catatonic.

peripatetic
per⋅i⋅pa⋅tet⋅ic  /ˌpɛrəpəˈtɛtɪk/ [per-uh-puh-tet-ik]
–adjective
1. walking or traveling about; itinerant.
2. (initial capital letter) of or pertaining to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.
–noun
3. a person who walks or travels about.

(A modified limerick, then:)

There once was a peripatetic
who roamed on a wooden prosthetic.
His gait grew frenetic
and almost pathetic
from drinking a potent emetic.

shibboleth
shib·bo·leth (shĭb'ə-lĭth, -lěth')
–noun
1. A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.
2. A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword; A commonplace saying or idea.
3. A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.

Betrayed by his nelly shibboleth
and protesting impediments a myth,
"Velveteen pantaloons
and classic show tunes,
just prove I am very chivalrouth."

Goofy as it seems, I can't even tell you how much better I feel. My only regret is that these limericks are are not dirty at all.

the visitation

My son and his friend (now ours as well) came to visit. We had a week of laughter, conversation, good food and company. To have such a delightful relationship with one's grown child is amazing. Amazing. I feel very lucky and, since The Fates demand payment, full of sorrow at our parting.

Glass half-full, glass half-full...

Dammit.

ye olde diy gonads

I just wanted to remind you that you've had several weeks of DIY-free posts.

You're welcome.

We're not done but viruses (human) and visits (human again) have conspired to slow down our awesome progress.

That said, I told our good friend Suzanne that I would give her credit (once, then it's mine to use as if I thought of it all by myself) for her summation of my spectacular home repair skills: "I think your ovaries have descended!"

Yes, indeed.

no. please. don't. stop.

A few months ago a new crossing guard started working on the main street I drive down to get to work. The fact that there are never any children, EVER, when I slow to a crawl in this school zone has nothing to do with my feelings towards this guard.

Because I have no feelings towards the guard. I mean other than a vague sense of mammalian connectedness that prevents me from running over humans and animals. Nothing teary, just you know, just that we have fur, we shit, hakuna matata.

WEEK ONE:
Oooo, she's one of those über-friendly types. Big smile to every passing car. And a wave. Using the stop sign. Let me repeat that: She waves at passing motorists with her stop sign.

I so wanted to be there when that behavior came to a screeching halt.

WEEK TWO:
Waving with hand. Stop sign held in "off" position at her side.

when logos copulate

UPDATE: Right here used to be a Flash animation of the original Obama campaign logo morphing into and out of the Pepsi logo. Flash is dead, so my animation is as well.

I am being chased by zombie logos. It was either get this out of my head and into my blog or go completely mad.

tweet status yawn

Today's topic: Twitter and Facebook Status Updates; Who Gives a Shit? may irritate some people. Well, then we're even.

Sure. There are worthwhile twitter and status entries amidst the update sludge being spewed out like factory offal into the ocean. Just like there are worthwhile comments following the news stories in the Chronicle. If you wade through a lot of floating three-eyed fish and old condoms you're sure to find a completely serviceable milk crate (just wash it off, it'll be fine!).

I admit it. It's easier to poke fun than to provide constructive criticism. But constructive criticism is for thesis advisors, pastors and therapists. Not for my meanderings. Okay, shit. I'll try and be more...constructive. Here are my suggestions for improving banal status posts:

Tedious status update	Improved status update
Boy, am I tired.	Boy, am I tired of embezzling.
Thank goodness it's Friday.	Thank goodness it's Friday, my BDSM dungeon is open late.
I'm eating some oatmeal.	I'm eating some oatmeal and found a boll weevil.
I hate my job.	I hate my job and I brought gasoline in my lunch bag.
I am so happy to be outside.	I am so happy to be outside buck naked.
I am walking the dog.	I am walking the dog and can't stop thinking about taxidermy.
I'm making an omelette.	I'm making an omelette for 350 people.
Life is wonderful.	Life is wonderful with two sets of genitalia.
I heart diet coke.	I heart diet coke enemas.
I've met a great guy!	I've met a great guy who gave me scabies!
We're on our way to visit family.	We're on our way to visit family and I'm high as a kite.
Just had a yummy tall, lowfat, extra shot Starbucks caramel macchiato.	I'm a marketer's wet dream.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Just a little more information and your status updates become snippets of joy. You don't have to thank me.

(Go on, you try it: leave me a comment about your improved one-liners.)

cyrano deserves vd

I have long been a fan of Cyrano de Bergerac. My high school yearbook quote was attributed to Edmond Rostand's protagonist:

To sing, to laugh, to dream,
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with an eye to see things as they are.

~ Cyrano de Bergerac

Now, I don't know if this is a 100% accurate quote–no Google, no Wikipedia in my senior year–but that is beside the point. Because it symbolized my 17-year old soul crying out for understanding. Of course, I identified with Cyrano. Of course. A high school girl who felt witty and brilliant on the inside (gack) and never quite attractive enough on the outside. Swooning over some boy who couldn't keep his eyes off of the prom queen, pleasant though simple girl that she was. Sweet colicky jesus, I can hardly stand the thought that I was ever like that.

Perhaps it's not fair to dismiss all of the high-drama longings of teenagers. Most of us had to pass through (while many of us stayed) that period of idealistic, egotistic hyperbole. It's kind of like disdaining the fact that I sat in a diaper full of poop as a baby. It was a necessary phase. However, I stopped beshitting myself and grew the fuck up.

One of my love's favorite movies is the Steve Martin knock-off of Cyrano: Roxanne. It's amusing. Fodder for Martin's wit. But the last viewing ended any vestige of affection I had for Rostand's hero.

I'm done with Cyrano, Phantom and Pretty Woman. No romance there for me. Why is it that we're supposed to hurt for the homely, scarred and common when they fix their passion on the very ideal that rejects them (and not incidently, the majority of us)? Why can't Cyrano find beauty in a woman with buckteeth? Why didn't the Phantom fall in love with an obese contralto? How come we don't laud the prostitute who sees beauty in the mechanic? Why is there no big story there?

I know this is mundane and what's-the-big-deal but I see this so often I could retch. If we feel compassion for the "unlovely" and applaud the "success" of landing the "perfect" mate, then we reinforce the bigotry that started it all. I'm tired of seeing the "less attractive" vindicated by landing the "hottie" (a word, by the way, that is wholly reminiscent of middle school idiocy). Or conversely, look askance at the "beauty" who chooses someone so "plain." I am similarly irritated when I hear some smug shithead talk about how two people are "so right" for each other because they're similarly sized, similarly judged unattractive or they both have a limp or something.

So, should "ugly" people only marry/love "ugly" people? Obese with the obese? Big nose with the big nose? No. It doesn't fucking matter how the pairing is "balanced" according to society's capricious rules. That's my point. My idealistic point.

P.S. I know this post is teeming with quotation marks. I just couldn't use all those inane qualifiers without marking them as outside my viewpoint.

really?

Do you remember some years ago that Philip Morris did that whole campaign to stop teenage smoking? It was probably mandated or something but here's an example of the creative:

Nobody bought their feel good tactics. Even if you didn't believe there were subliminal messages (like some educators and anti-smoking groups did): that the clouds look like smoke, the snowboard like a lit cigarette and the mountains like piles of tobacco leaves, the idea that a corporation that made its money off tobacco sales would seriously want to discourage the next generation of salary-paying consumers from smoking is pretty ludicrous.

Which brings me to Chevron's latest media blitz. Tagging onto the feel-good, planet-saving conservation wave moving across the country/world:

Sorry. I just don't buy it. Chevron makes its money, and plenty of it, when we don't leave the car at home. This feels like such blatant bullshit to me. Marketing-driven bullshit to put a green tint on Oil & Gas. I admit, we all would be in a shitpile of trouble if the Oil & Gas industry went belly-up tomorrow. We need oil and we need gas. At least until we come up with a plethora of working alternatives. That said, don't insult our intelligence. BIG Oil wants you to put BIG miles on your BIG cars. It's their bread and butter. Or their crude and diesel.

It's like Whole Foods promoting the nutritional value of Velveeta. Like Hustler publishing an article on the importance of abstinence. We are not fooled. And we are not amused.

how long i have waited

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Thank you, Joe. Despondex gives me hope for a felony-free future.

facebook me me meme

I did this thing because I've drunk the kool-aid and been facebooked. Since I went to all the ridiculous trouble to catalog myself, I thought I'd dump a copy here for those of you not thoroughly bored by self-congratulatory list-making. Here are 25 damn things about me:

1. I'm a Puerto-Rican/Irish, ex-New Yorker, naturalized Texan, ex-Mormon (attended BYU—no shit), narcoleptic queer. (for the love of labels, people...)

2. I am now a happy atheist. Going from nun to heathen was one of the most liberating experiences of my life.

3. Design is one of my life's passions. I think about it all the time. Typography. Tea kettles. Book covers. Bass violins. China. Chaise lounges. Keyboards. Kiwi salad.

4. I minored in Art History and wept when I saw Florence's Duomo for the first time.

5. As far as I'm concerned, wood, flour, metal, fabric, paper, cement, leather and glass are all the same: raw materials. Knitting, carpentry, baking, metalsmithing...it's just the tools and joins that differ. And I love all the tools. I want to learn all the joins.

6. I am a late blooming feminist and believe that no woman should have children if she doesn’t want them. Ironically, my favorite job was raising my two children.

7. I loathe deferential treatment based on my gonads. I am not, nor will I ever be, a "lady."

8. I find it disturbing when women take their husband’s name. Sorry. It harks back to the days of being property. Besides, you're getting married, not adopted.

9. I was über-dedicated to being the BEST parent ever and fancied myself well qualified and successful. Over time the idealism of early parenting has gotten a solid ass-kicking. When all is said and done, I think I did a decent job but owe my parents an apology for making such a fuss about "not making all the mistakes they made."

10. My (grown) children are amazing. Even Especially when we don't agree.

11. I am ambidextrous. (Yes, Virginia, it's a euphemism.)

12. I have been married (not legally, of course--this IS Texas, after all--but in every way that counts) to the same woman for 22 years. I am still stupidly in love with her.

13. Facebook is too fucking public...okay, even when I was the most obedient, god-fearing, letter-of-the-law little prig, my secret sin was how much I LOVED to swear.

14. I am driven to be financially stable. Obsessed about becoming debt-free.

15. I grew up blue-collar and aim to be a balanced intellectual. Whenever I get too up my own ass about things, my common sense mocks me. Without mercy.

16. I am unfazed by title, degree or position. I have neither reverence nor irreverence for those in power. The only people I am in awe of are those who have done something awesome.

17. Humor has saved my life. Most people survive a shitload of things and credit God, psychotherapy or macrobiotics with their survival. Thanks to my mother I survived a crisis of faith, a divorce, a custody battle, dear friends dying of AIDS and other scary-as-shit events because she'd taught me to laugh.

18. I wouldn't have sex with anyone who didn't love good food.

19. As much as I love design and building and fixing things, writing is dearer to me.

20. I have a job that I truly enjoy. While the process (animation) is very satisfying, the end product (banner advertising) is meh. I'm surprised at how good I am with that. It doesn't hurt that I work with funny, talented people.

21. I love fixing my home. Because we have no option, we've learned to fix almost everything. Ignorance is a valuable asset.

22. I love being at home. With my partner or by myself. It is my favorite place.

23. I have been lucky enough to travel to Europe many times. I lived in Spain for three months. I also woke up in Paris on my 50th birthday. That was fucking awesome.

24. I am a shameless math, word, design, grammar, cooking, technology geek. And I love me some puns.

25. I don't believe that monogamy is a sacrament.

26. I was once a juror on a torture/murder trial.

27. I hardly ever watch television. But I'm not too proud. I'm online way too much.

28. I will get a tattoo someday.

29. I hate what image-obsession and dieting has done to our individual and collective sense of self-worth.

30. I taught myself not to be afraid of the dark when I was young by walking around our basement with the lights out.

31. I am not superstitious.

32. I love adhesives. Epoxy, wood glue, duct tape and...don't get between me and my stash of double-sided tape.

33. Jesus, I’ve reached 33 (too). Oh, I‘m also wordy.

this is me...

...posting a link to a sneak preview of a game. Called Cogs.
I am in love with the concept.

This is just a screen capture and will not play in the window but will take you to the page I found it on...via boing boing, link

But it's an electronic GAME. Why is this happening? (Is this real? I have 2 fingers.) What's next?

• Heated discussions about Star Trek costumes?
• Dice fetishes?
• Obscure SciFi jargon? (yes, dear fimbulwinter, I mock you.)

But just look at those cogs and pipes. Sigh.

we fought the tax man...

...and the women won!

Property taxes protested successfully: Check!

Phew. Is that a relief.