Yesterday I was vacuuming and I discovered something that changed my life!! (don’t we all make our big life changing discoveries with something noisy and vibrating in our hands?)
My vacuum cleaner works better when you use it in an east/west direction and not so well in a north/south direction! I experimented all over the living room and I think I have to say that it’s true! Amazing. More likely, the carpet has a ‘grain’ or ‘direction’ in it of which I was previously unaware. This is going to revolutionize the way I approach vacuuming. YEAH!
Of course, the thing I have to admit is that I have lived in this apartment since 2005 and I got my vacuum when I moved in (a Dyson, sigh). So that’s almost 3 years with this carpet and this vacuum. Three years in which I hadn’t figured that out. I’d like to say it’s because I’m functionally retarded or that I’m unable to pick up on clues and postulate hypotheses from them.
The truth is…I just don’t vacuum as often as a responsible adult might. Hell, I don’t even vacuum as often as an irresponsible adult might. The carpet in my place is pretty sad. The stuff that was under the sofas is all nice and fluffy and clean. Everything else has been abused into submission. It really became evident after I vacuumed and could see it.
On the other hand it allows me to play a game where I just keep vacuuming and emptying the canister until the vacuum can no longer pick anything up.
OH! Also! I was so excited to get a clear canister vacuum for those times when there is a centipede in the house and David isn’t around to wrongly save its life and put it outside. I was so expecting to be able to suck them into the vacuum and watch them whirl around and around in their private arthropodic hell. This isn’t the case, sadly. They get sucked up, but I think there are just so many bits and filters and things that you never get to see them again. It might be for the best, I think I read that this is how Vlad Tepes started out.
So there you have it. I spent my Saturday making new and exciting discoveries about my vacuum!

So I’m still pissed about this whole idea that we can take something commonplace and not at all dangerous and use it to freak people out in order to make them buy our product.
Actually, I think I just described the entire history of marketing.
Dude 1: we need to sell something!
Dude 2: all I have is some ammonia and food coloring
D1: AWESOME!
Later: Dirt….you see it every day….it’s on your shoes, on your pants….it even surrounds the very foundation of your home. Dirt. Have you ever stopped to consider what dirt is? Dirt is the decomposed leftovers of animals and plants. Decomposition. Are you thinking about it? Are you thinking about that giant bloated raccoon carcass you saw on the way to work today? Well, one of those and many other things including worm poop and beetle legs made the dirt that is surrounding your house right now. Keep your family safe! Save your family. Your children are not worth the risk. Douse them daily in our specially formulated cleansing solution…..
oh, right, also….Fuck you Lysol.
In the spirit of open honesty, other people’s fingernails freak me out. I see them as a hotbed of germ production. But, it’s not like I’m mindfucking the public over it.

Dear internet! Thanks for making me feel enormously insane yesterday. Not just regular nutty insane where I might tell my coworkers about the time in second grade when during an instructional filmstrip on something important like exhaling did a classmate of mine secretly stick her finger up her butt and then hold it out and ask us, the members of her ‘table’ if we wanted to smell it (true story!). When I’m feeling a little nutty, I like to share that story.
No, Internet, you made me feel even more crazy than that.
I’m sitting at my desk working on something, I think I was adding utility use data to a giant excel spreadsheet (the awesomeness of that act alone would drive most to insanity), there was a lot of noise and talking from my boss’ office so I turned off my iTunes podcast (Tom Ashbrooke : On Point, current events are HOT) because my other option was to turn it up louder and that’s an irritation for other people (other people do not care for current events, they are not hot (actually, like half the people in the connected office listen to super right wing republican talk radio and it’s really bizarre, like the time I happened to catch one dude say “so, they say with global warming it’s going to get colder! how does that even make sense? huh, that just the same doublespeak marxist nuttiness we’ve come to expect from liberals” Like, wow, “I don’t understand the issue and I’m not qualified in any way to dispute the facts but it seems wrong so I bet it is wrong…hey, also…that whole ‘globe’ thing? totally pansy liberal bullshit! When I go outside the ground is flat, just like God made it. Total flat Mercator projection earth”. I love republicans) (wait, where was i?))
Oh yes, insanity.
I’m sitting there at my desk and I keep hearing mumbling …mumblemumblemumble. I can’t figure out where this mumbling is coming from. There’s no one in the right vicinity for that style of mumbling. I check to see if maybe by some weird act of physics some voice is bouncing off my computer screen (Physics? sounds bouncing? that’s crazy communist bullshit!). No sound bouncing off my screen. So now I’m trying to figure out where this mumbling is coming from. I’m trying to remember what I know about auditory hallucinations, do they actually hear them in their ears or just in their heads? because I’m hearing this from my ears. Did I take the wrong pills this morning? I’ve done that before…Nope, 3 blue 2 brown 4 shots of espresso. Did maybe I leave iTunes running and just pop the volume down? No no no there it is not running.
Now I’m worried. Then it stops and we’re cool and I continue to break down kwh used per day per square foot in each building because knowledge is power and immensely detailed and boring knowledge is like the same power that some mid level manager in a midwestern office might wield.
Then it starts again. Mumbling. Goddammit. I’m not even 35 yet. Why couldn’t I have a few more years before the slow sweet slide into thorazine and apple sauce? Lord knows I am looking forward to the day when I can wear a robe all day and my unkempt hair is all the permission I need to talk about the brown eels that invade my pants almost daily. But I’m not ready yet! I still have laundry to finish! Clean underwear is a gift I give David!
mumble mumble
I hit the F9 key (which on a Mac is the magic “show me every open window” key. It’s magic. Though not as magic as F8, that one shows me the current temp, how many pounds in a stone, and the definition of “eutectic”). Whoa, right there in the corner….what is that…..I click on it.
Goddammed stupid local news site I clicked to from CNN.com or something. I think it’s a talking ad, no, it’s not. Oh for fucks sake! This local news site (I believe it must be local news for the greater metropolitan area of Retardville) decided that people needed so desperately to know the fucking Oscar nominations that they would have the filmed coverage play quietly over and over and over in the corner of a page.
You know what? If I gave two shits about the Oscars I’d fucking click a link to an article about the Oscars. When I click a link about some small town guy who got his head stuck in the toilet, that’s what i want to know about. Go ahead, list the other headlines to the side, I’m game, I follow news links. Don’t just decide “hey! everyone cares about awards given to people! There’s nothing more fulfilling than watching someone better than you receive an award for going to work!”.
God, thorazine and applesauce sounds good right now.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of toilets…
What the fuck is it with this sudden fear of toilet spray? I don’t watch tv but someone was telling about some ad where they show you that your toilet can spray germs up to 6 feet in the air!!! Oh my god, middle america! It’s time to freak the fuck out and buy yet another bottle of useless bromide to fight a war on something that isn’t going to kill you anyway. People! Your toilets have been spewing germs 6 feet in the air (and subsequently all over your toothbrushes) for your entire lives! Every single flush of your life has sent happy germs into the air! Has it killed you yet? Has it even made you ill? I bet there’s a pretty strong argument that regular low doses of common germs can actually help boost your immune system! Hell, I’m gonna go hold my toothbrush over the toilet right now and flush! How do you like them apples?

This weekend I cleaned my kitchen. Cleaned the whole damned thing. I cleaned like a pilled up OCD soccer mom that never gets laid. I’m not OCD, I don’t have kids, and I get laid with a frequency that is imprudent to discuss.
I am, however, pilled up. Of course I can’t blame the manic cleaning on the pills. I’ve been taking this dose for 6 months now, and nothing got cleaned. I think it’s the pills and the extra sunlight. It’s been amazingly fuckass cold here lately. When it is that cold, there is always bright bright sunlight (no nice warm insulating blanket of clouds).
I cleaned the hell out of the kitchen. I ran a billion loads of dishes. I stuck things in the dishwasher that weren’t dishes but I figured anything that needed to be washed and fit in the dishwasher would go. Cabinet fronts, sink, dishes, floor, counters. I threw away everything that was uselessly taking up space. I reorganized. I discovered the Mr Clean Antibacterial Multi-Surface Cleaner has a bizarre slightly anise-like scent that becomes stronger when sprayed on coffee residue.
I discovered that Pine-Sol will cut through any amount of old grease. I also realized that the properties of Pine-Sol that allows it to eat the grease on my stove also allows it to eat the fat on my hands. My hands have this weird scaly thing going on. EW. And no, I don’t want to wear gloves. they’re so creepy on the inside and they constantly remind me of Curley from “Of Mice and Men”. Creepy.
My house smells like a giant hippo ate an entire pine forest and then shit everywhere. Awesome.