Category Archives: Blab

Whatever happened to

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Whatever happened to Midnight Oil? Are they the Chumbawumba of the 80’s?

  • David and I did valentines early, dinner at the Red Stag. All I have to say is you can keep your powdered tiger’s penis and oysters and what have you. Duck confit on toast points with hand made mustard is what I’m talking about.
  • One day I am going to punch the news in the face. Or I’m going to punch every one in the face. Can we please stop being dicks? Let’s stop shooting people or kicking them off their ancestral lands or whatever it is that people are doing that is dicklike behavior.
  • Relatedly…in response to the whole warrantless wiretapping bullshit…America is safer when we follow the RULES. We have a system in place, it’s not perfect but it is a good system, a solid system of checks and balances that allows each branch of government to keep track of the others. Getting a warrant is a way of saying ‘i’ve done my job in a thorough and honest manner’ and then you can have someone else say ‘you are right, this is thorough and honest’ or ‘though your intentions may be correct, your evidence is lacking’. Warrants are not hard to come by and if you are tapping phone lines then it’s not like you have the immediacy of someone standing with a gun somewhere, and if that were the case, a warrant would not be necessary. Call me an idealist, I know that I am, but if you are honest and doing your job well, then there should be no reason to avoid asking for a warrant. If you say you want to keep America safe then that means that you keep all of it safe, not just the bits you like. I’m not a doomsayer, I am not one who sees or believes in conspiracies, but I will say this, when the government starts acting as a separate, independent entity and stops acting as an extension of the people then the government has lost its focus and the people have forgotten their responsibility.
    Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
  • okay, I have to start the pork enchilada process in the crock pot (trust me) and shower and whatnot before Julie’s plane lands!
  • oh, yeah, the dogs are good and healthy. David is sweet and awesome. It’s 12butt cold outside and I have 2 (TWO!) of those poky, hurtey taste bud things on my tongue. Where do these come from? It’s like 2 taste buds decided to get all pissed off and explode! Assholes.

ways in which I am retarded (or really fat…probably just fat)

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Yesterday, as I was getting ready to leave for work, I discovered a rather large monstrosity in the driveway. Seems that my neighbors were having work done on their gigantic white pine. Though I had hoped they were having it removed, they were just getting it trimmed.
It’s not that I don’t love trees, it’s just that the neighbors on either side of my house each have these 80 feet tall, 80 billion year old white pines. All year long they spray sap, drop preemie pine cones that look like maggots, spray sap, fill the gutters with pine needles, spray sap that the dogs get between their toes and there is NO getting it out so they go nuts and chew their feet, dump pine cones everywhere. Oh! and they spray sap all over the place.
There was this large truck with a bucket on a lift and those big extendo stabilizer feet and it was all set up and there was a dude way up high in the tree. I didn’t want to be a dick and make them disassemble everything just so I could get my car out so I grabbed David’s keys and took his car to work.
I think I can officially say I know how to drive a manual transmission.
The thing about David’s car is that when he bought it, the previous owner had had to replace the driver’s side door, but he never got the lock changed to match the key. This really isn’t an issue, in fact it makes things very chivalrous because David always unlocks and opens the passenger door for me (then I get in and open his door for him. Easy). When I got to work yesterday I parked on the street as the ramp was full.
After an exciting and emotionally fulfilling day at work, I left and went to the car. I parked on the street next to a snow bank. To be more accurate, it was a dense, flat faced snow cliff. Anyone who has grown up with real snow knows that come february, all the snow is concrete. It’s been there forever, it’s warmed and refrozen and dried out enough to become especially solid and unyielding. Those of you who envy us and our snow are actually just envying that early fluffy Norman Rockwell snow, not reality. February snow is the leading cause of hiding under the bed and weeping.
And so, the car is there next to the snow and I have very few inches between the two. I try to squeeze into the passenger side so I can unlock the driver door and it’s a no go. I try different tactics, butt first, backwards, eyes closed, swearing, laughing, farting. I’m not getting in. I have to just accept that I’m too damned fat for this job. There are any number of skinny people on campus with whom I am friends. I could call one of them and have them come help me. “Hello, you are skinny and I am the human dugong, can you help me get in the car? yes, please bring some lard and a hydraulic jack….and some cupcakes too!”
I don’t have my cell phone with me! Dammit! I forgot it at home again and I don’t actually know anybodies phone number. I could go back to my office and call David and ask him to drive over in my car and work this out, he’s remarkably thin and agile, but I know he’s tired from work and I don’t want to be a stringwiener. I had to call him once and ask him to bring gasoline to me because I was playing fast and loose with my gas gauge. Nobody likes an irresponsible girlfriend! Especially one that can’t even get into her car because she has a deep and abiding love for the four basic dairy groups, The Frozen, The Aged, The Spreadable and the Chocotastic.
Okay, fine, me and my gargantuan ass accept that this problem is ours and ours alone! Using sheer force of will and pretty good upper thigh strength I literally forced myself into the car. It was like shitting backwards in public. once I was in I realized I wasn’t going to be able to just unlock the driver door, get out and go around I decided to just clamber over the seats and drive away.
I had considered going through the hatchback, but I figured that was a real emergency sort of move. A billion years ago the door latch mechanisms on my tiny Geo Storm froze solid. No amount of swearing or force could help you. We were forced to climb in and out through the hatch back. That car was much smaller than David’s and I was way way fatter then, but I still wasn’t going to do it unless a mecha-godzilla was coming directly at me and it was my only escape route…and even then I’d have to think about it.

The hippo has fangs

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A few years ago David bought for me a handmade leather hippo from the French Market in New Orleans as a Christmas present. He bought it the day before I flew down to meet him there. When I got there he took me to the French Market for some shopping or whatnot and INSTANTLY I saw the table with the hippos! I fondled and caressed them, I engaged in bad touch. I really wanted one. In some inexplicable moment of magic (responsibility), I decided that with all I’d spent on Christmas and flying to NOLA and upcoming expenses, I would forgo the awesome hippo.
Of course, a couple days later I unwrapped the hippo that David had already bought for me. We’d only been dating a few months at the time, but it was pretty much the sign I needed.
I have 3 hippos on the end table next to the sofa, he’s the biggest. He’s all lovely and handcrafted and everything, but his teeth…not so right. The teeth are just very cheap plastic and they are shaped like fangs or sabers. They’re insane, they are not hippo teeth in the least. They are completely wrong,, but somehow, completely perfect in their awesomeness.
In completely unrelated news…
I wrote up my first real pattern (a cowl) and sent it off to pattern testers. Pattern testers will save your life. They all found the same giant mistake! They also gave some really valuable feedback on the project and gave me more confidence. I will have the pattern available for download in a couple weeks. If you would like me to make one for you I’ve settled on $30 plus materials.
Speaking of…
A coworker saw me wearing one of my awesome pirate skull hats and told me her grandson would like one (she’s done this before to me). I offered her the pattern, she asked if I could make one. I said I could but it would probably be $15-20 plus materials. She tsk-tsk’d me and said “oh come on”. This is something that I find HIGHLY IRRITATING. She’s a knitter, she is aware of how much time and effort goes into a project. This is a custom/adapted pattern (adapted from knit to crochet and then broken down and rebuilt to be shaped differently) and it is hand made. I was being generous at $15-20. $35 to $40 would not be outside the realm of reasonable for the item. Yes, yes you can buy a winter hat for cheaper, but I am not competing with machine made store bought hats. It’s an entirely different product, sure, both keep your head warm, but they are not the same.
I do not make these items in exchange for money to support myself, so I do not have to be competitive. I do not have to undercut myself in order to sell. I do not have to hire chinese orphans in order to stay in business. I make my items and price them according to what my time is actually worth to me, not the ‘market’. Someone either appreciates the item or doesn’t.
Of course if I was trying to make a living selling them, then it would all be polluted factories and orphan slave labor and a document titled “basic human rights” that I would pee all over. To listen to any corporation talk, this is the only way they can survive! It seems they are always on the verge of going under! Without their billions in profits they’d go out of business! Thank god for orphan slave labor to keep our struggling economy afloat.
Am I a little skeptical of the motivations of big business? yeah, sometimes.
Unrelatedly…
My kitchen is still clean, my living room is clean but not entirely organized, the dining room is halfway there and the bathroom is next.
Also…
we got a new water heater the other day! We also got a gas leak from it but they came out and fixed it right away. That was pretty good. No one died.
By the way…
Which one of you recommended I watch “Year of the Dog”? Because I would like to kick you in the knees. First, I really did not need to see a movie about a dog dying. Secondly, the rest of the movie? insane! I only watched about the first half hour, David watched the rest. BAD PERSON!!! Do not recommend these things to me!
And I’m…
off like your mom’s prom dress. Awesome? like a 12 pound possum.

Go with the grain…

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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!

Hey, Lysol!

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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.