Also known by its alternate title: All Your Blankets are Belong to Us!1!!! Which was a lot funnier before I fixed the glowy laser stare of dqqm. I’m not sure that fluorescent green pupils are really an improvement over red ones.
Month: July 2006
New Letters to Esther
I spent some time last night scanning old letters and transcribing a few more new ones. In this installment, we have a family weigh-in and hatching baby chicks, courtesy of Ruth, and preparations for younger brother Clark to drive down to Bloomington in the family’s Ford to pick up Esther at the end of the school year. Also, more allusions to the rift between the Munro and Glendening families, in the form of Mamma telling Clark to tell Esther not to offer the Glendening girls a ride back to Geneva. Curiouser and curiouser!
I Had a Dream, Joe
I’ve been sleep deprived lately. I haven’t even been able to catch up on the weekends, which really sucks. This morning, I was able to go back to sleep after getting up at an insane hour to let out Miss Brown and feed her. And, I remembered why I don’t like going back to sleep. I had the damnedest dream. Well, two of them, actually. One was about house hunting, and was really unpleasant and stressful. The second one was just plain bizarre. I was standing in my front yard, in the sun, talking to my neighbor. He was wearing a floppy “farmer” hat and pointing at something off to the southwest. That was all fine, but then I realized that he had no body. He was just a big ol’ floppy-hatted head and a hand wearing a flowered gardening glove. WTF?! There was a Wizard of Oz vibe about the dream, in that it was slightly menacing but reassuring in that “it’s just a dream” sort of way
I’m going to try to go to bed early tonight, so that I won’t be tempted to sleep in tomorrow morning.
Choice, the Environment, and Irony
There is a story floating around certain parts of the blogosphere about a Hummer that implodiated in a fast food parking lot, felled by a wee bump against a stanchion. It is amusing and ironic and, dare I say, schadenfreude-inducing? I think everyone with a functioning brain stem can agree that Hummers are ridiculous. They serve no purpose I can ascertain, other than as a conspicuous symbol of consumerism. They get terrible mileage, they are too overgrown for their frames, and they hog too much road and parking lot real estate. Worst, they are not actually built for the one thing that they appear to have been designed for: off-roading.
So go ahead, hate on Hummers and their owners. If nothing else, it gives me one more reason to dislike Teh Ahr-nahld.
However, it seems a little short-sighted to me to hate on all SUV owners, as they–and their SUVs–are not all created equal. It is probably not surprising that it makes the Baby Shelly cranky when folks lump all SUVs together as gas-guzzling earth-destroyers driven by over-protective mommies. Not only is it untrue, but it is spectacularly ignorant to cast asparagus upon a lowly tool instead of addressing the underlying issue: crass consumerism. SUVs of the urban assault variety are merely a symptom, not the disease itself. If it wasn’t SUVs, it would be Cadillacs or some other flashy, eco-unfriendly ride.
Look, we all make choices. Some of those choices have a larger environmental impact than others. Some of those choices are sacrosanct and above reproach, while others are fair game for criticism. So when I hear a woman rationalizing her decision to cart her three kids around in a car that gets worse gas mileage than my SUV, while criticizing those who drive SUVs, I have to think, “WTF?” While I don’t normally feel any need to second guess anyone’s decision to have as many kids as she wants, or to drive whatever she wants, when my choices are questioned, I have to put it into perspective. My little SUV and I could not possibly have the sort of environmental impact that three children and a Beemer will have. So, when you start waving around the “SUVs are bad for the environment flag,” you might want to take a good look at your own choices and how they affect the environment.
Smacking
There are certain human behaviors that drive me batshit crazy. One of them is smacking and generally making excessive noise while eating. It’s nauseating. This is why I find the new KFC commercial to be both perplexing and offensive. Why would anyone in their right mind prefer the sound of chomping and smacking to that of polite dinner conversation? I mean, the whole point of sitting down to eat with others is that it’s a social experience, right?
This revulsion of mine is not consistent across species, however. What is sickifying in humans is thoroughly charming in, say, canines. Miss Brown gets her evening meal split into two portions: an after school snack and a bedtime snack. When I get home from work, I let her outside to potty while I put kibble in her bowl. When she comes back inside, she goes immediately to her bowl, grabs a mouthful of food, shoves her nose in my face, and proceeds to rub her kibble-crumb-encrusted lips all over me. While wriggling euphorically and chomping and making all manner of otherwise smicky-smacky lip noises. Ah, Teh Cute! It is to die for! Truly, it is about the most adorable thing in the whole wide world, as far as I’m concerned. But, if a human did that to me, I’d have to kill them.
Shhh! This is a Library!
Hey, you in the back row, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Notes from the Grammar Police
Dear Slim-Fast People,
Please advise your advertising department that the correct phrase is “fewer calories,” not “less calories.” I’m sure y’all don’t want to be portrayed as a bunch of ignorati.
Thank you,
The Grammar Police
Cattail and Bumper Stickers
I’ve been driving around with a nekkid car, which has been bugging me. The MoonPie of Delight was plastered with all sorts bumper stickers (what else does one do with an Onslowmobile?). I figured it was a public service to give folks something to read while they were stuck behind me in traffic.
Last week, I pulled up at a traffic light behind another blue Tracker. It was the BoD’s twin, except it was sporting all manner of red-white-and-blue stickers of the “These Colors Don’t Run!” variety. That was the last straw. I couldn’t let the BoD’s evil twin go unchallenged, could I? So now the BoD, too, is finally sporting stickers of her own, and I feel like I’ve done my civic duty. If I didn’t live in Red Central, I probably wouldn’t feel so strongly about plastering my car with pinko lefty propaganda. I think it’s important to remind folks that there is another point of view. I sometimes get the impression that folks around here have no idea that liberals exist in the wild.
We Have Normality
The migration is finished and I think most everything is working. I had a weird problem uploading photos this morning, but I’m hoping it was just a fluke. I was able to upload a bunch of files with no problem, but the second batch had to be uploaded one at a time. Hrmf. The email kinks seem to have finally been sorted out, as well, but I’ve lost a bunch of messages somewhere, and I fear they’re permanently AWOL.
On top of all that, my hard drive decided to crash and die last weekend. I’ve been pretty good about backing up files, so it wasn’t as tragic as it could have been. It was still a headache I didn’t need, though, considering that I’ve misplaced some of the programs I use all the time. Re-downloading them on my crappy connection was not fun. The good news is that I remembered to set the new hard drive’s jumpers before installing it, installation went smoothly, and everything is working perfectly. I even seem to have magically fixed a weird, non-critical error I was getting from Photoshop.
And then, as if life weren’t exciting enough, one of my air conditioners decided to die last night. Luckily, it happened while I was home and not during the day. Otherwise, it would have gotten dangerously hot in here for an elderly cat and a brachycephalic dog. It was too late to go buy a replacement last night, so I ended up going in to work early, then leaving when the stores opened. I picked up a new AC on the way home. It was a pain in the arse to install, though, because it’s so shallow that it’s not properly weighted for drainage. All the weight is on the interior half of the unit. Hrmf.
So, while I was experiencing my imposed computer and blogging hiatus, I was busy taking lots and lots of pitchurs. These are the highlights.
Crepuscular Rays
Echinacea
Zinnia
Dew on Leaf
Daylily
Cobweb Weaver
Storm Clouds at Sunset
And, it may storm tonight. Can a plague of locusts or a scourge of boils be far behind?
Note: The egg sac in the spider photo is about the size of a pea. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculously tiny those little hatchlings are.
Sunday Photoblogging
I woke up early again this morning, while it was still cool outside. The sun was shining through the trees, creating little fingerling rays of light as well as a long patch of sunshine on my otherwise shady yard. Within that patch, the dew glittered on the grass, so I got my camera and took some macro shots of it. There were also zillions of those little spider webs littering the yard. I don’t know what sort of spiders inhabit them. They look sort of like winged, eight-legged ants to me, not spiders.
After yesterday’s sweltering heat, this morning’s dew was wonderfully refreshing. It’s likely to be just as hot again today, so it’ll be nice to think of the coolness of the dew on my feet.
Crepuscular Rays
Evening Belt of Venus
Last night’s Belt of Venus occurred at about 9:30. Daylight saving time has wreaked havoc on my sky watching, among other things. I just haven’t been able to adjust to the new rhythm, so things have been hit-and-miss. I can’t get used to the fact that it doesn’t get dark until 10pm. I’m normally in bed long before then, and the light makes it difficult to sleep. I’m starting to wonder if my internal clock will ever adjust.
red paper boat 