There is something disturbing about eating oatmeal that has come out of a microwave that smells like beef stew.
Category: Crankypantsing
New Letters to Esther and Teh Internets
I’ve scanned a few more letters that had already been transcribed, and transcribed and scanned a few new ones. There’s one from her father. His letters are short and sweet and sporadic, but they always make me smile. I picture him as a frugal sort, because he always tears away the unused portion of the page. All his letters have a ragged bottom edge. Now that the younger kids are out of school, the letters from Esther’s sister Ruth have picked up in frequency. She was a bright, bubbly girl. I think her letters must give a realistic glimpse into what the Munro household was like.
The whole uploading process has been maddening, though, and has taken me most of the afternoon. My internet connection is topping out at a blazing 7 Kbs/sec, and dipping down below 2 Kbs/sec at times. I’m really fed up with the lack of connectivity in the hinterlands. It seems to me that giving rural folks reasonable access to Teh Internets–and by reasonable, I don’t mean anything extravagant–would be something the powers that be might want to work on, but apparently it has not been, and I suspect will not be, any sort of a priority. It’s difficult enough to make AT&T/SBC provide minimal quality for standard phone service. They can’t be arsed to do anything above and beyond that.
Other than that, it’s been nice and quiet this weekend. I managed to finish mowing the, ahem, “yard,” which was some sort of Herculean task. Between one thing and another, I hadn’t mowed in nearly a month, so the grass was thigh-high in some spots. I had to pop a wheelie with the mower for the first pass, then take a couple more passes. And that was on the highest setting. It looks just awful, too, like someone cut it with a butter knife, or maybe a pair of those blunt lefty scissors from kindergarten. Later in the week, I’ll have to go over it again, on a lower setting, to even it up. I’m sure it’s annoying the crap out of my neighbors. Heh. On second thought, maybe I’ll leave it looking scraggly.
Just for Andy
Andy mentioned Mayberry LSD, so I had to go on a scavenger hunt. I knew I had it tucked away somewhere, but I’ve moved approximately twelfty times since 1991, when it was published, so I had to do some digging.
In other news, the DVD burner installation went as well as could be hoped. It seems like, no matter how straightforward the process is, I end up screwing it up somehow. This time, I got the drive physically installed, and the case put back together, to find that I hadn’t set the jumper to Master. Duh. So I had to take the damned thing back out again, because the power unit is too close to the disc drives to get at and move the jumpers from inside the case. Hrmf. Then, I dropped the jumper and couldn’t find it, so I had to use the one from the b0rkened drive. On the bright side, software driver and installation, etc. went flawlessly. And, we have achieved burning. Woot!
The thing about installing hardware or software is that it’s dead boring when it goes well and aneurysm-inducing when it doesn’t. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. That’s why I hate it when people ask me to help them out with computer stuff. It’s not that it’s difficult, but when it does go bad, it goes very, very bad, indeed.
And now, an instant review: Breakfast on Pluto (based on the book by Pactrick McCabe)
Think Hedwig and the Angry Inch with a soupçon of In the Name of the Father and you’ll have a good feel for the tone and storyline. Glam Irish transwoman Kitten goes on a quest to find her mother and gets tangled up in all manner of weirdness, including Republican gun runners and a nightclub bombing. I do so adore Cillian Murphy. I fell in love with him in Disco Pigs, and have not been disappointed in anything he’s done since. Even Red Eye was damned entertaining. So, I unreservedly endorse Breakfast on Pluto.
Oh, and the soundtrack is most excellent!
Effing Cell Phones!!!eleventy!!1!!!
I swear to god–all of them if I have to–that the next time someone’s cell phone rings, I’m going to do a Linda Blair. A mass e-mail was sent to everyone in the department, telling us to turn our phones to vibrate (or turn them the fuck off), and to go out into the hallway to take calls. So, of course, that means that the woman who sits behind me has the volume on her ringer–which is some irritating carnivalesque ditty–set to “May Induce Brain Hemmorage.” This is the third time today it’s rung, and I’m about to cry. And then there are the fuckwits who walk up and down the aisles, talking on their cell phones. This is an office, people, not fucking Kroger.
In hiring news, on which planet is it acceptable to e-mail a potential future employer, using all lower case and no punctuation? I don’t find it offensive, in that it makes no difference to me in terms of whether or not I’ll hire someone. But, I do find it peculiar. Surely, this is the time when you want to put your best foot forward? Making cavalier with the norms of written communication seems to me to be an inadvisable plan of action.
And, I won’t even address the inability to follow even the most simple of directions. I’ll just mention that, when I say “email me for an application,” I do not, in fact, mean that you should call me. Email and phone calls are two entirely different things! Considering that the job ad states clearly, “must be able to follow written and verbal directions,” demonstrating clearly that you are incapable of at least one of those things is a Very Bad Idea. I’m just sayin’…
Oh, and I just overheard a coworker say “anomynous” three times in one conversation. I wonder if she eats pasghetti for breafixt?
Yoplait Sucks
Why does Yoplait suck? Well, there are a lot of reasons, starting with the fact that it is overly sweet and of a mucous-like consistency. I personally find the taste and texture to be thoroughly offensive; however, they are not as offensive as Yoplait’s newest commercial. In it, Yoplait asks you, the consumer, to consider their yogurt as a tool in your perpetual weight loss arsenal. Cuz, you know, all women are always on a diet because all women are fat and disgusting, no matter how objectively UN-fat they might actually be.
Case in point: the woman in this Yoplait commercial. She’s so thin that the daylight shining from between her thighs is nearly blinding, and she has a washboard sternum. But, yet, she’s so scared of her big, fat ass being seen in public that she eagerly subjects herself to Yoplait Candied Snot.
A Little Knowledge…
D’ya know what I hate? I hate it when folks insist on spreading misinformation. I especially hate it when, upon being challenged, they support their position with, “I’ve been teaching this subject for umpty years, so I know more than you do.” I’m sorry, but I don’t think it matters how long you’ve been teaching something. What matters is whether or not you ever bothered to become sufficiently educated on the topic in the first place.
Hrmf.
Folks, do not use acrylic medium as a final sealing coat. It’s not a varnish, and shouldn’t be used as one. It’s not impervious, it’s not protective, and it’s not reversible. And, while I’m on the general subject–for the love of God, do not ever put acrylic paint or medium over oil pastels.
Random Nit Picks: Little House Edition
I’m through with season 3 of Little House on the Prairie, and have begun season 4. It’s been thoroughly enjoyable, my personal issues with Michael Landon notwithstanding. However, I have a few Picts to bone:
- Melissa Gilbert was not a very good actress in the first season. About halfway through the second season, she started to get her sea legs.
- I can’t imagine folks would’ve left their horses to stand in harness for long periods of time. Horses aren’t cars, and you can’t just park them out front and leave them standing in the hot sun for hours on end.
- Speaking of sun, I’ve been to Minnesota a time or two, and they have dirt and grass and trees there. Specifically, they have black dirt, green grass, and green trees. It’s woodlands/prairie there. What it is not is an endless, red dust bowl. Nor are there mountains there. And, while it does get warm in the summer, it’s not generally blistering hot, as one might think when seeing Michael Landon sweat himself to death on nearly every episode.
- Speaking of dirt, why is there so bloody much of it? The entire Ingalls homestead is surrounded by hard-backed, baked dirt. Much of the town is, too.
- What is up with Carrie? The girls who played her were terrible actresses, so I can understand why her character wasn’t ever very well developed. But, surely they could’ve done something with her?
- In one episode, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash played a couple of grifters with hearts of gold. I’d never seen this episode before, so it was bittersweet to see them looking so young and vibrant. What a lovely bonus!
- Bunny, the horse, was supposedly a girl. Only, Bunny was clearly sporting an, um, Willie. So to speak.
- Did I mention that the grass is always brown? And, the dirt?
- The set dressing was too sparse. I know the Ingalls were poor, but surely their home collected “stuff.”
- When did Laura learn to swim? In the camping episode, she can’t, but in Remember Me, she can.
- Also, in the beginning of this episode, Mary is sporting piggy tails, which are a huge improvement over her normal hair-do.
- Short haired dogs cannot have poodly-haired puppies.
- Speaking of dogs, I really can’t stand the convention of using them in place of wolves. German Shepherd Dogs do not even remotely resemble wolves. Seriously.
- Again, the brown grass and dusty, red dirt.
- Also, did I mention that it is not always summer in Minnesota. They have winters there. And, when they do have winters, they consist of more than one isolated blizzard.
- When the family (and half of Walnut Grove, it seems) packs up and heads to Dakota territory, there is no real way to tell how long they’re gone. It sure doesn’t seem like that long, but the Ingalls return to find their house festooned with cobwebs and the mill owner, Lars Hanson, dying of a stroke. Walnut Grove has turned into a ghost town. But, the land surrounding the Ingalls homestead is still nothing but hard-packed, brown dirt. Not a single weed has grown in their absence.
Art History
I love art history. I find it endlessly fascinating, because it encompasses just about every aspect of human existence. I realize that not everyone–not even, necessarily, other artists–are as enamored of art history as I am. So, it was gratifying to hear a friend mention that she’d been watching the BBC’s How Art Made the World on PBS. We had a brief discussion about human vs. animal perception, idealization (e.g. the Venus of Willendorf vs. the Kritios Boy), and the flow of artistic conventions from the Egyptians to the Greeks (Greek Kouros and Korai vs. Egyptian sculpture).
It was incredibly cool to watch her get it, and to see the sparks fly and the synapses connect. Folks, that is why art history is such an amazing thing to study. A good teacher can forever make a positive influence on the way his or her students view and interact with their world.
There are also bad teachers, who make their students want to hide under their desks and cry. Class, meet Professor StuffyPants. I managed to make it through two semesters of survey and one of Medieval before giving up on him. At the end of it, I felt like I deserved some sort of medal for perseverance. With profs like him, it’s no wonder that my fellow art students weren’t very interested in taking more than the bare minimum of art history classes.
He did a disservice to a huge number of students by disrespecting their intelligence and generally acting like a jackass. He had the opportunity to inspire hundreds of kids–art students, no less, who ought to have been an easy sell–but he wasted it. His students would have been better off with him telling them to go home and watch PBS, instead of attending his lectures.
Only dreaming
I stayed up way past my bed time last night, watching a truly awful interpretation of The Swiss Family Robinson. Why do I do these things to myself? I loved the MacGyver aspect of the book, so, since I’ve been on a bit of a pioneering bender, I’d added the series to my Netflix queue. (Yes, these are the aforementioned discs that were shipped to me out-of-order.) I assume the series was created for cable teevee, but I don’t know which company to hold responsible. Really, it’s that bad. I can’t even recommend it for the cheese factor. That’s two hours of my life I won’t be able to get back.
Because I was up so late, I slept in this morning. That’s rarely a good idea, because when I do, I inevitably have bad–or at least weird and disturbing–dreams. Usually they involve things like being chased around abandoned amusement parks by Sleestak and/or Stormtroopers. This morning’s weird and disturbing dream was caused by yesterday’s bout of template ugliness. I dreamt that the CIA were forcing me to control people’s behavior with style sheets. Not being any sort of coding genius, I had to figure out, by trial and error, how changing tiny variables would affect people. I don’t remember any more of the dream than that, but I woke up feeling just a little panicked.
I think it’s time for me to toddle off in search of caffeine.
Grandma’s Bath Mat(thew)
Since the beginning of time, whenever I’ve visited my grandma, she’s taken me into her bedroom, opened the closet, and proceeded to shop for me. And not just me, either. She does this with with pretty much anyone who will stand still for it. She shops like nobody’s business, and hoards away all sorts of cheap-but-ultimately-useful junk, so I suppose the “let’s shop in grandma’s closet” routine is her way of justifying her hobby.
The last time I visited–sadly, several years ago–I was awarded a gawd-awful rubber-backed acrylic bath mat(thew)* in a disturbing shade of hot pink. Now, I’m all for pretty colors, but pink is not in my decorating vocabulary. Nevertheless, I brought the bath mat(thew) home and packed it away. I figured that I could surely find some use for it, if I thought hard enough. And, I did. Grandma’s hot pink bath mat(thew) became Elliott’s chewy spot (the place where he was Allowed to have grotty bones and whatnot). Then, a few years ago, I realized it would be a perfect way to protect the car seat from dog hair and–as it is rubber-backed–potential spewages. The rubber backing would also keep the mat in place on the seat. It worked so beautifully that I recommend that anyone who transports dogs in their car, pick up a few cheap bath mat(thew)s to lay on the seats.
So, onna counta having taken a couple of days off earlier in the week, I had to work this morning. When I reached B-ton, I realized I’d left my ginormous iced tea at home (alas and alack!), so I stopped at Bigfoot and purchased a tasty beverage. I reached work, parked my car flawlessly (an unusual enough occurrence that it merits mentioning), got out, and while collecting my various accouterments, managed to deposit the entire contents of my pepsisodapopcoke on the driver’s seat. I stood there for a moment, stunned. One, I now had no tasty beverage and only a $10 bill, so I couldn’t purchase a replacement from the vending machine. Two, my seat was saturated with wet, red stickiness. O ick. Three, I had recently spilled a Mudslide down the console (no, I wasn’t drinking and driving, I was taking a drink next door with me to a party), and had used the dog towels I keep in my car to clean up that mess and hadn’t replaced them. So, I had nothing to drink and no way to clean up the mess. Hmmm. How to replace the lost beverage, without getting my behindermost parts saturated with red, sticky goo? I know! Grandma’s bath mat(thew)! I removed it from Harriet’s spot and laid it across the driver’s seat, hopped back in my car, and returned to Bigfoot, where I was treated to a consternated look from the clerk.
Thank you, grandma, for insisting I needed a hot pink bath mat(thew).
Oh, and I managed to park all sorts of cattywampus the second time around. Hrmph.
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* There is a story there, about dogs, the mats some of them develop in their coats, and a very nice Canadian man named Matt. The long and short of it is that bath mats shall forevermore be known as bath mat(thew)s in my world. Bonus: I dare you to try saying bath mat(thew) out loud ten times, fast. If it doesn’t make you laugh (assuming you can accomplish it), then I suspect that there is something wrong with you.
red paper boat 
