Category: Crankypantsing

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Linkidinks and Bogglement

Shelly

First, the Linkidinks:

  • What every well dressed tank is wearing this spring: a tank cozy. (That’s for D, onna counta her post on subversive knitting projects.)
  • Also, the Crochet Hyperbolic Coral Reef Project.
  • For Ms. Lea, who ties funny knots.
  • Halliburton is given yet another contract, this one for $385 million, to waste building immigrant detention centers in the US. Read it and weep. From Halliburton’s website (in pdf format):

    • The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.

    What “new programs” are they preparing to rapidly develop? Creepy!

  • Via D, this most excellent reworking of I Am the Walrus, koo-koo-ka-chu.
  • Ramen taste test.
  • From the surreal files, a Yahoo news story about the role Yahoo has played in the jailing of Chinese dissidents. M’kaythen.
  • From the Department of Duh, high gas prices are the result of corporate greed, not the price of crude oil.
  • YouTube video of Indian street traffic. Amazing. It’s like anarchist ballet with cars. And, am I smoking crack, or is India where all good Festivas go to die?
  • Does becoming involved in the Goth subculture protect kids from harm? Interesting, and not at all surprising. I just have to quote this bit, because it makes me all kinds of happy:

    It is a strongly non-violent and accepting subculture.

    Crazy and dysfunctional, yes, but not violent and not unaccepting. I think that was one of the most important parts of self-identifying as a freak when I was in high school and college. The freaks take all comers and have a live and let live philosophy. There’s a lot to be said for that.

  • Lots of things bother me about Tom Cruise, but I’m amused that Katie took pain killers during the delivery.
  • Speaking of The Tom, I’m thoroughly creeped out by the baby’s epithet “TomKitten.” It’s as if the wee one burst forth from her father’s forehead, fully armored. I believe the myth goes: It was prophesied that any child of The Tom’s would overshadow him, so when Katie became pregnant, The Tom ate her. Or maybe it was just the placenta. Anyway, he then got a thumping headache, and asked his publicist to cleave his skull in twain with an axe. Out popped baby Suri. Et voila, The Tom achieves solo male birth.
  • More creepiness. I’ve long been bothered by the tone BushCo has been taking on the subject of Iran. I do not find this admission to be comforting.

Second, the Bogglement:

And then there’s this little gem from Slate, on The Medical Institute for Sexual Health. The Med Institute has received a $200,000 grant from the CDC to create a program to teach medical students about sexual health. Sounds innocuous enough, right? Only, the guy who heads the Med Institute is W. David Hager, a misogynist who raped and abused his wife. He was also the author of the report that is implicated in the FDA’s decision to not give OTC status to emergency contraception. Nice guy, eh?

Anyway, according to Hager’s Med Institute’s mission statement, they believe that “the behavior choices necessary for optimal health are sexual abstinence for unmarried individuals and faithfulness within marriage.” Now, I realize that Our Malevolent Leader is all for keeping it in your pants unless you’re one of God’s chosen people, which is problematic on about a zillion levels. However, spewing ridiculous tripe like the above is not the way to bolster one’s position. Fortunately for Our Malevolent Leader, who had the foresight to leave nearly every child behind, they aren’t teaching logic in schools these days. If they were, then it would be patently obvious that married folk do not have a monopoly on faithfulness. The existence of a piece of paper, or lack thereof, cannot predict whether or not a person will screw around.

And don’t get me started on the “nonmarital pregnancy epidemic.” My ass. Again, a little piece of paper cannot predict whether or not someone will make a good parent. I realize they’d like us to think they’re referring to teen pregnancy, but if that was their true intent, they’d’ve said so. No, they mean exactly what they say. They don’t like uppity wimmins having babies on their own, onna counta we’ve got eeevil uteri and cannot be trusted with their operation.

The CDC has no business funding this sort of crap. Then again, we’re talking about a government that thinks that only married folks should be having Teh Sex. According to its new abstinence education guidelines, in order to be eligible for government grants, the group in question must teach that:

“Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse. […] Throughout the entire curriculum, the term ‘marriage’ must be defined as ‘only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.'”

What that means is that they must teach kids that they shouldn’t have sex until they are married, and that only God’s Chosen People (those who aren’t Teh Gay), will be allowed to marry. If you are gay, too bad, so sad, no sex for you. I really cannot see why on earth our government should be allowed to pursue such an agenda. If they want to disseminate abstinence only information, fine. It isn’t an effective way to achieve their supposed goal, but in and of itself, it’s not a big deal. However, when it is used as a framework for teaching kids that there is something wrong with being not-straight, that’s another kettle of fishes.

Crankypantsing

On Cars and Driving

Shelly

What started out as a stormy day (5″ of rain in 90 minutes!) has turned quite beautiful, if a little warmer than I’d prefer. I took the back way home, so that I could look at all the baby cowlets. Oh. My. Gawd. but the wee babies are some serious kind of cute. I nearly went off the road while driving past the cute little farm on Woodyard. They have bitty newborns that are so cute it hurts.

And, it must have been the day for moving hay. I passed two farmers hauling flatbeds piled high with round bales. I assume they’re rotating stock, as it’ll soon be time for the first cutting. Out with the old, in with the new.

The point, though, is that I had an ancient gold pick-up truck behind me. It reminded me of the truck we had when I was a kid. Oh my. For a long time, it was the only “running” vehicle we had. And, I use that term euphemistically. The steering column was literally (and I use that term literally) held together with baling wire. The gear shift was a flat-head screw driver. The best part, though, was that it would not stay in low gear without help. Whenever we needed to go uphill, my step-dad would have to get out of the truck, climb underneath it, and use a set of vice grips to clamp it in low gear. Now that is what I’d call manual transmission. At the top of the hill, the little ritual was repeated in reverse. Très amusant, non? I haven’t gotten to the good part, though. Those of you who are familiar with southern Indiana will see why this is especially problematic. For those who are not, have you seen Breaking Away? We have a few hills down here. Actually, our hills have a few hills. And those hills are on top of yet more hills. Basically, this is not the place for a vehicle with a b0rkened transmission. The mind wobbles.

However, the icing on the cake was that my step-dad was an auto mechanic. No, really. Can you believe that? I won’t bore you with tales of the VW Beetle that had no reverse gear. Or the VW Squareback that had a broken driver’s seat and no alternator. And then there was the VW Microbus that, like all VWs, had no heat. Instead, it had a kerosene space heater. Talk about a death wagon on wheels!

It is for to weep.

Anyway, this might explain why I have such deep and abiding love for my little Tracker. Unless you’ve grown up with junkyard rejects, you have no idea how nice it is to be able to decide, at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon, to just drop everything and go on a road trip.

Crankypantsing

The Grammar Police Never Sleep

Shelly

Paging Wilford Brimley. Would Mr. Brimley please come to the white courtesy phone?

Don’t let on, but I’d like to smack him upside the head. I’ve mentioned before that I’m disturbed–on a near daily basis–by his mangling of the English language. I’ve recently discovered that he has a little friend. I don’t recall what product it’s for, but there’s a commercial on heavy rotation right now for a medication for some sort of “respitory” ailment. That’s right folks. I thought it had five syllables, too, so I’m just as shocked as y’all are. And, amazingly, if you go a-Googling for “respitory,” you get 174,000 hits. It is for to weep.

Crankypantsing

Zzzzzz

Shelly

Someone poke me with a really, really sharp stick. And hurry, pleaseandthanks. I’m actually falling asleep while I’m typing. I keep standing up and moving around, trying to wake myself up, but it’s not helping. I hate knowing that I’m nodding off and not being able to do anything about it. It’s awful.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

But keeping dark is hateful

Shelly

It’s not particularly fun to wake up at 4 am. It’s not particularly fun to have to leave for work at 5:15 am. About the only thing that is less fun is waking up at 3 am and leaving for work at 4:15 am. Daylight saving time, my ass! It wouldn’t be so bad if I could figure out how to change the clock in my car. I don’t really need to be reminded every morning that it is really 4:15, not 5:15. Talk about adding insult to injury. Worse is that it’s not even pretending to be dark out when I go to bed, which I also usually do at a ridiculously and obscenely early hour. Mitch Daniels has a lot to answer for.

Fucker.

Sometimes it’s depressing to be a tiny speck of pinko-blue swimming in a sea of red. I am finding this to be especially true at 3am.

Since I’m on the subject of things that make me cranky in the morning, I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the accepted procedure for stopping at traffic lights and stop signs. I don’t know how they do things in Wisconsin, where Mr. CRV Driver is from, but here in Indiana we recommend stopping in front of the line. As in, all four tires of your car should not yet have crossed the aforementioned. That would be the exact opposite of having all four of your tires on the far side of the line. I’m just sayin’…

To the old dude who works for the parks department and drives a nearly invisible dark green Ford F-150, could you please either pick up the pace or stop driving on the bypass? Seriously. If you cannot go faster than 30mph, you really shouldn’t be driving where the speed limit is 55mph. I’ve almost rear-ended you multiple times, and I saw a gravel truck nearly go off the road this morning, trying to avoid flattening you.

To the person with the E tag who keeps snagging my parking spot: Are you made of money or something? How long do you intend to accumulate tickets, just so you can park in the A lot?

To the Herald Times delivery driver: What in the name of all that is holy do you think you’re doing? You do not (not!) deliver papers from the highway. This is the second time I’ve been stuck behind you as you’ve crept along, winging papers through the passenger side window onto the the ends of people’s driveways. Not cool.

That’s all from this week’s edition of the Rural Road Rage Diaries.

Oh, wait, I lie. There was one more. A red blinky light means S-T-O-P. It does not mean slow down a little bit. A blinky yellow light means slow down a bit, and proceed with care. Which is what I did, which is why I didn’t cream your ass when you barrelled through your blinky red light. Fuckwit.

Crankypantsing, Genealogy

Mormons Being Creepy

Shelly

So, as I’ve been going through all this genealogy BS, I’ve come across a metric fuck-load of references to the phrase “sealed to parent/child,” along with recent-ish dates. Wondering what on earth that might mean, I went a-Googling. Lo and behold, it refers to LDS baptism and binding. Basically, no matter when you died, or, apparently, what your faith was when you keeled over (boggle), your present day descendants, if they are endowed[1] LDS members, can opt to have you baptised and sealed to them. In other words, your spirits are then eternally bound together.

Now, I’m all for folks practicing whatever sort of mumbo-jumbo floats their boats, but I think it’s of the utmost importance for people to have free choice of which flavor of Kool-Aid they prefer to drink. I’m squicked out by the thought that hundreds of years after someone’s death, their descendants can fool around with their eternal souls.

I think that definitely qualifies as spiritual “Bad Touch.”

I’m just trying to imagine how some of the Quakers I’ve been researching would react if they found out their souls were being enshrined against their wills in some sort of Mormon death cult. I mean, these were folks who took their own brand of religion seriously enough that they were willing to come to this country in order to practice it freely. They also don’t strike me as folks who were into super secret rituals.

____________________________________
[1] What endowment means is anyone’s guess. It apparently entails participating in an uber-s00per-s33kr1t ceremony that none must speak of ever after.

Crankypantsing

The Office Crier & Stubbies

Shelly

It’s one thing to comment to your cube neighbor about a mass e-mail. Some of them are mind-bogglingly worthy of comment. It’s quite another to go around asking folks if they got a particular message (the subject line states that it was sent to everyone on campus). I can’t, for the life of me, figure out the purpose of such an act. Why does he need to know if anyone else got the message? It didn’t come from him, so he presumably has no personal interest in whether or not certain people received it.

Another thing that bugs the hell out of me is related to answering the phone. Everyone in my section of the office shares a phone that is oh-so-irritatingly located rightbehindmydesk. Because I’m closest to the phone, I’m usually the one who answers it. If I waited for someone else to do so, I’d go insane from the ringing. All this phone answering necessitates the taking of many, many, many phone messages. Not a big deal, except that there is never a reasonable writing implement in the vicinity of the phone. There used to be a few dried up pens and a few dull pencils. I noticed today that those have morphed into a coffee mug packed with dull, stumpy, little pencil butts. WTF?! I started to take a few over to sharpen (I don’t mind stubbies, but I hate writing with dull leads), but then I realized that I’d have to sharpen all 30 or so pencils for that to be helpful. Otherwise, I’ll be playing “find the sharp pencil,” which is absolutely guaranteed to make me several kinds of cranky.

Fromme whence didst yon pencil butts cometh? I asked a coworker, only to learn that someone from another unit–on the other side of the floor!–brings them to us. Whyever the hell does she think we want stubby little pencil butts, I’ll never know. According to my coworker, the benefactress likes little pencils, and leaves them all over the damned place so that she has something to write with on those rare occasions she’s out and about. Hot buttered Christ! So we have to deal with a mug chock full of fucking pencil stubs–many of which are too short to sharpen–because she might want to use one when she’s passing through? I. Don’t. Think. So. She can take her own damned arse end of a pencil with her if it’s that important.

Crankypantsing

Backlog Doughnuts

Shelly

The first working day of every month, we count our individual and collective backlogs (librarians really like their statistics, lemme tell ya’).

So, to make the chore less onerous, the various unit heads take turns bringing in pastry-type treats for everyone. Usually, these treats are in the form of Backlog Doughnuts. The manager in charge of that month’s treats sends a message to everyone, announcing the arrival of the aforementioned.

I’m not a huge pastry fan, so I don’t usually partake. Plus, I don’t do any of the counting of collective backlogs, so I’m never sure if I’m allowed to partake. See, one manager sends out just a general “treats are here for everyone, so eat up” message, while another manager sends out something that goes a little like this: “There are backlog doughnuts at X location for those who participated in the collective backlog counts.” Only, she sends it to everyone, regardless of whether or not they are eligible for said backlog doughnuts. Unfair, says I, to taunt us with Tasty Num Nums and then, in the next breath, forbid us to partake of them. How rude!

So, on the first working day of every month, I get cranky as hell because of the Backlog Doughnut Conundrum. Will I be allowed to have a doughnut this month? Or, will they be meting out The Pastries of Maximum Perturbation?

Oh woe is me!

Art, Crankypantsing

Why I’m Not a Joiner

Shelly

A couple of years ago, I joined a Yahoo group for gluebooks. For those who don’t know what gluebooks are, they’re journals or artist books full of collage. The group started out as a low-key, fun bunch of people. Then, the moderator started getting cranky with lack of participation by lurkers.

I wasn’t a frequent participant, but I had been attempting to post at a frequency that was well within her guidelines. I say “attempting,” because she kept blocking my posts. On topic, perfectly civil and supportive posts, I might add. Hrmph. I sent her an e-mail, explaining that it was kinda hard for me to participate if half my messages were getting nuked. I never heard back from her.

About a month later, she went on another bender, this time stating that those who weren’t participating enough (like me) would be unsubscribed from the group. M’kaythen. I e-mailed her again, and again, was ignored.

Then, the kicker: she used one of my images for the group’s home page, but credited it to someone else. I e-mailed her to tell her that she’d mis-credited it. No biggie. It has happened on every art-related group I’ve ever belonged to. Normal, accepted practice is for the moderator to fix the problem and send a correction message to the group. Not this time, though. Nope. Instead of the usual week that images were left on that group’s home page, mine was yanked down that same day with no correction, no “oops” message to the group, and no explanation. What the fuck?!

At that point, I unsubscribed from the group. I’d heard enough about the moderator’s shitty behavior from others, that I decided it wasn’t worth it.

That’s all ancient history, but it explains why, when I recently ran across a gluebooks “lens” she’d created on Squidoo, I was gobsmacked to find that the Flickr snapshot was composed entirely of my artwork. HAW!