Saturday, October 18, 2008
Oh. My. FSM.
OK, while sitting at your desk, your computer, your sofa, your seat in Starbucks, wherever, start making a clockwise circle with your right foot.
Now, with your right hand, draw a number 6 in the air.
Your foot will change directions, and there's nothing you can do about it.
ARGH! It's been driving me mental for half an hour now.
All Is Well
I spent two days doing the furnace dance with Bruce the Repairman. He's a bit of a redneck and seriously right-wing and really I can't see us ever being friends, but he fixed the furnace and made sure that we weren't going to die from carbon monoxide poisoning, and that counts for a lot.
Because of having to sit shivering in the cold, cold house for two days while doing the furnace dance, I wasn't able to get to the post office, therefore not only am I not at Rhinebeck but neither is my yarn, about which I am doubly bitter.
One thing, and one alone, has made it possible for me to endure the last two days. Make sure you go to the bathroom before you read this.
If you're one of the "losers who didn't go to Rhinebeck this year" I guarantee it'll help.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
And then the Furnace Exploded
I had to work tonight (at the "bad" place, even!). I grumbled about it a bit and clearly didn't want to go as I set the alarm for 12 hours after it needed to go off, but hell, it was a statutory holiday (Thanksgiving here in the Great White North) and being a slut for double-pay, I had little choice but to go.
And then, while sitting there happily working on Yet Another Soul-Sucking Mitred Square Blanket of Doom (in ack -- it needs to be machine washable) I got the call that everyone hopes to get at some point in their lives.
Him: Uh, I think the furnace exploded, how do you turn it off?
Me: It did WHUT?
Him: It was making booming noises and a fireball came out of the front of it.
Me: Oh. That certainly sounds like it exploded.
Him: Yeah. So how do you turn it off?
Me: You go to the thermostat in the living room and move the switch to "off".
*sigh*
Fortunately no harm was done, it just seems that the gas leaks out for too long before the pilot light thingie ignites it. And then it explodes.
There go all of my plans for tomorrow. Life is out to kill me, I swear it.
Monday, October 13, 2008
And Yet Another Rant
Have you ever read a book that just grabbed you by the short hairs and sucked you in in the first paragraph and owned you?
Yeah?
Me too, but the one I'm reading now is the exact opposite. I'm on page two and already I want to go to the author's home and punch her in the face. (The book is Skin and Bone, by Kathryn Fox, if anyone's wondering).
She pissed me off with a single word. That word? Decimated.
"deci·mation n.
Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions."
(definition gleaned irresponsibly from some source on the interwebs)
So, every tenth person. Ten percent. And yet this dangling trout-biscuit (I'm trying to expand my field of profanity to include fish) has chosen to use the word to describe a house that has been burned almost to the ground. Not ten percent burned. From her awkward description I am led to assume that only about ten percent remains.
"Devastated" would work. "Trashed" is also a viable option. "Fucked up like a fucked-up thing" would also be more accurate than "decimated" although admittedly less lyrical.
And yet she chose to use a perfectly good word, a stellar and powerful word (just think if your ranks were being decimated, wouldn't you be counting quickly to ten and maybe just maybe switching places with the nose-picker to your left?).
Oh sweet honey-drinking FSM, I'm now on page 8 and someone is extolling the virtues of his dog, saying that it can "detect the presence of accelerants up to days later". Um, up to days later? How many? Two, four, sixfuckingteen?
OK, this book gets returned to the liberry without my having explored the depths (and I'll bet they're pretty shallow) of its shoals.
If anyone's wondering where all of this ranting and vitriol is coming from, during the time I spent in the mental ward that is my head this summer, for FIVE SOLID MONTHS the DJ from Hell played the J. Geils Band's "Freeze Frame" on continuous loop. I don't like that band at all and dislike that song specifically. I don't know the lyrics and instead of looking them up like a sane person I made up the words. Five months of some guy singing "I was chewing on a flat black flapjack" in your head is enough to drive Gandhi to at least considering the benefits of getting all stabbity on people's asses.
I suspect there may be more rants in the offing. In the meantime, please use "decimated" appropriately and govern yourselves accordingly.
Remember, I know where you live. Or, well, no I don't. But I know where I live and that has to count for something.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Indulge Me, If You Will
I beg your indulgence, for I have a great need to rant just a little.
"Two posts in two days? Will miracles never cease?" I hear you say, to which I reply, most respectfully, "Shut up."
Now I don't want you to think that I spent the entire summer lying about, eating bonbons, crying in the bathtub and wondering if I should buy the regular or the lemony-fresh bleach for my after-dinner beverage.
Oh no, amidst the weeping and the wailing and the wallowing in the deepest wells of angst, there was much reading done; escape and solace was attained through frequent pillaging of the local liberry.
Mr. Assmuppet says I have to pay a nickel to the liberry every time I call it that instead of the library and he also says he's authorized to collect on their behalf, but I checked with them and they didn't seem to know anything about it so I think he might be a great big liar, liar, pants on fire and he also owes me six dollars. But I digress.
I have previously stated quite clearly my opinion of those who deface books and I had much occasion to vent my ire lo, these past many moons, however there is one word that really gets right up my noze and although I never saw it "corrected" in any of the books I read I think that quite likely I would have let such a transgression pass. In fact I may have rejoiced in it.
That word is "workaholic", and I would urge you to cross it out or even tear the whole damned page out of the book should you run across it at any point. Possibly going and setting fire to the author's home would be an overreaction but let me tell you, I wouldn't be the one turning you in for it.
English is a delightful, flexible and ever-changing language (and my flagrant use of both "liberry" and "noze" without a smidgen of guilt will give you a hint how seriously I take the "purity" of the language). It is both a joy and a source of endless frustration and amusement when trying to explain to a non-native English speaker the whys and wherefores of all the rules and why there are often more exceptions to the rule than words covered under the rule itself, but there are certain patterns, ways in which words are invented (or "unvented" as the late lamented EZ would say, although in reference to knitting rather than to words), and "workaholic" Just. Won't. Do.
There are some who know far more about this sort of thing than I do (not difficult really, as I am relatively uneducated and seem to be, as usual, blowing hot air) and I welcome input (although not corrections as we all know this isn't a democracy) but it would seem to me that the word from which that excrescence sprung is "alcoholic". Now, an alcoholic is someone who is addicted to alcohol -- that's a given, yes? So ... what exactly is a so-called workaholic addicted to?
Workahol?
There's no such word as far as I know (although when I did sales admin. I must say that some of the salesmen were tanked more often than not and very often while working, and so for that particular class of gentleman -- and I use "class" very loosely -- an exception may be made. But for none other.) (Or should that be "no other"? See? I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, really. My grammar and punctuation suck too, and I don't actually care all that much. And I start sentences with "and" and use far too many parentheses and seem to think italics are a design feature. Again, shut up.)
Alcoholism is a serious disease. It ruins lives, families, health, relationships, businesses and is responsible for unpleasant stains on countless carpets.
Workaholism is ... not a word.
You see the difference? On the one hand, a serious disease; on the other, a stupid non-word. Disease; stupid non-word. It's simple, really.
Don't use it again. I'll be watching you.
And to quote the annoying man who called me up this afternoon to discuss the $85 I most assuredly do not owe to his company, "govern yourselves accordingly".
(PS, I told you I was back)
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
I Thought ...
First I thought about drinking bleach ...
And then I put on my glasses so I could see things a little more clearly.
I looked for advice from on high, but all I got were rude gestures from the spiders on the ceiling of my studio (they eat m*ths, we loves the spiders)
So then I came up with the bright idea that I should disappear for weeks from my blog and email and the interwebs in general and freak a bunch of people out while getting my shit together. (If anyone wants a tidy pile of manure, I am now your go-to girl).
So I hung out with my kid a lot (you can see she's no longer sick) and read books and cleaned house and slept and slept and slept and as you can see I'm feeling a whole lot better.
And then I decided "screw this depression thing, it's really annoying". This is me and Her Surreal Highness telling Depression where to go.
So I took a bunch of pictures with the $7 webcam I got on EBay six, eight months ago -- maybe longer -- and never installed, in an attempt to reassure all and sundry that I have not in fact been committed.
This picture may not have so much in the way of focus, but what do you expect for $7. Me? Yeah, focus. Quite a bit now, thank you.
I can't sleep worth a damn any more, but I only crash like the Hindenberg when I'm too depressed to move, so that's a good thingie, and such. After a few hours of sleeps I'll see what I can do about mending the hole I left in the fabric of that internets thing by unplugging for so long.
(and thank you, Lala, for saying that I look about 20 in these pictures. That's what being sane and rested will do to me, seemingly. At least I hope you were referring to my age and not IQ. Please don't tell me if I'm wrong.)
