I have noticed a common denominator in the people I am related to. No, I won't say abject stupidity - though it is tempting at times. It's that they just don't listen. Communication is a foreign concept to them.

My brother called this morning blathering on about the historical society website being 'down and banning him' or some such. As it was morning and I was sleeping, I wasn't particularly inclined to care. My mother took the message and I told her I'd look into it later in the day and email him, but there was a 95% chance that it was something he'd done and not an actual problem.

As the day rolled around, I had about an hour to rest a while before leaving to pick up Aus from work. As I have had a migraine and cramps for like the past four days, I was looking forward to a nice rest. "I don't want to be bothered," I told my mom. "If someone calls - especially Ron - just tell them I'll get back to them later. Okay?" "Okay!" she says, and goes about her merry way cleaning things or reading or whatever it is she does for entertainment. I put on some good music. Stretch out, get comfy. Consider doing some writing. Ahh, comfort. Sounds good, right? Wrong. No more than five minutes later, I hear...

"LAURA! ITS FOR YOU!" followed by banging on my door. Incredulous, I call back "Yeah, well... tell them I'll call back later." I kinda hope she's not getting senile or anything because... didn't I just say something about not wanting to be bothered? Oh maybe I hallucinated that or something. Well whatever, now she has the message for sure right, so I settled back down. About two seconds later...

"ITS RON. HE NEEDS TO TALK TO YOU. ABOUT THE WEBSITE."

Well fuck yeah he thinks he does. We've already been over this too. I still don't feel particularly inclined to care - especially since this is unpaid volunteer work and is in fact COSTING ME MONEY as I am paying for the hosting and domain. This does not imply I also want to answer stupid tech support questions that can be handled over email just as easily, especially when I have about an hour to rest and my head is pounding like a bass drum.

I took the phone, said... "I'll email you." and hung it up.

Then my mom was bitching at me for being unhelpful, AND he called back. Communication. We can has it now?

Being as I am observant enough to now realize that they are not going away until I handle yet another of their 'omg it is such an emergency!' problems, I take the phone and snarl "What can you possibly want that can't wait?" into it.

Ron informs me that 'The website is broken' because he can't get it to 'let him upload a picture.'

I asked for details of what he was trying to do. He was trying to access the gallery... which he's never set up an account for... to put pictures into it. Never mind that we haven't even built the albums yet and it's nowhere near time for that.


He couldn't understand why he couldn't type in 'ron' and some random word for the password and get into the gallery to upload pictures.

I'm like 'That's because you're not registered. Stupid.'

So now we have to register him because he 'doesn't understand' and says he thinks he's banned from the gallery for making too many attempts at stupidly entering an invalid name.

Imagine the internet like a forest. He's the bear lumbering around through the trees trampling saplings and shitting on things.

This is what I deal with here.

Apparently Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died today. Both were pretty much iconic figures - I remember having Charlie's Angels dolls as a kid, and in the 80s when the Thriller music video was a sensational hit having a Michael Jackson style jacket. Farrah had cancer and died after a long struggle - she made a documentary about it that was supposedly very moving (I haven't seen it). Michael Jackson... well. What can you say about the freakish turn of his life that hasn't already been said? I still don't understand why everyone gets so emotional about the death of celebrities. Three radio stations on the way home were playing Michael Jackson songs, and earlier the Beatles break on another local station was dedicated in part to Farrah. What did Farrah have to do with the Beatles? Nothing, but she died today and they had a show so good enough. What a circus.

I have spent the past couple of days helping my brother, who needed to go to the hospital with bad shoulder and neck pain. They were worried he might be having a heart attack and ran all sorts of tests. Turns out he has bursitis, and he's doing okay today thanks to the magic healing powers of steroids and percoset. The hospital formerly known as Kessler (now Atlanti Care) is at least cleaner then Kessler was and has some new furnishings. They've taken away the depressing beg for money while you are forced to see repetitive stories of children dying horribly while you wait St. Jude commercial tv, which is definitely a bonus. The wait time however, is atrocious. It was bad enough at Kessler, but Atlanti Care suffered from a distinct lack of beds and staff. There was one doctor on duty, and maybe six beds in the emergency room that I could see? People were waiting for upwards of three hours just to get in. The doctor on call was very competent and nice when we did finally get in there though. But the sheer amount of suffering going on, with people moaning and children screaming, was horrific. I felt like I was at a field hospital, surrounded by the broken and bleeding and dying. It was really not a happy night.

With me I had Joe Jackson's book, a A Cure For Gravity. If you do not know who Joe Jackson is (hint: not Michael's father), remedy this fact immediately and have a listen to his newest album Rain. The book is his autobiography (the first twenty-five years or so anyhow) and a witty discourse on the nature of music and our relationship with it. Great book, great musician. Gave me something to think about when I definitely needed that.

Went out to lunch with my aunt and uncle today, and my uncle was listening to conservative talk radio. One of the things that they were going on about was how 2010 is a census year, and how the census is a horrible invasion of our privacy and what the hidden agendas to census data are and so forth.

I also read about PETA being all up in arms about Obama killing a fly. They even sent him a 'humane fly trap' so the flies could be caught and released or some shit.

The things people concern themselves with are amazing to me. What about the situation in Iran? What about the economy? Let's take all this wasted time and energy that people seem to have going on for Things That Don't Matter, and apply it to positive, helpful things.

Like this -

The National Bone Marrow Registry is in the middle of a "Marrowthon" where it's no cost to register. FREE! How cool is that? You get to possibly save a life AND it doesn't cost you anything! Go NOW to http://www.marrow.org and see if you meet the health requirements. Unfortunately I do not so I can't sign up, but YOU might be able to so please check it out. This is a very real need and a positive thing you can do, and it's free. Also please spread the word about this in your journal or on your Facebook to get other folks to register.

Dear d-bag in Altoona ,

Hello. Thank you for continually trying to reset my LJ password. You realize every time you try this, I get a notification in my real and actual email. Which, you know, you don't have. It also includes your IP - which, you know, is traceable.

--L

PS:

This is you:



and this is me being unimpressed.

Today I am thirty-nine.

So far I went to lunch, played a couple of games of apples to apples with my mom and brother, and lounged on the porch a while doing my jigsaw puzzle. There has also been an ongoing birthday cheesecake, so it's been a pretty good weekend overall.

My new bike! It is a very girly Schwinn that my mom and brother Joe bought me for my birthday. It's so very pink - partially to help it avoid the fate of my last bike, which was that it got kidnapped by teen boys and subsequently broke. If the color isn't enough of a deterrent, it also has a very thick chain lock.

I am pleased to announce that the Holy Church of the Creepy Christ has a few new additions. Just bought a 1948 lithograph of a nun which has eerie holy glow going on, and a late 1800s statue imported from Italy of St. Rocco which has a creeptastic leaking plague sore on his leg, along with some kind of dog waiting eagerly for Rocco's blood or some such. So now in addition to praying to Creepy Jesus for all your salvation needs, you can also hit up St. Rocco. He's the patron saint of contagious diseases, so whether you've got VD or TB, give him a prayer and he'll get back to you. I am considering starting an LJ community for the church one of these days - let people post pictures of their own creepy religious statuary and post their prayer request and so on.

I'm babysitting my brother's dog today which, while the dog is cute, is a big pain in the ass. She needs to go for walks quite frequently and sniffs everything before deciding on the right spot to go. It'd be like if we, as humans, had to travel around from public bathroom to public bathroom, sniffing every toilet until we found that one magical spot that we felt like going in.This is why I'm more of a cat person - they can take care of their body functions on their own as long as you provide them with a place to do it in.

• 02:59 @RumWench
  How is Sims 3? #
• 03:01 I rode the Tilt-a-whirl the ferris wheel and the merry go round today. Also, my feets got wet and sandy. Go Ocean City! #

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Haven't felt up to writing much, been kind of depressed and dealing with family drama.

All three kids have currently moved out - which on the one hand is a big relief as they are the cause of so much stress. On the other hand, it is disappointing how much they are pretty much wasting their lives and going nowhere. But they are old enough now that what consequences they face as a result are on their own. I tried as much as I can and now it's up to them to either fix their problems and get on with their lives or continue sliding downward.

My brother is currently visiting from Virginia, which is nice. He'll be here until June 10th.

This Saturday's is my mother's 80th birthday party. My birthday is June 13th and I'll be 39. Time flies!

I've been enjoying playing a game called Kitten Sanctuary. Very cute and fun. Cats get kidnapped by aliens and you have to rescue them and take care of them in a kitten sanctuary.



EDITED TO ADD:
Have spread the Kitten Sanctuary addiction to Aus, Jess, and Nathan. Muaha...

Nathan: Oh, unrelatedly, kitten-stealing aliens are cockbags, and don't let them tell you otherwise.
Aus:Well, yes, they are. They're tentacle monsters and they want pussy. What do you expect?

When "vagina" is your mood and/or status update, you are too drunk for the internet.


This has been a pubic public service announcement.

Some college kid emailed me a while back (a year or so?) because she wanted her name removed from one of my LJ entries. Problem was that I a) couldn't find the entry in question and b) I didn't really care all that much. I wrote her back that she'd have to be more specific because I couldn't find the entry in question (it was a press release about my short story Mudo being published in the Santa Clara review that included mention of one of her poems being in there as well). Mind, I didn't write the release - just c/p'd it from the website that ran the story. Anyhow - my likely guess is that she is either 'zomg so embarrassed by the poem now that she's 'gotten so much better' in the past four years or she wants to claim that it hasn't been published before so she can resubmit it somewhere and claim to give them first time rights. Whatever. So not my problem either way. She never wrote back.

Now, fast forward about a year later and she suddenly sends me this charming email. Yes, this is what they teach you in college!

Hi charisma:

I emailed you a long time ago about the Livejournal entry where you mention my name (Some Annoying College Chick) in the news where your poem was accepted to the Santa Clara Review. I can't remember what your response was, and I tried to access it on my Livejournal account (which I have since deleted) in order to reread why you didn't immediately do what I asked. I am writing to you again to ask that you please delete the post, or edit my name out. Since the request doesn't affect you in any way, I can't understand why you wouldn't honor it. A quick response would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Some Annoying College Chick

Oh yeah. That's going to make me care so hard right there. Then I noticed because I didn't respond to this IMMEDIATELY (I was sleeping, kid) - I got a message on my facebook. No, she isn't a friend or anything- she just estalked me to make EXTRA SURE I got her VERY IMPORTANT MAIL.


Subject: follow up

I don't mean to be annoying but I just wanted to make sure you got my email about your livejournal post with my name in it. I am asking that you please edit it out. This is not the first request.

Thank you,

Still Some Annoying College Chick


Guess what? You ARE annoying. In fact, by now, I'm more inclined to go in and edit the entry to make your name stand out in three inch tall sparkly glitter text than I am to remove it. I gave her the following reply:

Why I didn't immediately do what you ask? Oh well let's see ...

If you could link me to the entry, I would edit it -last time you mentioned this I tried searching for it and can't find it and that was the end of it because you didn't contact me again until now. I really don't have much interest in digging through 10 years of entries to do a silly thing like edit out a name - especially since the tone of this message is rather rude. I'm under no obligation to do so, and it's hardly a top priority. You're the one who wants something here, so I would suggest asking politely and providing a link to the entry that you want edited - and an apology wouldn't hurt either. Might make me more inclined to honor your request as you are quite right and it does not affect me in the slightest.

Is this response quick enough for you?

--L


I suppose she figured she better tone down the condecension a bit if she wanted her PRECIOUS NAME to be preserved, so I got the following:

L:

Didn't mean to come off rude--the reason why I probably did is because I didn't think it would require the digging you said it does, and with no access to the reply it's hard for me to understand why someone wouldn't, yes, honor, another person's request for privacy. I found the entry with relative ease, but perhaps because I was looking. The entry can be found here: http://charisma.livejournal.com/683883.html.

Thank you very much for replying quickly, and thanks in advance for doing me this favor.


Making excuses for your behavior for the win! Oh, this is probably why - it's not that she was being snotty about it, of course not.


Dear Annoying College Chick,

I guess there's one thing they don't teach you in college - if you're going to ask someone to do you a favor, great or small, a little politeness goes a long way. Being a right bitch about it earns you a scathing live journal entry, with your precious name removed of course - but you sure as hell know who you are. Let's hope you actually learned something today - even well-educated academics (like you undoubtedly are) have to crawl out of their holes to deal with the public every now and then. Also.. you're not exactly attending an ivy league school there.

Also x2, re-reading my Santa Clara review - your poetry kind of sucked. Googling your precious name - it still does. Oh and by the way - there seem to be about ten or more other people with the same completely generic name that you have - so unless you go on a little quest to hunt down each of them to preserve the sacred purity of your name - you're still nobody special to the internets.

No love,
Me

Yesterday was a very good day - we went to Atlantic City to see The 88 and B52's in concert at House of Blues. We decided to make a day of it, and went to do other things in the city before the show.



First was the Atlantic City aquarium, where I got to feed manta rays and pet all kinds of cute little sea creatures. They are a small aquarium, but have some really nice fishes, amphibians, and reptiles in the space they have. There are two floors of critters and then an observation deck overlooking the ocean on the third floor. Very fun. See more pictures on Facebook - album 1, two, three.


Next we went to Ripley's Believe it or not on the boardwalk. Admission is kind of expensive (15 dollars), but there were a lot of things to see and it was very fun. I got a little book and some sort of Ripley card game that I have to actually take a look at today - didn't have much time yesterday, too busy doing things. They had all kinds of neat things there - even the famous Fiji mermaid! See more pictures on Facebook album 1, album 2, three.

I got a psychic reading - palm reading - on the boardwalk for the hell of it. Man, that thing was actually scary accurate - don't really feel like getting into the details but a combination of good-and-bad things. Then we had some pizza, and took one of those rolling wicker chair taxis over to the House of Blues (which is in Showboat). The guy who took us over was also going to the show, and he sung some B52s songs on the way, and gave us a tour of all the boardwalk musicians we passed - was fun. We saw him later during the show and he came over and said hi - he was a little drunk by then but still funny.
Boardwalk pictures



A little worry at the show as the guest list wasn't down when we arrived, but it came down and then we got our tickets - they gave us balcony seats right over center stage. Really nice seats! First act they had on was actually... a Rockband. Really. They won some Rockband competition to get to open for the B52s. They played a video about the competition before the band took the stage - it was basically a huge commercial for Rockband. Amusing, though, in a way. Then The 88 came on - and wow, they are good live. So much energy! A lot more upbeat than some of the concerts we see too, which was really nice. Good vibes. After The 88's set, we went down to the merch table to hang with Adam while the B52s where on. He gave me a cd and some assorted such, and a poster that he had the rest of his band come sign too. Also got a picture with with him, then with everyone after the show. They're all nice folks. Concert pictures

Today woke up pretty sore from all the running about yesterday, and all three kids gave me squat for mother's day. Brenda at least has a healthy sense of self-preservation and offered to take me out to dinner later in the week. Jeanette, in her usual lack of decorum, spent most of the day screaming about how we should give her things. Steve didn't even show up or call. I got my mom a set of Laurel and Hardy statues and a roomba vacuum (which is still on the way).

Tomorrow the shed should arrive, and then we can start hauling inventory out into it, then starting the book business up again. Go books.

Okay friends here it is....

sound_tracking

Please join! This is where we will be posting the albums from Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of all time - I think we'll be able to set them up as streaming from Imeem, possibly DL available (but you know how that goes - only for evaluation purposes kids!). There'll be a poll for each album so you can vote whether or not it is worthy of the position Rolling Stone gave it - and there will be discussion in the comments so you can give your opinions of it.

For those of you who have been living under a rock and/or haven't heard, we also have a character development prompt community that is up to about 1,200 members so it is going strong. Daily writing prompts are given, and it's a lot of fun - so if you haven't joined that one yet, find it over at....

charloft

Expensive week here at the Cushing house - have to pay the balance of the shed on Monday, and just bought a Roomba for mom for mother's day. Also my grill died - so I wound up getting a super George Forman grill thingy with timer and removable plates and adjustable broiler etc. because we use it so often (grilled meat for the win!) that it's really worth paying a bit extra for the features. Still, spending over 2000 dollah in the space of about seven days is a little intimidating, even when you do actually have the money saved for it and it is (with the exception of the grill which died suddenly) all planned for.

Oddly enough, my old laptop sort of resurrected itself (idk either - zombie electronics ftw?) and my new laptop is having some Vista-related dysfunction. So we've gone from one completely functional laptop to two semi-functional ones. So it goes.

I have not yet started reading Geek Love, as I was intending to finish up Widow of the South first - then got re-distracted by some of my German books (which are non-fiction accounts of various WWII topics that I can only read a bit at a time because they're heavy subject matter). So... eventually I will start reading that.

The circus is coming to town - there's Ringling Brothers in Philly at the spectrum and Cole brothers right in Vineland as far as smaller shows go. Both are show dates within the next couple of weeks, so if I want to go to one or both I would have to figure it out soon. Major problems with the one in philly - driving and parking. Major problems with the one in Vineland - probably bad bleacher seating that'll pretty much kill my back. So... worth it, not worth it? I love the circus, and have a character driven interest to see a show up close and personal to boot - but it may be too much trouble logistically speaking.

Speaking of shows, have not heard back from Adam regarding guest listing for B52's / The 88 on Saturday. I may have waited too long to drop him the reminder email - or maybe he'll still get back to me. We shall see. I just hate not knowing until the last minute what to plan for.

The illustrious mister Nathan sent me Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of all time (book) so I am going to make it my new project to listen to all five hundred albums and give my opinions of them. Am considering doing this as a separate blog, vs just putting them here, vs making a community for them. Might also find the albums and host them somewhere for DLs, or link to them streaming from imeem so other people can listen and give their opinions too. Thoughts? Anyone interested in playing along if I make it a separate community?

When watching a news special on how furniture can tip over and kill children, it's not polite to root for evolution, is it? Yet...

If little Billy's dumb enough to pull the tv over on himself, his stupid genes don't get passed on to the next generation. Everyone wins! I think coddling is half the reason we have so many dumb people. It's harder and harder to die from your own stupidity as time goes on and we put warning labels on more and more things, and have these specials on how to protect our precious children from any number of threats real and imagined.

Therefore more dumb people survive to breeding age each generation.

And because they're dumb, they often pop out massive numbers of children, each probably as intellectually incapable as the parent.

Dammit, I want to go back to the days of lead based paint and sharp toys that could choke a bitch. We survived those in childhood therefore we earned the right to pass on our genes.

The lilacs are blooming, which always puts me in mind of the Walt Whitman poem. I performed that and O Captain, My Captain once for high school forensics (public speaking sort of deal - not to be confused with the dead people kind) and I have been fond of them since. Other signs of spring - a herd of eight deer spotted by the side of the road, the birds flying in pairs, all sorts of insects and animals starting to run about again.

I went for a bike ride with my brother today, and would like to go walking this weekend if the weather and time permit.

I am just about to start reading Geek Love which Ash and Jess both said was really good. I am also going to start in on some comics as recommended by Dien, but I do not know where to start as yet. Too many choices!

I am feeling a little unwell today, though likely from allergies. There is swine flu reported in the next county over, but I'm not going to get paranoid over it. Aus made dinner for us tonight - he's such a good husband.

Our shed should be here in about a week- then it will be time to get the book business going again. It is also almost time to put the houseplants out on the deck for the growing season.

Meme time:

(stolen from Jeffie - which I totally pronounce as Hef-ay sometimes in my head just because I can)
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your Lj.

• 02:27 Listening to Everything Gives You Cancer by Joe Jackson. Just thought you should know that. See how useful having a Twitter is? #

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There has been little I've had to say lately, and part of that I suppose comes from the dullness of the routine - the back and forth a million times a day driving kids and husband and mother to where they need to go. It is very easy now to lose track of individual days, sometimes even weeks go by and I make no tracking of one day as any different from any other.

Today something happened.

Jeanette had a seizure outside her workplace, just as we were pulling up in fact to pick her up for a doctor's appointment (she hadn't been feeling well). She was lying there convulsing on the ground surrounded by her co-workers, and there was a sort of surrealism to it like sound and sight and all just spiraled and distorted. There is just something that happens when you see your child lying there on the ground and you think about when they were born and how this might be the last moment you will see them and all the things you fight about seem petty and insignificant. There are a lot of times when I do not like how the kids are right now, these teenage years and their attitudes of entitlement and how they are often rather belligerent and self-centered. But still, there is the hope that you will have years beyond these times in which things can balance and normalize and at least get back to some semblance of the affection you had for each other in younger years.

And in a moment you wonder if you have lost that chance forever, and then she comes out of it and you release a breath you didn't realize you were holding and you will know that you love this child no matter what shitty things she says to you on a nearly continual basis because that is just the way of things.

My father died as the weather was turning warm, as the flowers were starting to bloom and life was renewing itself. I always thought that a particularly ironic time to die, and at this time of year my thoughts ever turn to death and really I thought I would be more likely to be the one lying on the ground having a near-death because of all the problems I have. You never think it will be your child. Old people sure, you expect it somewhat, and when you are sickly yourself you kind of think about the possibility. But not a kid, not you kid.

It's like that.

Nathan visited us for a few days last week. That was really nice. I went to the Bus Stop Cafe, and my friend Joey was performing there and asked me to come up and read one of my poems during his set and I did with him and his friends providing background music. That was really nice. There have been some good times, some points of light. I am writing a lot. I am still working on my German (plucking away at the new language, word by word). We have purchased our shed and it will be on the way soon and we have a sort of business plan.

Hanging in there, though sometimes it's a lot more 'hang' and a lot less 'in'.

Tomorrow's agenda includes finding a neurologist then figuring out how we're going to pay for one.

• 00:36 Why am I twittering again? Too lazy to log in to my journal. My new laptop has DIED. Woot. Aus is trying to fix it. #

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Hoppy Easter from Disturbing Crossroads Bunny!

and happy zombie Jesus day from L, too.

• 21:36 I might as well try this thing again. I still don't really see the point of Twitter, but whatever. #

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