I hate Comcast. We lost service (internet, phone, and tv) for three hours today after they were effing around at the poll. They wanted to 'send someone out tomorrow sometime' which I found unacceptable. A bit of me threatening to go down their and put my foot up someone's ass later, they sent out a technician. The problem? They were supposed to shut off a neighbor's service and shut ours off instead. WTF.

The only problem is that Verizon is the only other option and they suck even worse.

Half remember a couple of dreams last night. One was that I was sleeping on the lawn, because I wanted to be outside in the fresh air and wind while I slept. I had a blanket spread out there, and I woke up to answer a text on my phone from someone asking if I was sleeping on the lawn again. And I texted back if that if you live in an area where crime's low enough isn't it nice to sleep where you can breathe?

The other dream was somewhat more disturbing - it involved being a girl at a girl's boarding school. There were these catty girls talking about vanity domains on the internet and one girl said "Oh, I'm not a domainist" in the same way one might say racist or sexist. I had an english class to go to, but I had to use the bathroom first. In the bathroom I discovered that there was a shower running and I pulled back the curtain because it was clear to see that there was no outline of a person in it so I could turn the water off. Face down in the water were two newborn babies (twins?). One of them was floating and the other was making some half-hearted swimming motions. I turned the water off and pulled them out and I remember feeling how cold their skin was and trying to revive them before they died. Don't know if that worked or not as I woke up.

I have to go to court with Steve early tomorrow morning over some incredibly stupid stuff. Teenagers are very good at getting themselves into stupid things. I am already stressing out about it, as it involves so many stressful things and I'm not really good with all that.

And today I got all kinda pissed off getting my oil changed. The yahoos that work there couldn't get the hood open so the guy comes to me in a completely condescending fashion and tells me that I have a 'problem' with my hood and I'll have to get it fixed before I got my oil changed. The problem was that despite the banging they did on my hood like complete idiots (which lucky for them they didn't do hard enough to actually dent anything- which also of course meant if a stuck hood WAS the problem it was unlikely to work). You have to stick your finger in to unlatch the latch, which took all of three seconds once I informed them. They were still smarmy and tried to claim I didn't understand it was some kind of spring or wire problem really - no, of course it wasn't them. Oy.

Our insurance finally kicked in, and it turns out that the doctor I wanted to go to does indeed take it - so Aus and I both have appointments for December 14th. I have a bunch of papers to fill out, and I've got to get our records transfered from the clinic and all but it's a step in the positive direction. It'll be really nice to see a proper doctor again. And I have so many other medical things that I need - dentist to get my dentures hopefully, eye doctor to get new glasses, gynecologist to get checked up and all... it's nice that we can get started on all that now.

Wal-Mart. You know you have to go there. You dread having to go there. It's pretty much the place that sucks you in because a) it's the only store in town that has what you need and b) it's got those low, low prices. Really though, it's like some sort of circle of hell and usually when I go in there I expect to deal with rude, surly people who are disgruntled by working for The Man. I'm cool with that. If I had to work at Wallyworld, I'd be pissed off too. Hell, when Aus worked for them he was frequently one thin hair from postal.

What I don't expect is for my cashier to God Bless me. Really, I don't. Few things annoy me more than someone foisting their religion onto me in an unwelcome and completely random manner. For a while, I dealt with this annoyance by asking questions like "Which God?" and "Bless me with what?" but the cashier just got this deer-in-headlights look that people get when asked to think outside of random reactions. Finally I just explained to her that look, not everyone's a Christian, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't bless me and we can just get on with the business of me paying you money for this made-in-china garbage I'm purchasing. So though this lady wears a million Jesus pins on her uniform, and she still God Blesses everyone else that comes in the store, she says to me 'have a nice day' instead. This is all well and good. Everything is right with the Wallyworld (or at least as right as it ever gets).

Fast forward about a year, and they have a new cashier. She's about 19 or 20, chewing gum and wearing a shiny gold cross necklace. She tells us "God Bless you and have Bless-ED holiday season" (I really hate how they say Bless-ED , but that's an entirely separate rant). So I try telling he that I don't want to be blessed by random gods thank you, since this strategy worked well with the other one. This girl just waved her cross around and belligerently re-blessed (or re-bless-ED) me.

I went to customer service to explain to them my problem, that this was the second of their cashiers that was God-Blessing people and that not everyone is a Christian, and it's pretty offensive and could they do something about it. The manager turns to me and says with a straight face that he'll have a talk with her because "It's not Wal-Mart policy to bless customers."

Please don't buy this man's books.

I have never read anything by John C. Wright, nor do I intend to. But in case you do, you might want to think twice about giving a homophobic asshole your money.

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.

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.

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

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.

Aus and I were on a conference call today with other people from around the country to go over some new features on the Gather website.... and suddenly, loudly, for about five minutes... the sound of someone's dogs barking loudly in the background.

The folks running the call asked them to mute their phone, but to no avail.

Things went on for a while... then dogs, again.

Things went on again... then more dogs.


Professionalism: You are doing it wrong.

Oh please, let the zombie apocalypse come so it will be legal to shoot my effing neighbors.

They have this obnoxious device on their lawn that continuously plays Christmas carols. Over and over and over again. They have it turned up so loud that I can hear it through my closed windows and walls - and the houses are not that close!

It is making me crazy. I want to go over there and unplug that bitch and shove it up someone's ass.


Any questions about why I hate the holiday season?

So I just woke up (Yes, late, I know- but I didn't sleep well the other night) and the first two things I see on the internets are as follows:

MEN CHARGED AFTER SKULL DUG UP AND USED AS BONG


and

WHY ARE THERE PERVERTS IN THE FURRY SLAVE PORN RP I WANT TO PLAY IN?


WTF, internet. I haven't even been awake ten minutes yet and you're already bringing stupid to the plate.

Dear mod,

If you're going to require five paragraphs of wanktastic introspective purple prose for a character to cross the room in your game, PLEASE note this in your user info or rules so I don't waste my freaking time actually applying for and joining your game, then having you make this post about how 'one liners' (aka, a concise paragraph or two when that's all your character really needs to say about a situation) are all bad and evil and how you personally spend half an hour or more on a single tag of glorious page long length.

I have this little thing called a life that really doesn't call for me to spend half an hour writing anything I don't get paid for, thank you very much. Also, if I wanted to write a page or two every time my character walked across a room, made tea, smiled, or threw a punch - I'd be writing fanfiction.


Every time I forget why I only play in games run by those I know well, or games of my own making, someone thoughtfully reminds me with shit like this. Thanks mod.

No love from me,
--L

Things that annoyed me today:

1. Lady who had her cell phone on speaker LOUDLY and was chatting all the way through the grocery store. I'm really not a cell phone person - especially YOUR cell phone, when I have to hear it.

2. Squatters. No, not people who live in buildings without paying rent - but ladies who squat instead of sitting when they use the restroom and then PIDDLE all over the damn seat and don't clean up after themselves. Every single bathroom in the public restroom was littered with the remains of squatters. I do not want to clean up your pee. I want to sit down like and do my business like a civilized being , not squat like we're still crapping in holes. They put those little disposable seat covers in bathrooms for a reason and that reason is so you can SIT. You will not get AIDS and herpes and die from toilet seats, promise. Also, if it's that time of the month.. and you know what time I mean.. do not leave the remains of your feminine hygiene products all over the place like it's a bloody crime scene. If you wouldn't do it at home, don't do it in public.

3. You know when you're about to pull out of a parking space, and there's this guy? And he's like.. in your way with his car, so you wait for him to pass. Only.. he doesn't. So you start backing out, and then he starts to go, realizes you're about to back up... and then stops. RIGHT UP YOUR BUMPER. I want to get out of my car and punch that guy. In the face. Right in the face. After what seems about ten minutes of the in and out dance, he finally goes. And by then, someone else is behind you. Yes, this happened to me today.

--

So I did a take two with the whole chat-with-group-of-people thingy I sucked at the other day - and this time, it went well. Same group of people more or less with a few different faces. I think the key may be to just not give up - if at first the social dynamic doesn't work, just come back another day and try again with different things to discuss. Not a prob.

Tomorrow have to take Steve to the doctor at 9:30, yuck. I hate mornings. He's got a pretty bad cold, though, so time to go.

Part two of What Simon Said has been written and posted at whatsimonsaid

Word count is 3,638 total.

Went to Wal-Mart today to get some potting soil to repot our plants before we bring them in for the year. Some of them have gotten so huge! It was an annoyance to get the soil though - in the 'Lawn and Garden' section they had tons of Christmas crap, complete with holiday music being piped in and employees wearing those stupid felt Santa hats. Didn't we just have Halloween like, oh, yesterday? Grr. I hate how stores shove these holidays down our throats earlier and earlier all the time. Someday Christmas season will just start in summer.

Anyhow, I asked where the soil and pots were, and I was told I'd have to go out through all the Christmas crap to the great outdoors, where they were 'somewhere in between those storage trailers'. I just kind of stared at them, wondering why they thought I was going to go rooting around in the midst of their storage trailers to get an item that should have been right in lawn and garden anyhow- and likely would have been if they weren't busy whoring themselves out to Christmas.

So when I got out there, there were these huge blue trailers and pallets everywhere - and the potting soil only came in one size. I don't know how big it actually is, so let's just call it for the purpose of this post HUGEMUNGOUS. So I called "YO! Does anyone work here?" and a lady came out from the bowels of Christmas and asked if she could help me. I pointed at the soil and asked if they really expected me to climb over the pallets and maneuver a cart around the trailers to get that. So she climbed on over and then took one look at the HUGEMUNGOUS bag and said "Oh. I can't lift that. It's too big. Sorry."

I asked her what she thought I should do about it, then, because I needed potting soil. She suggested "Um.. you could go back there and drag it out somehow. I have to get back to Christmas. Bye!" Fortunately my son was willing to go back there and haul it out, but it was quite irritating.

While outside later at home doing the repotting, our old friend Joey walked by. Joey was one of my brother Ron's best friends growing up, and we see him around the neighborhood every now and again. So he came up to talk and we found out he was taking computer lessons, but didn't have a computer yet. Since we just wound up with one machine more than we need, we're going to fix it up and give it to him. I'm glad, because we were trying to figure out where to donate it to - and having a friend that can use it is even better! It's an older machine, but it still gets the internets and runs all the programs he'd likely need to run on it, so it should work out well for him. We just have to see what it needs - I think it needs a keyboard for sure. Joey might also give Steve guitar lessons, which would certainly be sweet.

Aus and I went to our favorite Chinese buffet for dinner - but it was very unpleasant. There was a group of loud teens there - about fifteen of them - some wearing sports team shirts and looking large and bulky. They were rude, obnoxious, throwing things and harassing their poor waitress who looked near tears. I was going to tell them to knock it the heck off, but Aus reminded me that there were 15 of them and only one of me, no matter how large and intimidating I can be.

My wordcount is 30,522! How are all the rest of my NaNo buds doing? I feel like I'm in the home stretch, woo! I just got make sure I don't slack off and actually finish. Here's my progress report: http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/ProgressReport/126851.html - I'm still about two days ahead of the curve, just in case something goes horribly wrong.

Today I took the car to get inspected... and it totally failed. Poor car! It failed for the windshield wiper (which we got fixed...twice... but it keeps dying) and emissions. Now it has a big red rejected sticker, and it feels all emo. Maybe later while we sleep it'll slash its own tires and honk disconsolately.

After that, we went to Friendly's where I ate steak and chicken (Mmm... combo) and had an ice cream. Then my mom wanted pants from Value City so we went there - and I had to go to the bathroom while we were there. So I walk into the bathroom, and there's this lady by the sink hiking up her skirt and shoving up three pairs of underwear with the price tags still on them. Go underwear thievery! That was so not what I wanted to see.

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Hey, they had my Tarot deck - Tarot of the Cat People! Sweet.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice - I contacted my local police and made a 'just-in-case' kind of report, and also contacted the college where his interent access came from and made them aware of the situation.

I feel a lot better about things now.

Well, today is going to suck balls.

Either I can go out with my brother and his very annoying wife, or stay home while the house is overrun by strangers including several small irritating children.

How about I choose option C, run away from home? That's starting to look appealing.

We just got a call from Aus's father's new-and-sucky-wife's son. Why? Because he wanted something, of course. Leeches. This is someone we've only met once before in our lives,and he wanted to sponge off of us on his way back to college- for three days!

Ugh. Have they no diginty?

If you're ever really bored, take a look at the Yahoo Personal ads. Me Aus and Kara spent many hours giggling over the very strange human beings out there lookin' for lovin'. It's even more entertaining to look for folks around your area, and guess which ones your neighbors may have placed. Hehee.

Roleplaying was fun tonight. Characters are some of the most intresting people I know.

I still have three gourds and two pumpkins on my desk. Well, four gourds if you count the dried one. I wonder if these three will dry out and be all spiffy, or rot and suck and have to be thrown away?

Tomorow Shrek is out on DVD. I hope we can buy it. I also want to look at after Halloween sale crap. I want a talking Halloween Scooby Doo that I saw at Wal-Mart.