So you may recall I got a new netbook a while back. At the same time we bought that, we also bought additional memory for it. We were going to upgrade the memory on this and on the old laptop, which we are going to fix up to give to a friend who is having heinous computer issues. So the first problem in our clever plan came when we discovered none of the approximately fifty million screwdrivers we have around here will actually fit the screws on the back of the computers.

Well, fine. We decided to do the sensible thing and order an electronics kit from Amazon. We wait for an interminable amount of time for that to actually arrive until today, when I get a package from Amazon. Exited I open it up... very surprised to find two huge air bubbles and nothing but a packing slip and some very light object at the bottom. This can't possibly be what we ordered, can it? Why no. No it isn't. It is, in fact, a CHEESE SLICER. A steel bladed cheese slicer with a rubber handle, how fancy. How.... not what we ordered at all. Pardon me while I cheese slice the back of my computer to get at the memory inside. Yeah, that'll work.

More fucking delays. Joy.

Oh, and speaking of delays... we got our insurance cards in the mail yesterday. Good news, right? Yeah, except that coverage doesn't actually start until December 1st and their 'helpful' website shows like ten doctors in all of South Jersey who will actually take the insurance. So I have to call around to doctors and see if any of the ones I actually want to go to will take what we have. But hey, I've got a whole five weeks or so to do it in! Five whole weeks of still being sick, unless I want to give in and go to the goddamn clinic again- in which you wait three hours to be seen for five minutes and usually it doesn't do any good anyhow.

James Ellroy is one seriously creepy dude. Watching Murder By The Book and he's on there taking about his mother's murder (and repeating about a million times how he lusted for her and hated her and wanted her dead) and opening the box of murder evidence and SNIFFING HER DRESS.

Yes, the one she died in.

Earlier in the program he's talking about how he used to break into women's houses to see their bedrooms and peep into windows and such.

I mean yes I understand his mother's murder and then being raised by his sleezeball dad warped his brains a little but HOLY CREEPY DUDE.

Today we drove to Newark, Delaware in search of CiCi's Pizza Buffet - which yes, pretty much rocks. All the pizza, salad, pasta, and dessert you can eat for six dollars. Yes indeed. We stopped at a nice park in New Castle too - walked by the water and down a pier and everything.

Along the way, we saw what might very well be the most hilarious business name ever - Analtech! We pulled over just to take pictures. As you can see, I made one into an icon.

All the pictures (taken by Aus) can be found up here on Facebook.

So... hypothetical question. A possum dies in your yard for no discernible reason - you just kinda go outside and ZOMG DEAD POSSUM under the tree.

Do you...

Poll #1460880 Dead Possums aren't Much Fun ... or are they?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

Would you....

Because three is looking likely, but four is oh-so-tempting.

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.

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

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.

In the latest 'if television says so, it must be true!' news, there's apparently a marketing campaign to get people to believe that high fructose corn syrup is fine and dandy. It even has a trendy little website and a press kit with animated banner ads so it must be extra double plus true.

Website comes with FAQ for bonus points:

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently concluded that "high fructose corn syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners."

Research confirms that high fructose corn syrup is safe and nutritionally the same as table sugar.

High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as table sugar and is equal in sweetness. It contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted high fructose corn syrup "Generally Recognized as Safe" status for use in food, and reaffirmed that ruling in 1996 after thorough review.

High fructose corn syrup offers numerous benefits. It keeps food fresh, enhances fruit and spice flavors, retains moisture in bran cereals, helps keep breakfast and energy bars moist, maintains consistent flavors in beverages and keeps ingredients evenly dispersed in condiments.


If that's not science-y enough for you, never fear! They've also got a scientific looking website with news blurbs and slideshow.

Who is helpfully providing all this 'medical and scientific evidence' that it's nutritious yummy and good for you? The Corn Refiners Association of America.

I totally trust their unbiased opinion, don't you? Eat up, kids!

Dammit... I hate when I'm only half paying attention to things and I miss the important details. I was watching a documentary on the Gestapo during WWII tonight and I was kind of zoning out and playing D&D Tiny Adventures on Facebook (yes, I know that is sad) and suddenly I hear...

"... which turned the corpse bright green."


WHAT?

They now had my full attention.

Of course, they didn't show pictures or any further information and quickly moved on to another subject.

I must know whose corpse turned bright green and how a corpse turns bright green to begin with! This is making me crazy not knowing.


EDIT: The answer has been found! Thanks to the amazing adalberg at wtf_history , we now know:

"Hermann Gφring, the first leader of the Gestapo, was also captured. Facing an almost certain death sentence at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, he too swallowed a smuggled cyanide capsule. It killed him instantly – and turned his corpse bright green."

In work stuff news - today, I had to set up a YouTube channel and a Flickr account/group for Terami. The youtube channel was simple, easy to understand, and took not long at all to get situated. Easy peasy.

Then we came to Flickr. First, the obnoxious thing required me to log in with a Yahoo ID to even think about creating an account. So I logged in with mine, and later had to create a seprate one to transfer it over to so it's something Terami can access too. Then I set up the group - which is supposed to contain a group photo pool, so you can see the pictures uploaded from the account into the photo pool. There's a setting to allow this to be publicly visible to all users - so if you click that, it should.. y'know.. make the pictures publicly visible, right? Wrong. No pictures.

There's also some other check buttons - safe, moderate, adult. It doesn't explain what these settings are, really. I click, I reclick... in various combinations. NOTHING will make the pictures publically visible as far as I can tell.

Yet I know it can be done, because I can see the Rilo Kiley group photo pool without being logged in.

So.. if anyone has Flickr, please explain to me what internet gods I have to make an offering to in order to configure this thing properly because it's making me CRAZY. I'm also supposed to be setting up Imeem and Gather accounts, but hell, not tonight. Flickr has pretty much run me out of patience for the internet today.


In non work-stuff news, I went to lunch with my two brothers and mom today, and then we played Super Scrabble. I kicked much ass. Unforuntely, we played it outside on the deck, and the world was full of pollen today - which is agrivating my allergies. I think that's making me grumpy too, in addition to flickr.


Edit: I also noticed that I managed to misspell 'Hirsch' in like a million places (left out the c) - fortunately in none of the urls themselves, but ugh. If anyone sees a place I assed it up, please tell me so I can fix it before it embarasses both the artist and myself. I is train professional, for realz. Grr. I think this is just not my day.

Edit x 2: Looks like the Race to National Train day is over, and green won (though in the end, they decided to give all three conductors a prize, which is cool)- so our team not only won the competition, but Aus also gets a $100 dollar AMEX gift card! Yay!

Edit x3: Apparently, Flickr needs to 'review' your account, which could take up to a week, before it lets your pictures posted to a group pool be publicly visible. I guess this is to prevent you from posting pictures of your willy or your naked granny or something. But still! They should have A BIG NOTIFICATION that this is the case. Not me trying to figure out wtf for hours, and then finally having to ask in the help forum until someone finally had the answer. MRgh. I hate you, internet. I'm going to bed.

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.

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. “We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.”

From here - http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801

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.

Weird thing 1: In front of the house/garage of our mechanic who died, there is a ring of mushrooms growing in the grass by the highway. I'm usually really skeptical about believing in anything, but he was Irish (from Ireland though he emigrated before I was born) and isn't there something about fairy rings in European folklore? It's just really odd.

Weird thing 2: Yesterday our mailbox flag was mysteriously up even though we didn't put it up, and there was no mail in there. Today I found out why when I saw a young squirrel hanging out on the wooden crosspost under our mailbox and playing with the flag. Up. Down. Up. Down... and then my opening the door scared him, and he ran up the tree and stared at me for ruining his fun.


Totally boring to do list:

( Things I want to do this weekish... )

Right now I gotta go get the car oil change, but I feel like taking a nap. It's all gray and rainy outside.

...yay?

At least they don't sell it along with a toy plane.

Still, pretty tacky.

Um....

Two things found on the ground at Wal-Mart, scanned for your viewing pleasure....

( Pictures... )

Rap snacks even has a website... where the animated movie shows a guy climbing up out of the sewer to get snackies off the street.

http://rapsnacks.com/

It's... special.

that I couldn't be any more disgusted by what human beings do in the name of politics and religion than when they were trying to tear down those beautiful Buddhist statues.

I was wrong.

This is the most mind-numbing horrible testament to how really screwed up a human being can be. No religion, no political ideal, no cry for attention is worth so much that innocent people should die for it.

Thankfully, my brother (who works in the city) hadn't left for work yet when this occured. I've got cousins in the NYC area, but I'm hoping they're all alright...

What I want to know now is what our government intends to do about this. If we do nothing, then terrorists will get the picture that America is open season for more attacks.

I also want to know where the hell those people who stopped to search us and test for explosive powder when we flew on the airlines because we were carrying a laptop and a game system were when people were getting on board with guns and explosive devices. Not one plane, but -eight-. How the hell could that happen?