I love fish, you know . . .

I want to talk about racism and "trailer trash."  Oh, and being "pretty."

Let's start with racism.  I was talking to a female relative yesterday about the murder of the toddler in Georgia.  We were talking about what can be done as a society to make this better, to lessen the violence.  As I spoke of possibly removing children from the homes of convicted gang members and drug addicts, she told me that was racist.  That by saying that, I was being a racist, I was being prejudiced against Black Americans.  Even though she knows that my beef is with the ACTIONS, not the skin color.  That's why I don't think my sister-in-law, who is white, should have custody of her children--she's a drug addict with repeat arrests and an established history of exposing her children to drugs and "inappropriate" behaviors.

It wasn't until later I realized my relative's statement was, itself, racist.  She assumed that, when I said "drug addict" and "illiterate" and "gang member" I meant Black American.

Oooh.  How do we feel about that?  I don't like it at all.  Again, I'm after the behaviors, not the race.  I think we can safely assume that no one, regardless of race, thinks that poverty, illiteracy, drug addiction, and gang activity are good for our society.  And I think most of us can agree that children growing up surrounded by drugs and gangs are being damaged.  And that's not racial, that's absolutely behaviorally based.

On the subject of racism, I'm growing concerned with the increasing use of the term "trailer trash" and the growing disdain for poor white Americans.  We know that stereotyping the poor of other races is a no-no (which doesn't mean our society doesn't do it, just that we know it's not right), but poor white folks seem to be wide open and fair game.  Honey Boo Boo and har-de-har, aren't those "People of Walmart" so FUNNY?  Look how they dress, look at their teeth, look how sloppy and poor and fat they are!

We are so sick.  So broken.  Why is poverty, illiteracy, and poor access to medical care FUNNY to us?  Why is it okay to point at people who live in trailers or receive food stamps and call them names?  Cracker?  Hillbilly?  Redneck?  Shitkicker? How are those any better than the lousy names  used to degrade other races?

We need to stop.  We need to stop aiming our aggression and our frustrations at people who are struggling, at people who are poorer than we are.  I know, I know, I took Psych 101, too, I get the whole "feeling better about ourselves by downing or degrading another group we perceive as even weaker than we are."  Fine, there's a possible explanation--so what?  It needs to stop--if we feel powerless or degraded or downtrodden, we should look UP at whose boot is on our neck rather than DOWN at who we can make even MORE miserable than ourselves.

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Had a video come across my news feed today.  Strangely, it didn't quite make me cry; probably because I'm all cried out over the poor dog.  But it did make me think, and more than that, it dredged up some not-so-good memories.  Memories of my Mom and how she responded to my sudden and drastic weight loss in tenth grade.

Did my mom freak out when her fat girl became her bony girl, losing 135 lbs in six months?  Sort of, if you consider dragging your starving, gums bleeding, hair thinning, hasn't had a period in months daughter to Nordstrom, The Bon, The Limited, and even (no kidding) to Vegas for a spin through Saks (yes, THAT Saks) "freaking out."  Oh, I became her special, wonderful girl, her clothes hanger, her PRETTY daughter.

The message was deep and devastating and so clear.  She loved me okay when I was her fat girl, but man, I was the BOMB when I was thin.  She was hauling me to work-related parties and dragging me along the floor to show me off to her coworkers.  Less of me to love, but what was left was obviously SO much more lovable.

I worry about this so much with my boy.  He could stand to lose 30 pounds in order to be a good, solid weight.  And he knows it, the doctor told him so.  It's such a fine line between encouraging him to eat better and work out more and HARPING on him or making him feel bad about his weight.  I dance that line every day, try to be matter-of-fact without being judgmental or in any way deriding.  My parents?  My dad ridiculed pretty sharply, hoping to shame me into weight loss. Problem was, the only foods we were served were incredibly fatty, sugary, salty, and breathtakingly calorie-laden.  And my Dad?  Would LOSE it on us if we didn't clear our plates.  Marvelously mixed message there.  And my Mom?  My Mom equates food with love.  If she loves you, she buys you one pound bags of M&Ms and dozens of sweet rolls and donuts and cheesecakes.  Of course, it's not all love there, either--there's the rewarding me for starving, the valuing me less when I'm heavy.  Again, seriously mixed messages.  So I KNOW how hurtful and how unproductive being mean or sarcastic about a child's weight can be.  I try to dream up meals both tasty and not over-the-top in calories or fat.  I make sure there is always a variety of fruit in the house.  

And yeah, I've taken to rewarding him for going to the gym.  He goes to the gym and gives it a good effort, he gets an hour of video game time on a school night.  "Good effort"  means aerobic and weights.  

I don't want him to ever feel that my love or my respect for him is rooted in his weight or his appearance.  I've felt like that my entire life, and I almost certainly always will.  I have friends coming to visit next week, people I've known online for . . . gosh, 15 years?  But we've never met. And I'm not excited, I'm not thrilled, I'm not anything but mortified because of my weight.  I don't want my boy to ever feel that way.

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So, discussing the Supreme Court, DOMA, and marriage equality on Facebook.  A friend comes in and tells me that it can be decided by the states because ALL states will abide by another state's ruling, i.e., if you're married in Vermont, Utah will recognize that marriage, should you move there (or just be passing through, I guess).  That, of course, is utter bull.  Ohio has flat out stated it will not recognize marriages between same-sex partners.  Period.  And I said so, copied and pasted from the Ohio State Bar Association on the matter.  Another friend came in and said, "It's called full faith and credit, it's in the Constitution.  Look it up."

Oh.  Oh, gosh.  Have I just been schooled?  I'm honestly not sure.  The tone seems sharp, but maybe I'm misinterpreting it, right?  I mean, it's not like him to do something like that, so I'm probably seeing it wrong.  For the record, while I'm no Constitutional scholar, fact is I actually took law courses in college, including Constitutional Law.  I am, in fact, familiar with the "full faith and credit" clause.  I'm also familiar with how little practical impact it has in modern matters.  

So, I don't know if I was just "dissed" or not, so I guess I'm going to let it go.  

*****UPDATE***** I was seeing it wrong.  Glad I asked.

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HUGE dinner tonight--baked cod, baked red potato (with just a tiny bit of Kerry Irish butter), carrots and onions, green beans and almonds, AND a salad!  I know, sounds like a lot, but I'm totally under on calories, carbs, salt, and fat, and over on potassium and fiber.  It's been a long time since I memorized which fish are okay and which are environmental disasters.  This is Pacific Cod.  I seem to remember Atlantic cod not being okay.  Time to go do my homework again, before our next shopping trip.

Okay, looks like my memory was right--Atlantic Cod is out, Pacific Cod is okay (though a couple sites said there may be mercury or PCB issues if eaten too often).  

Here, this is a Pacific Cod (thank you, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife):  

And that's about it.  Rode that stationary recumbent for 50+ minutes tonight, and I am superbly tired.  Doctor's appointments day after tomorrow.  Gosh, I can hardly wait, lemme tell ya.

Oh, and one last thing, because I'm on the right side of history here.  Hope you are, too.

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Judge not, eh?

So, back to the baby-shooting in Georgia.  It's starting, it's spreading like wildfire.  You know, the "it was the MOM who did it!" shouting.  Why?  Because she isn't crying enough, she isn't convincing enough, she's talking too much, etc.  And here's what I have to say about that:

I was convinced that Ed Smart had killed his daughter.  No kidding, I was certain that his demeanor was inappropriate, that his crying seemed tearless and disingenuous.  I spent years working with rape and domestic abuse victims, felt confident I had a "handle" on the way people react to violent tragedies.

And I was TOTALLY wrong.  UTTERLY mistaken.  Elizabeth Smart, that beautiful, heroic young woman, that SURVIVOR, wasn't dead, and her Dad's grief had been absolutely genuine.

It was then I stopped "going with my gut."  Because guess what?  "Gut feelings," "instincts," and "hunches" are crap gauges by which to measure someone's guilt or innocence.  So I'm not going to run with any "the parents did it!" ideas unless solid, reliable evidence to that effect surfaces.  Right now, I'm going to stick with the Principle of Parsimony, aka "Occam's Razor."  You know--all things being equal, the most obvious, reasonable, easy-looking answer tends to be the correct one.

In that same vein, have you ever wondered what it would be like to have people assume you've done something horrible because they don't think your outward emotional response is in keeping with their idea of what it should have been?  You know, like I did with Ed Smart?  Can you imagine living with the knowledge that people think you murdered your child when, in fact, you didn't?  That's what comes into my head now.  Doesn't mean I don't sometimes think, "Oh, gosh, please don't let it have been the parents," but I'm very careful to keep my thoughts to myself.  

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Now, real quick, while I've got you here?  Do your kid a favor, don't give him some dippy name from some religious text, huh?  Like "Coriantumr?"  You'll save him all sorts of ironic embarrassment when he gets arrested and splattered over the web for serious Mormon no-nos like intoxication.  Seriously, "Coriantumr?"  What were you thinking?

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So, this came across my Facebook feed the other day.  I've seen mention before, but this is the first meme I've seen.  I have to say, it seems a good idea, and part of my likes it, but I have some serious reservations.  Why?

Because it's not MY job to watch out for YOUR dog.  My eyes are crap when it comes to spotting little ribbons tied on dog leashes, especially in evening/at night.  And the last thing I'm going to tolerate is someone yelling at me because I didn't see the ribbon.  It's not that I'm not sympathetic--I have a "dog-reactive" dog myself.  And it is MY responsibility to keep space between him and other dogs.  Putting a ribbon on my dog's leash doesn't in any way make it anyone else's problem.  Nice if someone notices and knows what it means, but if they don't?

That's on ME.  Nobody else. And I know, most folks pushing for this won't blame folks who miss the ribbon or its meaning.  But you just KNOW there are a few who absolutely will.  

And that's all.  Still no red paneling.  I am SUCH a loser.

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Murder, Grammar, and Dead Ducks ,,,,,,!!!!!????

I'd like to start today off with a grammar rant.  I'd like to talk about ",,,,,," and "???????" and maybe some "!!!!!!" for good measure.

Let's start with the obvious one--the multiple commas.  Like that MEANS anything.  What does that mean?  Is it like stage direction, indicating a particularly long and meaningful pause?  Like a POWER pause?   Because we already have ellipses and commas and semi-colons that do the job super-nice without making you look like you've gone twitchy on the comma button.  Perhaps this is "text speak," but it's creeping into more formal written communications, and it's making people look like . . . well, like texting children.  Who haven't quite mastered the written language.

Now, let's talk about "?????" and "!!!!!!!" for a second.  We all know what "?" and "!" mean.  So are the multi-packs indicative of MORE?  How can you be MORE inquisitive than inquisitive?  What, it's not just a question, it's a SUPER-question?  If you're trying to communicate interrogative disgust, "Are you KIDDING me?" is usually pretty effective.  On the "!!!!!!" front?  Okay, you're excited.  You're REALLY excited!  You're MEGA-excited!  Fine, use two.  But dang, please stop with the 10+ exclamation points, wouldja?  Nobody's that excited without dancing on the edge of cardiac arrest.

This came across my Facebook feed yesterday.  Would be funny if it weren't so close to the truth these days.

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I've been following the news about the toddler shot in his stroller by muggers near Atlanta.  Checked out the Facebook page of one of the accused.  His "about" blurb? "ME IN MY NI**A"S A TURN UR BLO5K IN TO MURDER SCENE"  (the ** are mine, to keep from getting grief from Blogspot).  The photos?  All baggy pants down past his ass and gang signs and obscene gestures.  All "thuggin" and "thug4life fo sho."  Class act, typical.  STEREO-typical.  Living DOWN to that awful stereotype.  Exactly who you would expect to do what was done.

We have a problem.  We have areas in this country that are absolutely disconnected from humanity.  So bogged down in poverty, in substandard education, in violence, drugs, and stupidity. We have one generation of people lost to this rearing the next generation, which will rear the next.  It's self-perpetuating, and this sort of festering gob is what it produces.  We can't just build a fence or a wall--one, that's crap, and two, no such thing as a "forever" fence.  We need to stop futzing around and sort this disaster out before it's too late.  You should SEE the writing of this kid, of his friends and family--barely literate, barely even comprehensible.  It's like a swamp with utterly turned around ideals and goals and ideas of what is and isn't intelligent or right.  Posts hailing a small child dressed as a gang member, calling her "lil thug girl" and proclaiming "SHE A STR8 THUGGG ! ... LOL!" and "lil cuzz killin idth !!"  Some of the posts demanding, in the most broken excuse for English, that the accused be released because "he din do nuthin, crackrs!!"  Seriously.  We need to fix it--it's hurting ALL of us.  Not just the poor little boy who is dead, not just his devastated mother.  We are ALL diminished by this, and allowing poverty and horror and prideful stupidity to take hold in our streets and separate us is what's brought it into being.

We need to fix this.

I'd post a horrific rap video one of the accused killer's friends posted to his wall--all about killing these folks and killing those folks and mutha this and mutha that, but I do actually try to keep things somewhat "clean" here.  Kid's not hard to find, though.  Look him up if you're curious.  As an example of what I'm talking about, here's a snippet from his page, going back to the dressing little girls up as gang bangers:

"Omg ! Ni Av'yianna .... U kno better she look ah hot mess today my granny hve her lookin me kinda way and idk whe she get this fang banging Frm ...lol I love her doe she look so throwed away today! Ugh"

 English?  Mmmm, I don't know.  What I DO know is that THIS is what our poorer-area schools are turning out.  What good does that do us?  Seriously, even if we're not going to look at the lives and the prospects of these poor, barely literate, barely understandable kids, let's look at what good it does SOCIETY to have schools acting as holding pens and pumping out illiterates, many of whom are caught on the "high school to prison" assembly line.  What good do we get from this?

NONE.  NO good.  So let's fix it.

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Hubby and son are off to play paintball today.  Breathtakingly expensive, but it's the BIG b'day present for our boy.  Was supposed to be last weekend, but it was rainy, windy, and in the low 40s.  Today?  Sunny and fifties.  That's better.  I want it to be a good time for him.  It's something he's wanted to do for a couple of years, and it's not something we'll be able to afford again until around Christmas, most likely.  I hope it's everything he wanted it to be.

The Paintball Layout

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Do you like duck?  You know, like eating duck?  I ask because I had a hellish ducksperience when I was a kid.  My dad came home from hunting with two dead ducks and made me pluck them in the kitchen sink.  I was maybe eight?  It took hours, it was horrifying.  See, I liked duck--I liked seeing them fly, I liked feeding them at the pond, I loved finding the stray feather here and there; stuck them in my hatband, called it "lucky."  This?

This was a nightmare.  And my dad kept coming in, checking my progress, and telling me I needed to do better.  I was missing things.  I was messing it up.  I was breaking off feathers instead of cleanly plucking them.  For hours, this went on.  Finally, my dad took over.  Angrily.

I've never liked duck, meal-wise.  But I hadn't had it since my first husband totally screwed one up by COOKING IT IN THE MICROWAVE.  Understand, this was winter of 1983.  Yeah, not quite the defining era of microwave cooking technology.

So, when hubby ordered duck with our Chinese meal a while back, I decided to give it a shot.  I mean, it had been almost 30 years since the microwave disaster, and it had been almost 40 years since the plucking nightmare.  I figured it'd be palatable, at least--after all, it was drenched in orange sauce, right?

WRONG!

I never even got past the smell.  I don't know what other people smell when they get a whiff of cooked duck in orange sauce, but I smell blood and metal and dead and feathers.  I didn't even perceive the orange or other things--just the gore.  It was intense, it was immediate, and it was gut-wrenching.

No way that's just an emotional thing--not when I haven't smelled it in decades.  No, this somehow indelibly marked my neurons, changed my brain in some way.  It was horrifying, and I felt bad because it was my husband's dinner and I literally recoiled, gasped, and clapped my hands over my face.  I said terrible things.  And he had to eat it!

I was going to post a pic of a duck being plucked,
but turns out I don't have the stomach for it.

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Watched a documentary the other night, name of "Kumaré."  In a nutshell, it's about a guy who's had it with religion and had it with the gullibility of people, and so, as an experiment, he starts his own religion.  Or, rather, he borrows heavily from eastern/Indian traditions and adds in his own completely nonsensical gobbledygook.  I won't tell you how it goes or where it ends up.  I will tell you that some of it is painful to watch because there are people who are so pathetically, desperately dependent on being told what is, what to do, what to think, and how to see the world.  People who cannot exist without believing in some supernatural this or that--like they can't just trust themselves, they have to be led.  It was sometimes funny in a not-nice way, and sometimes heartbreaking in a very human way.  I enjoyed it.  Here's the poster--it's a link, too:

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Still no red paneling.  I suck.

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Scientology and Poor Armus

So, I'm a bit out of sorts this morning.  I hate doctor's appointments, and, after last year, I expect every one of them to go bad.  We have at least FIVE doctor's appointments between us next week--gynecologist and skin cancer folks for me (plus a possible mammogram), hubby has a physical, and our boy has a physical plus an appointment with an oral surgeon to look at his screwed up x-rays.  Do I need to tell you my arrhythmia is having a joyous holiday in my chest?  It was worse last night than it's been in a long time.

Plus, I'm hungry.  Really hungry.  And disappointed.  I had really hoped to lose more weight before the doc's visits.  Somehow, saying "Yes, I gained back 75 of the 180 I lost, but I've now lost 25 of what I gained" sounds better than "I've now lost 17 of what I gained."  I know, when we're talking in terms of HUNDREDS of pounds, it's silly for me to obsess over eight.  But I am.

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New book out, shining a light on Scientology again.  I'm torn.  I mean, on the one hand, Scientology is quite obviously nutty, manipulative, scary, and all-around crazy and should be held up to scrutiny.  But you know what?

They all are.  Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Mormonism--they're all batty.  And they all should be held up to the scathing light of day.  Why is the idea of space aliens and "body thetans" any more crazy than the idea of goddesses with umpteen limbs or the water-walking-back-from-the-dead guy, or deities masquerading as talking, flaming shrubbery, or Ezekiel--have you read Ezekiel?  Utterly Patsy Cline.  Like Thorazine time.

I'm not defending Scientology--it sickens me.  But it drives me completely bonkers when devout Christians or faithful Mormons start to "diss" the theology of Scientology.  Um, kids?  Golden plates. Gods of your own planets. Pregnant virgins and talking serpents.  You have your own "buyability" issues.  Don't worry about theirs.

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Speaking of magical ghosts in the sky, it's a good thing I'm not superstitious, because otherwise I'd be feeling pretty seriously put-upon right about now.  See, we get a lot of wind here, but we only seem to get the "hand from the sky, send everything flying" sort of microbursts on Thursdays.

Yes, Thursdays.

That would be recycling day in the 'hood.  The day everyone puts out their bins (or, in our case, the big 64 gallon trash can) full of recyclables to be strewn, hell to breakfast, by the wowser wind gusts.  I know, you're thinking I have "blue Taurus" syndrome--I'm only noticing the wind on Thursdays because it only causes me grief on Thursdays.  But no, that's not it--see, we have TWO trash days a week, and the wind DOESN'T blow down the garbage cans on Mondays.  Only on Thursdays.  Only on recycling day (which is also a garbage day--both go out on Thursdays).  Invariably, Thursday mornings (only mornings) are freakishly gusty.

Probably a government plot, right?  Because we all love a good conspiracy theory.

Anyway, I'm eager for warmer weather, because chasing down recyclables and cans in the cold sucks.  Without shoes, it sucks even more.

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Hubby and I were laughing about a funny cultural thing that came up when we first moved in with my Mom.  She had wanted macaroni and cheese with hot dogs for dinner.  Hubby, being born and bred in Utah, thought she meant this:  

My Mother, being from Pennsylvania, would never have meant that.  She, in fact, meant THIS:

To his credit, hubby was horrified as he prepared what he thought we would want.  And he was relieved when we looked at like it was from another planet.  

THE PLANET UTAH

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Have written some new reviews over on Epinions--if you're into pet food, dog harnesses, chocolate, or digital cameras, have a look!
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Just got some bad news.  Armus, the dog we couldn't bring with us because she was too old to make the trip?  Fell down the stairs.  She's pushing 17 years old, and it looks like she's done for.  Armus, whom I hope hasn't been waiting for us to come home.  She's a good dog, but she's an old one, especially for her size.  The only Labrador Husky (that's a sled-dog breed) I've ever known.  I hope she recovers, but considering her age and health, this is probably her last.  Poor Armus.

Armus

L-R Bodhi, Armus (before her ears stood up) and JoJo

And that's about it.  A little of the joy in my day just poofed.

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

It's always something scary. Or irritating.

So, our boy had an appointment for a panoramic dental x-ray today.  You see, a year ago, he had one done, which revealed a small "radiolucent spot with a radiopaque outer rim."  Or some such crap.  We took him to an oral surgeon, much to Blue Cross's chagrin, who didn't want to do much of anything.  He said that, with the placement (directly under the roots of his bottom incisors), anything he did would be potentially devastating.  He recommended a "watch and wait" approach.  He recommended x-rays in a year.

So here we are.  The small spot below the incisors?  The same.  But now there is a much larger, irregularly shaped radiopaque spot underneath our boy's wisdom tooth and extending to just below the adjacent molar.  #31, I believe.  This is big, it's not tiny like the thing under the incisors.  So it's back to the oral surgeon.  The dentist said "it might just be swelling from the wisdom tooth starting to impact," but this is the same dentist who totally missed my salivary stones and insisted that pulling our boy's deciduous canine wouldn't inspire the adult tooth to come in (even though, a year earlier, that's exactly what his old dentist did for the canine on the other side, and it worked).  So I don't know.

I don't know.

What I do know?  Is that we don't have dental insurance.  We have GEHA, which is a supplemental thing, but when you're knocking a three grand bill down to fifteen hundred, it's still a grand more than you have.  No idea how much this is going to cost, only know that we don't have it.  But we have to know what's going on here.  Our insurance really balked at covering the Oral Surgeon last time, tried very hard to insist it was DENTAL, which they don't cover.

Oh, sweetie.  Be okay.  Please.

Today's x-ray, unmarked

And labeled for your viewing pleasure

So, the dog's training is paid for.  I actually thought we were going to wait a month, see how my medical stuff comes out, but it's done now.  Gotta tell you, I don't want a pelvic, I don't want a mammogram, I don't want to step on that scale and have to feel like hell about myself.  But I DO want the CLEAR results of that mammogram, I DO want someone to say, "Everything looks normal," and I absolutely NEED my metoprolol script re-upped.  And if I don't go for the pelvic, then I have to go to the GP/PCP and ask HER, and I sure don't want to do that.

Medical care exhausts me.  Co-pays exhaust me.  But, being someone who's lived without health insurance for long periods?  It could be worse.  I recognize that.  

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Been reading a lot about the Steubenville rapists.  Been seeing all the sympathy rolling their way.  

Because, hey, if you can't blame the victim, who CAN you blame?  Not the RAPISTS, clearly.

Let's get something straight here--no matter what she wears, says, does, no matter how she acts or how much she drinks, no matter where she walks, drives, or passes out, the RAPIST is the one who calls the tune, the RAPIST is the one who decides to RAPE.  I don't want to hear about the rapists' promising athletic careers or academic whatever-the-hells or, gosh, how sad that they'll be registered sex offenders.  What else do you suggest they register as?  They are, after all, SEX OFFENDERS.  Stop acting like they're poor little victims.  Their poor little victim had her name, her reputation, and her very life strewn out and torn to bits in court in defense of rapists.

Of rapists.

If you don't like rape, don't rape.  If you don't want your sons serving time for rape, teach them not to rape.  Teach them to respect women--all women.  Teach them that their hands and their penises stay to themselves unless expressly invited.  Teach them that alcohol poisoning and Rohypnol  are not forms of consent.  Unconscious or barely conscious can NEVER give consent.  

Period.

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Hubby picked up The Hobbit on Blu Ray last night.  From what I understand, the wonky 48 frames per second gig won't translate.  I get the feeling I'm glad about that.  Just finished watching it, and I'll get into it tomorrow.  Not feeling all that charitable tonight, will probably be less critical after a night's sleep.

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I want to take a moment to discuss "slactivism."  You know, the whole "I clicked a button, I forwarded an email, I shared a meme, I've DONE something!" thing that seems so common these days.  

Hey, I share memes--not because I think I'm raising money or making change.  I know better.  I share memes because they're funny or because they reflect my feelings about something, and I share them with folks I know likely share my opinion.  Every once in a while, if I know someone's open or on the fence, I'll share something that I think might nudge them over.  If it's something not wildly inflammatory or insulting, that is.  I don't consider that "slactivism" because I don't think I'm being an "activist," I don't think I'm accomplishing anything other than amusing myself and my friends.

I guess, to me, the term "slactivism" refers to people who post a meme (or a magnetic ribbon on their SUV) and feel they've done something, like their obligation to be active and humanitarian has been fulfilled.  You know, with stupid crap like this:

Which came with the following stupid caption:  

I am not asking you to hit like but i am asling

you to please Share .

Poor baby Suffering from Cancer , For every

share of this pic , Facebook will donate $1 to

the parents of this baby .

___________Sharing will Take Secs ___________

_______________ Please Help____

Okay, folks?  People?  Please?  This sort of thing is ALWAYS BS, okay?  ALWAYS.  Facebook/Microsoft/Apple/FEMA/Walmart/WHOMEVER is NOT going to donate WHATEVER amount to WHATEVER sick baby based upon your clicks, forwards, or shares.

Period.  So stop it.  You're like a virus, you just eat up bandwidth and waste people's time.  Stop it.

STOP IT!

On a related note?  "LIKE this soldier/baby/child-in-a-wheelchair/legless-dancer/bedraggled puppy, SCROLL if you hate them" memes?  Those are also not activism, they don't accomplish anything, and trying to guilt people into sharing your stupid crap is . . . well, it's stupid crap.  Stop that, too.

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And now that I'm all done yelling about stuff, do me a favor?  Check out my comparative reviews of CAMERAS and CHOCOLATE.  Because they really do go together, and if it weren't for cameras and chocolate, I'm not sure life would be worth living.

And that's all, I think.  Except for some bad paneling.  I know, I know, I promised bad RED paneling, but that's on my iPad, and I haven't sent it over yet.  Until I do, have some turquoise with  . . . is that coral?  Salmon?  LOL, what ever it is, it's perfectly precious!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Ben Affleck and Microsoft Eurobloat

So, the phone just rang.  Started with that "beep" that screams "international call!"  And then the long pause and the beeps that make it clear someone is mass-calling.  Oh, and I forgot to mention--the number showing on the caller ID?  000-000-0000.  And the "name?"  "V03161815420009."

Riggghhht.

So, after saying, "Hello?  Hello?" a few times, I get someone.  A very heavily accented, very Indian someone.  The conversation?

Goes something like this:

"Hello, Ma'am, my name is George, and I am calling from technical support for ALL WINDOWS COMPUTERS."

ALL Windows computers?  Really?  Every one of them?

I didn't let him get any further into his idiot spiel. In fact, I cut him off abruptly, cried (nearly shouted, in fact),  "Oh, no you are not--shut the f*ck up!"

BS is bad enough when it comes across my Facebook feed or into my email box.  On my home phone?

Zero tolerance.

Here, read this from Microsoft

And this, which details this sort of scam.

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I don't know if I've gone into this before, but I was in a wowser car accident back in 1993.  Facial fractures and spinal issues aside, I suffered a whopper of a closed-head injury.  A traumatic brain injury, if you will.  A lot of things about me are different now.  One biggie?

My inability to grab onto words or remember certain names.  Some words, like "hammock," I have to work sideways toward--you know, "cassock, hassock, hummock, hammock?"  Seriously.  Because I've just written it, it'll stick fresh for a little while, but when I try again in a few hours, it'll be gone and I'll have to sidle into it again.  One thing that has made this bearable?  Doing it aloud.  Because it's comical, it amuses me, and whether it amuses or befuddles folks around me, their response is funny to me.  The other night?  We were in Wegmans and I couldn't come up with the word "Eclair."  You know, as in "I've decided I can't afford the calories, so I'm going to skip the eclair tonight?"  Except that, instead of "eclair," I came up with "Eurobloat."  As in, "I've decided I can't afford the calories, so I'm going to skip the Eurobloat tonight."  I almost hyperventilated laughing.

As a result of constantly witnessing me in action, my son has picked up the habit--when he can't come up with a word, he'll just keep throwing out words or random syllables until he hits it.  Sometimes, the results are hilarious.  A few nights ago?  He was trying to discuss some announcement made by the Israeli government and couldn't come up with "Netanyahu."  What did come out?  "Nosferatu."  

Hey, he was close, right?  The laughter was uproarious--not because he came up with a blood-sucking vampire instead of the Israeli Prime Minister, but because it was purely unintentional, a matter of sound and syllables.

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Watched "Argo" the other night.  Fabulous, really.  Yes, a few wanders from history (of course, it's a movie), but an all-around brilliant film.  I want to spend a moment talking about Ben Affleck.  Boy, but hasn't that guy grown up?  For years, I confess, I wasn't all that fond of his acting.  It seemed . . . insincere, a little cocky.  Often came with an unconvincing smirk that screamed, "LOOK, MA!  I'M ACTING!"  

Not anymore.

I noticed the change a few movies back, right around "The Company Men" (though it was hinted at in "Hollywoodland").  A maturity, a depth a--how to put this?  I no longer watch Mr. Affleck and think, "Oh, look at him act."  Instead, I find myself, two-thirds of the way through a film, thinking, "Whoa--I totally forgot that was Ben Affleck!"  Nothing endears an actor to me more than a performance so convincing I forget it's acting.

And his directing?  Well, we've known for a while he had that in him ("Gone, Baby, Gone!").  

So, if you haven't seen "Argo?"  Do so.  Seriously.  It won those fancy statues for a reason.

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Having steak, green beans with almonds, baked potatoes, and grilled pineapple for dinner.  Oh, and crab-stuffed mushrooms.  Tonight, we'll make our boy's b'day cheesecake and homemade ice cream.  He wanted cheesecake.  Go figure.  We grabbed him a couple of books for his birthday.  The BIG gift is paintball, which is a LOT of money, but something he's wanted to try for years.  It's going to seem a lean year, but only because he chose what he wanted, and it was paintball.  I hope it's as fun and exciting as he wants it to be.  Love you, babe.

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And now, in honor of my friend, we'll do another bad wallpaper.  Because wallpaper's just like paneling, only in a greater variety of patterns and colors (though I did find some RED paneling I'll get up here soon!).

Is that really a 70s wetbar in a closet?

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Pet Mold and Other Such Things

So, when I was a kid, we used to drink a lot of apple cider.  You know, the old-fashioned stuff that came in the giant glass jug.  One day, as I was about to pour a glass, my Dad noticed a speck of something floating in the cider.  This speck, it turned out, was the tiniest little bit of mold.  As something of an experiment, we decided to keep the mold rather than wash it down the kitchen sink.

The mold, which was soon dubbed "Marty," thrived.  In fact, it wasn't long before Marty had slurped his joyous way through all the remaining cider.   It was at that moment our little experiment took a rather sickening turn.  When asked whether or not we were okay with letting Marty starve, my sister and I adamantly rose to Marty's defense.

No!  No, Marty  must be fed!  Anything less would be positively cruel!

Not Marty, but quite possibly a relative

And so the weekly feedings commenced.  My mother, of course, wasn't so happy about this new addition to the family.  In fact, she was downright horrified.  She would storm from the room at feeding time.  Small wonder--when Marty's bottle was opened, the deep sucking, hissing noise was immediately followed by a smell.

A stench.

We would all laugh (except for my Mom, who, as I said, would rush away) and shove in pieces of bread and dribblings of juice (and once, notably, a scoop of ice cream), then seal Marty up again to slowly but inexorably devour his culinary delights.  I don't recall how long this went on--months, probably.  I was only eight or so, so my grasp of elapsed time isn't so great.  What I do remember?

How it ended.

It ended with Marty's bottle cracking.  My Dad told us that Marty had gotten too big and too muscular for his home.  I believed it then, believed Marty had cracked the jar in an attempt to break free.  Looking back, I think it more likely that my mother, who was forever "accidentally" breaking things and slamming things about when angry, gave Marty a good kick in hopes of busting him up and winding him up in the trash.

When the crack was discovered, my Dad proposed taking Marty, cracked bottle and all, out to the dump and "setting him free."  My Dad went on and on about how happy Marty was going to be, how he was going to have the whole dump's worth of tasty treats at his . . . sporetips.

It's a fun memory.  Most folks would probably be horrified, I know.

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I want to take a moment to talk about "Hospitalists."  It's a relatively new term to me, I guess maybe I'd have called them "Internists" or "Staff Physicians" in the way-back,  but now they are called "Hospitalists."  And I haven't got a lick of use for them.

I've had three experiences with "Hospitalists," and each one has, to be blunt, sucked.

My first?  I was admitted to St. Ben's (or Ogden Regional, as it's been known for years now) complaining of chest pains.  Now, I get a lot of chest pains, but this one was new and different.  I hit the ER, and the ER physician (Dr. Joan B., a wonderfully skilled practitioner) smacked me with more baby aspirin and hooked me up with a 12 lead EKG.  They found nothing in the ER, but admitted me and ordered a Cardiolite Stress Test, which comes with TWO fancy 64 slice CT scans for my enjoyment and future increased cancer risk.  Before sending me down for the stress test, a "Hospitalist" came into my room and, looking at my chart, said (in a rather unpleasant, accusatory tone), "I see on your EKG clear evidence of a previous heart attack."

BAM!  If that doesn't wake you up, huh?

I told him I'd had no heart attacks, but he told me that "EKGs don't lie."  Told me that, just because I didn't think I'd had one didn't mean I hadn't.  He was, overall, amazingly unpleasant and had that "omnipotent physician" thing going on.  You know the one--where he knows everything, including everything about you, and you're just stupid and slow and dull and maybe, just maybe, a liar, to boot?

This was seriously unsettling.  A heart attack?  I was 43!  When had I had a heart attack?

A while later, down in the "nuclear medicine" department, I allowed them to hook me up with a 15 or so pound harness with about a Brazillion (you know the joke--how many is a Brazilian?) leads.  They started the nasty IV that left me slogging on that treadmill like I was trying to jog through cement.  Afterwards, I asked the Cardiologist who was looking at my feeds, about the "clear evidence of a previous heart attack."  He said, "What?" and really rooted around, examining every inch of feed.  He looked up and said, "I see clear evidence of an irregular heartbeat, which we already knew about--who said you'd had a heart attack?"  I told him.

He rolled his eyes.  He practically sneered.  And then he said, "Perhaps the 'Hospitalists' should do whatever it is they do and leave the Cardiology to the Cardiologists."

I've since discovered that irregular heartbeats often trigger the "previous heart attack" flag in automated software meant to interpret EKG results.  It's not a mistake a Cardiologist would make.

My second "Hospitalist" disaster (Hospitalistsaster?) came that same hospital stay, though it was a different practitioner.  The woman wanted to put me on a particular medication for my arrhythmia. I refused, told her I was concerned about the possibility of inspiring a secondary, competing arrhythmia.  She told me that she was bound to inform my insurance company that I had refused recommended treatment, and that I faced the possibility of my insurance refusing to cover my expenses as a result.  She then told me that I was foolish to worry about such a thing, that the situation I feared was only a risk in folks with both PVCs and PACs (that's premature ventricular contractions AND premature atrial contractions).  Which is EXACTLY what I have going on.

I lost all cohesion.  I asked her if there was any particular purpose to that file in her hands?  Was it just a PROP, did she even know how to read?  Because if she DID know how to read and she HAD used my medical file for more than just set dressing, she'd know that I DID, in fact, suffer from both PVCs and PACs,.

Oddly, my insurance was never told that I had "refused recommended treatment."

Stupid, lazy people.

I will give my third "Hospitalist" credit.  While the same "automated EKG interpretation" hung us up again (this time immediately pre-surgery last spring), he DID listen when I said, "Ah, yeah--we've been through this, it's a thing that happens when the software meets my arrhythmia."  While he didn't believe that his precious software could be wrong, he did accept that I was aware and had discussed the issue with a Cardiologist.  Not the best of responses, and not the most encouraging (I like my medical folks to be open to new information and willing to learn/research an issue), but certainly better than what I got from the other two.

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One last thing?  I just want to say a little something to my former teacher turned Congressman.  Hey, pal?  Don't do that--don't call people and chew them out for asking you why the House can't get its act together on the sequester.  Don't be that ass.  That young man wrote to you because YOU are HIS REPRESENTATIVE.  I know, that concept is likely far beyond you (representing a common person?  I know, right!), but that's the fact of it.  Do NOT tell him that he should call Harry Reid (who is NOT his representative) and chew him out, don't tell him that he needs to write you again and be polite.  He was polite--you were the one lacking in manners there.  And hey?  Repeating, over and over, "Don't rag on me" is NEVER the appropriate response when a constituent asks you for an explanation of your behavior.  You owe an apology.  Heck, you likely owe thousands of them, but if you're still the same smug, self-aggrandizing prig you were when I knew you in school (and you are, I see the interviews, I read the news), you'll never apologize.  I can only hope that you're right and I'm wrong on the whole afterlife thing.  

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And now?  I know, it's not bad paneling, but it just SO caught my eye, it's SO awful, I had to share!

Enjoy (?)

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ