Sure, Why Not?

There’s a belief that every little girl is a princess, or should at least be told she is. What does it mean to be a princess? Who knows? Adults think it’s an endearing thing to tell little girls and think it’s just adorable when they act upon it. How? They idolize Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, or whoever else, wear clothes with them on it, and dress up like them, for Halloween or otherwise. I myself was Snow White for Halloween at age five. But what did this princess ideal mean? Really, it comes down to the little girl being an object of affection, particularly from males, usually her father, but in the older form of the princess, this includes boys her own age perhaps, or at least the expectation of such. She was special, to be pampered and showered with gifts, and her only job was to sit there and look pretty and cute.
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So the other day, I got this strange call on my cell phone. Annoying recording. Voice came on saying something like “this message is to warn you that the warranty on your vehicle is about to expire” and went on to say to wait for a rep to come on and talk, blah blah. Hung up right away and didn’t give it another thought. Not sure how telemarketers got my number, but whatever. My car is several years away from warranty expiration.

The number is usually blocked, but this time it wasn’t. It was 818-870-8127.
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That’s right, everyone. Today is my 25th birthday, and you know what that means.

It means that at last my brain is fully developed. You’ve got these public interest groups and all saying that studies show that your brain is immature and underdeveloped until you turn 25. That before then you are incapable of making any sound judgments. Well, I always called bullshit before, but now that I actually am 25, maybe my outlook might be a bit different.

Yes, yes, it’s true. I do feel more lucid, more logical. I feel like I truly understand the world now, and I realize that anyone born after this day in 1983 can’t possibly be so rational. It can’t be explained, as you can’t possibly understand until you turn 25. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Because if you are not yet my age, you shouldn’t drink a drop of alcohol because it will give you cerebral palsy. And don’t think about driving because it gives you Down’s Syndrome. Also, sex before age 25 will definitely make you autistic.

Of course, why am I retyping this whole thing? I’ve already written all about my new outlook on life. Read it here.

Now I hope you understand, or however much your underdeveloped brain possibly can.

Ugh, here I am talking about current political stuff. What is this, a blog?

Anyway, so we all know Hillary Clinton just won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. Kind of expected. In any case, Barack Obama, as some suggest, pretty much screwed himself in a comment he made about small town Pennsylvanians. Here’s a quote from the Lexington column in the Economist:

He told a group of fat cats in San Francisco that the reason why he is finding it hard to appeal to blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania is because they are “bitter”. They have suffered from so many broken promises that they prefer to “cling” to God, guns and xenophobia rather than reaching out for a helping hand from the government.

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Something odd about the way some houses are designed. I thought of it not too long ago when I was first looking into moving into a shared house maybe, to get away from my family. One place listed on Craig’s List was like this shared 5-bedroom house. For a moment, I wondered that it might have been the house I lived in between the ages of 10 and 18. Nah, it wasn’t, but it got me thinking. What if that house were a shared house instead of a family house like it was for us?
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Being content is a social taboo.

Having a dead-end job is a fate worse than death. Having little to no interest in a big promotion or higher-end position is a sign of a mental problem. Having no real career plans means you’re doomed.

Wait. What?
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At work, I sit up front in the reception area (because they ran out of room in the lab, and being the lowest rung employee, I’m the movable one, hehe). I still do lab work, just my desk is up front now. So I get to deal with what comes with that task.

One thing that has annoyed me, and keeps happening in the year and a half or so I’ve been sitting at this spot. We’re in suite 220. Straight across the hall is suite 200. You know, it’s in plain sight. On our floor, there’s just four suites in a little cluster there. Plain sight. Everyone has the same grey plaque outside the door saying the company name and the suite number.
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Sigh. Christmas is over.

Well, after tonight anyway. Epiphany has come, the Three Wise Men have given their gifts, and now the celebration has come to a close. Well, not in our house, since we decided to leave the decorations up until Grandma gets back from the hospital. Yeah, she’s back in the hospital. It might be a while. Might still be Christmas around here past Easter, heh. Well, I hope not. We want her out sooner.

But for the most part anyway, time to take down decorations. Take those lights off my window. Already took down the garland and little red tree that I had up at work. That made me sad. Now my desk area is all bland and non-festive. Sigh.

And, of course, take down my little lights right here under my posts.

Until November 27, 2008.

Another Christmas has come upon us! Joy to the world!

I tell you, was a gorgeous Christmas Day here. Sunny and clear and quiet outside. Better than last year when it was raining. Made me think of the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer song “I Believe in Father Christmas”. First line goes: You said there’d be snow at Christmas, you said there’d be peace on earth, but instead it just kept on raining, a veil of tears for the virgin birth.

But, yeah, that was last year. This year, was a nice day. True, snow would have been way better, but not a bad day still.

Just one little issue. Grandma got sick about five days ago and hasn’t been well since. And after this morning she fell down after getting out of bed, and was too weak to pick herself back up and was on the floor for THREE HOURS, something was really wrong. Don’t know yet. Also been running a fever.

Could be something. Could be nothing. This afternoon, my dad and aunt and the rest of us decided it was time she went to the hospital. Dad, aunt, sister, and cousins took grandma to the hospital, and I stayed home to keep track of things here, plus I’m the only one who has work tomorrow and can’t do the late night if it came to that.

Interesting thing, though. I still feel like this was a good Christmas. If you’d told me before that we’d have something like this happen on Christmas Day, I’d shudder at the thought, feel like that would ruin it for sure. But it doesn’t feel ruined. Nor do I feel like this happening today made this any worse in particular. Magic of Christmas right there, I guess. Christmas still came all the same despite some adversity. I feel like a Who!

And, like the last two years, here’s my Christmas videos!

UN: xmas
PW: tree

Yeah, I know, it’s the same as last year even though I had said it was temporary. Whatever.

It started innocently enough when Kathleen visited the NYRA forums for the first time in two years. Quickly disgusted, she left me a note on my Facebook profile that she found she didn’t miss the forums that much and was amazed that I could put up with the idiocy all the time. I told her it was a legitimate concern, that I’ve either gotten used to it, or I just have to rely on my coping methods which, as I put it, consisted mostly of abuse of moderator powers whenever Alex wasn’t looking. She replied, amazed that I’d be able to do anything without Alex looking, wondering if he wasn’t as dictatorial as he once was. I responded saying that, no, he still watches my every moderatory move (and threw in a comment of “and to think he thinks I’M the one stalking HIM, but that’s another stupid story entirely…”).

Alex then saw the Wall-to-Wall between me and Kathleen, so saw this back and forth, so he left a comment on her profile saying he’s always watching. Then the following ensued, read it from the bottom up to get it in the right order: alexkathfacebook.png

So, naturally, I posted that screen cap on the NYRA forums in a thread I’d made not too long ago specifically for memorable conversations.

And just today, I realized that’s true. Alex is ceiling cat. He is Ceiling Alex. And here’s what he does: Ceiling Alex

And here’s what I do: Ceiling Alex and Me

Good times.

So the other night, my dad was commenting about the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and how it’s different from all the other specials in that it mentions Jesus. This was, of course, accompanied with some whining about “oh noes, Jesus can’t be mentioned because the Jews and Muslims would complain!”
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Holy crap, what an awesome movie. It was just on NBC, so with all the ads, it got stretched into three hours. Hooray for writer’s strike! Take off all the crappy sitcoms and just play Christmas specials every evening!

In a strange sense, it’s kind of pro-youth. You’ve got this young George Bailey guy always determined and always willing to do the right thing, even at his own expense. Even when just 12 years old, saved his brother from drowning which made him half deaf, he yelled at that old Potter guy defending his father, and stopped his boss from poisoning a kid by mistake even though he doesn’t point out the error before he gets the shit slapped out of him. Everyone around him is screwing up, so it’s up to him to be the solid one, the responsible one, the rock.
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Last weekend, I finally bought a string of sequencing Christmas lights. Last night, I got them out of the box, plugged them in, and watched them flicker and flash! They were plugged in and sitting in a pile on my lap. Weird!

So I strung them around my window, which is right next to my computer. A little awkward and half assed, but still cool looking.

But I mentioned this already last year in Lights Please. Colored sequencing lights are win.

Except I had to turn them off after a while because they were giving me a headache and making me nauseous, LOL. Bah!

This is the exact same type string we had many years ago at our house. It was put on a small tree in our front yard. And my dad, my sister, and I could never agree on a flashing setting! I wanted it on Chasing Flash, but my sister wanted it on Twinkle Flash. I forget which one my dad liked, probably Combination. There’s eight settings total.

Except this string I just got is faulty on one of the settings. The one called “Slo Glo” is supposed to be each color fading in and out, but it doesn’t work like that. It’s just a random bunch of lights on the string that fade in and out, different colors. So not much different from Slow Fade, which is all of the lights fading in and out at the same time. Which is kind of boring.

This tells me that I’m not prone to seizures, at least.

Been meaning to bitch about this for a while, but then I suppose it came up more after I was reading something about criticisms of the Harry Potter books. No, I don’t mean the Christian fundamentalist whining we all already know about. I mean the members of the “official writing community”, or something.

Eww! Rowling uses too many clichés! Eww! They’re just kidsy magic stories! Eww! This will just make kids be interested in bad pop culture writing and not Rudyard Kipling! Eww!

Wow.
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You know that feeling when the holiday spirit finally plops into you like a shiny festive ton of bricks? Awesome!

Today, at work, I decorated my desk area. Well, it’s actually up front in the reception area. On Saturday, I had gotten a little red tree with red lights and some red and green garland. I lined the garland along the edges of my desk, and set the little tree on a little table by the door. Only thing is the electrical cord is shorter than Galen’s dick, so I couldn’t move the tree very far from the outlet. Still looks all pretty.

Now with a festive work area, it dawned on me. Christmas is coming! And we all know what that means.

ZOMG, lights! ZOMG, tree! ZOMG, cookies! ZOMG, presents! ZOMG, songs! ZOMG, Christmas specials! ZOMG, decorations!

ZOMG, Christmas, ZOMG!!!

Oh, man, I love this time of year! Who couldn’t? Soulless losers, that’s who!

Wait, isn’t Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on tonight? Oh, yes, it is! Sweet!

Island of Misfit Toys. What can I say? It just speaks to me.

So I’ve been kind of sort of shoe shopping since my six-year-old Skechers are getting rather torn up. And you know? Haven’t had much luck.

When it comes to shoes, or any sort of apparel I choose for that matter, I prefer something to be as all-purpose as possible. The way I normally dress passes for work and doesn’t make me look overdressed when in casual settings. Plain but nice shirt. Black pants. Same accessories I wear all the time (earrings, cross necklace, youth rights wrist band, WWJD wrist band, 10-year-old digital watch, 11-year-old glasses).
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I was thinking about the general power that parents have over their offspring. Not just as children, but continuing through their lives. After perpetually training them as children to obey them, that their word is final, that they must never go against their parents’ wishes, the message sticks. Sadly.

I listened to my mother if I felt like it. Naturally, it led to a lot of family issues. She’d ask me to do something. I’d do it if I felt like it, which I did sometimes. I only did stuff if I saw some actual point to it. Like putting dishes away. Hated it, but knew it had to be done, so I did it (eventually). Mom didn’t like my attitude, of course, but screw her. I really didn’t give a crap what she thought. Or, well, I did to a point, but after a while, I realized more and more she was in no place to be telling me what I should be doing when she could barely make decisions for herself.
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Came across yet another list of things girls are apparently supposed to like in a guy. For those who enjoyed the last one, here’s another.
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Is there some rule that every single movie must advertise using the prelude of Bizet’s Carmen? Oh, yes, makes the movie sound all adventurous and crazy. Fail.

Click that link and scroll way down to know which music I’m talking about. It’s also the music used in Tetris when you’ve gotten a high enough score to get that scene with the Kremlin where it’s launching stuff up to the sky.

It’s also my ring tone. Hehehe.

I had a thought. You know how in like elementary school, the kids are taught about good dental hygiene? Brush and floss twice a day like good little boys and girls, or else some cavity monsters will eat your teeth, and you’ll have no teeth anymore. And remember to go see your happy little dentist twice a year!

Eh, interesting curriculum. I have a better idea. Try this.

Kids, brush and floss regularly. Why? Because toothpaste and floss are relatively cheap. And if you don’t, you will get cavities and gingivitis, which requires special and very expensive dental checkups. Your parents may or may not have dental coverage on their health plan, if they even have a health plan at all. So when you’re in excruciating pain from cavities and you need to have the dentist fill it or yank the tooth, which will be more physical hardship for you, mommy and daddy will have to shell out thousands of dollars to even have it done, which will result in them going into serious debt, you will get nothing for Christmas or your birthday for the next five years, they won’t be able to make the mortgage or rent payments, so you’ll all have to move in with grandma and live in the same cramped room. Or even if you don’t need any serious dental work now, the bad dental habits now will cause lots of problems later when you’re an adult, and your mouth is in agonizing pain and you need a root canal, but you have no dental coverage and you can’t afford the procedure, so you’ll either go without it and be in misery for a long time while your teeth deteriorate more, making you need an even more expensive procedure, or you have it done immediately, but even then the cost is too much, making you unable to afford food or gasoline for the next year. You’ll then have to move back in with your parents, only to have them ride your ass for having not listened to them when you were a kid about proper dental hygiene.

So, yeah, clean your fucking teeth, kids!

This has been Day 90 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 7.