Author: Katrina

Nineties Kids Remember

December 1, 2015

(Have I really not posted in three months? Ugh. Well, let’s see how far this December thing goes this year…)

You know those posts that float around social media saying “only 90s kids remember this” or someone else whose adolescence occurred entirely or in part prior to the turn of the century?

Cassette tapes. Getting film developed. Car windows that roll up and down by use of a hand crank.

Yeah, I, a 90s kid, am glad to be rid of all that shit, too. Thanks for reminding me.

Oh, but the next generation won’t appreciate not having annoying things like this anymore because we have digital media files and power windows? Well, good, it gives them more room to find what’s lacking in the current technology so they can in turn improve on that! Yay, progress!

And then there are the posts suggesting today’s kids will never know such bygone things like, say, a Pez dispenser or ending friendships by playing a well-timed Draw 4 card in Uno.

Except they can because Pez and Uno are totally still around, so I don’t know what the fuck these people are talking about. *shrug*

Equines, Vines, and Mines

August 31, 2015

Hey, look what day it is. Come around for the fifteenth time and once again it is…


DAY

100

Alright, let’s see, what went on that’s remotely interesting and I feel like sharing…

Okay, none of it is all that interesting, but here it is anyway.

Day 4, late birthday cake gathering for me at work, later Trapped Forever by Metro because I didn’t have the exit fare

Day 6, aaaand trying to drive down a very narrow DC street resulted in me destroying someone’s side mirror, clearly going into DC is a bad idea in general.

Day 7, Rush concert! Three hours of music… but they didn’t play Freewill. Sigh. Afterward, Virginia said “oh, going into DC has been nightmarish? challenge accepted!” So in the middle of the night I was stuck in construction traffic on the beltway for THREE HOURS!

Day 8, a bunch of weird backyard games, but stayed in Maryland, so no driving issues this time!

Day 9, gahhh, jury duty! County is making me miss work… for like two hours. They let us out at like 11am and I was still able to go to work. Cool.

Day 13, mmmm, free donut!

Day 14, AMERICAN PHAROAH [sic] WINS THE TRIPLE CROWN!!!!!

Day 21, took little brother to Sugarloaf to climb rocks to his heart’s content.

Day 22, yay, rained out barbecue!

Day 25, parents clearing out stuff from old storage trailer, better not throw away stuff I want to keep!

Day 26, work picnic! Oh, and my headlight’s out.

Day 27, trying to get a blood test and get my headlight bulb replaced on the same day was a bad idea.

Day 29, Nationals game!

Day 35, Inside Out!

Day 39, family left town on a train and left the Wii with me, woohoo!

Day 42, ‘splosions and chili!

Day 43, Team USA wins World Cup!

Day 45, wow, there’s this overgrown vine slowly conquering my backyard… Better start yanking it out… Hey, we have an air conditioner! I remember that thing.

Day 47, Donkey Kong Country! Fuck yeah!

Day 50, cleaning up a lot of crap, finding a lot of old crap I kept for some reason.

Day 54, crap, I think my laptop is having issues.

Day 55, loud tapas are loud!

Day 56, Minions!

Day 57, family left again… but took the Wii with them this time. D’oh!

Day 61, power outage at work! LOL

Day 64, so hard to pick out a new laptop.

Day 68, LOL another power outage at work

Day 69, hey, my car hit 69,000 miles today! What timing!

Day 70, Crash Bandicoot!

Day 75, oh, wait, my laptop does still work, Chrome was just eating its RAM for breakfast.

Day 77, hey, it’s 8/8 and I opened an 8 in Minesweeper! Think I’ll bingewatch Sense8.

Day 80, making travel plans.

Day 84, zoo!

Day 86, eep, I’m in trouble… I can fix this.

Day 87, yay, I fixed this!

Day 91, all the numbers!

Day 94, time for car maintenance… going to take a while, I’ll need to take a *shudder* loaner car! I hate the loaner car! I want MY car!

Day 95, a bunch of very expensive car work later, finally rid of loaner car and got my own car back!

Day 97, shit, my other headlight is out now.

Day 98, stuff that should have happened a long time ago.

Day 99, mmmm, yummy Greek salad.

And finally…

Day 100. Crazy work day and a mysterious intermittent rumbling sound at home. And chicken wings.

Alright.

As these 100 Days of Summer draw to a close, I see that so far 2015 has had a lot going on, which will be gone over on New Year’s Eve. But it’s got four more months to work with. And I’ve got to post on here again because this thing has been kind of neglected.

Goodbye to another 100 Days of Summer. It all starts up again on Day 1 of Round 16 on May 24, 2016, in whatever form the world will be in then. Who knows!

This has been Day 100 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 15.

New Hat!

August 23, 2015

Hey, check it out. I was playing Minesweeper because, well, I’m me, and look what happened. I won. Well, of course I won. I’m awesome. But I won a field that had every number on it. 😀

Okay, it was on the third try, but still counts.

You may also notice something different around here. Sure, Why Not? is totally new and improved! The color scheme and whatnot are… ugly as all hell like usual.

But it’s got a new hat!

And by that I mean new header. The winning Minesweeper field with every number because why not? I was tired of the old one.

Enjoy the brand new Sure, Why Not?. 😛

This has been Day 92 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 15.

Who Comes After Affirmed?

June 6, 2015

He won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Nothing new. They do that all the time.

And they’re off in the Belmont Stakes.

Crap. He got off to an early lead. That’s certain doom.

Around the far turn. He’s still in the lead, but there’s still a ways to go.

There’s one of the horses coming up on him now. Sigh. Oh, well. Another let down.

Wait a minute…

That horse is quitting.

There’s no one gaining on him now.

Oh, my God…

OH, MY GOD!

…

HE DID IT!!!!

American Pharoah [sic] won the Triple Crown! It finally happened!!!! 😀

I’ve been waiting my whole life to see this!!!

Good job, American Pharoah! Who’s a good horsey with a misspelled name? Who’s a good fast horsey? That’s right. You are! 😀

This has been Day 14 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 15.

Death by Paper Cut

April 28, 2015

So I was putting away some paperwork the other day when my left hand grazed the side of a folder sitting in an upright organizer. A sheet of paper inside that folder was poking out the side at that moment. Sure enough, I grazed the side of it so lightly yet just right that the paper sliced into my left ring finger.

Gah! Paper cut!!!!

I’m cringing at the memory. As are you, since you’ve had a paper cut and holy crap they suck!

Every time I get a paper cut or some other stupid incident that results in some minor bloodshed, I start to think… what if this is what kills me? Like if the cut got infected with some super resistant form of bacteria and I wound up dead from sepsis.

Aside from the death, which would suck in and of itself, there’s the shame of such a pathetic death. What if there is an afterlife? What if I’m hanging out with some other dead souls and they share how they died, whether heroically saving people during a storm or simply succumbed after a long battle with cancer? They’ll be all like “So what happened to you?” And I’d have to be like “Well, I got a paper cut that got infected and killed me just shy of my 32nd birthday.” And then they’d avoid me. I’d only be allowed to associate with those who died from choking on a hot dog or something. For all of eternity.

Or even back in life, when people ask “aww, how did she die?”, friends and family would be like “from an infected paper cut”. It’d probably be on my tombstone. In my obituary. It would overshadow just about anything else about me. Something about working in biotech or being a youth rights advocate? Nope. Dead by paper cut!

So I guess, if death by paper cut is even remotely a possibility, we should live our lives in such a way that we’d be remembered for something other than this pathetic death. Which is a rather tall order. Murder people by giving them paper cuts perhaps? That’d certainly solve some problems, but may create others.

Lion and Lamb

March 30, 2015

So we’ve all heard that saying about the month of March. That it “goes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb”. The idea is that the month begins with harsh wintry weather and ends with mild spring weather.

Yeah, I call bullshit. I mean, if anything, it’s the other way around.

What do lambs look like? They’re gentle, soft, white, and fluffy. You know what else is gentle, soft, white, and fluffy? Snow! In fact, it’s right there in that rhyme, that Mary had a little lamb “whose fleece was white as snow”. Not whose fleece was, say, like airborne pollen that will have you sneezing for the next four months.

What about the lion? Well, what do lions do? Other than lie around all day and plot regicidal wildebeest stampedes. That’s right. They roar! Know what else roars? Thunder! Know when we get lots of thunderstorms? Spring!

In white and fluffy like a lamb, out roaring like a lion. Much more accurate.

Mmmm, Candy Hearts 10

February 14, 2015

“Crazy 4 U” Aww how nice.

“Sweet pea” Isn’t that the baby from Popeye? That’s not romantic.

“Soul mate” Having a candy heart for a soul mate? Eh, could do worse.

Yup, it’s that time again, where I eat these traditional Valentine’s Day conversation hearts and mull over their messages, while musing in my traditional Valentine’s Day way about romantic relationships. Somehow I’ve managed to churn out ten of these now. What shall this tenth be about?

Ah, I know.

Ever notice in a romantic couple that the girl seems to take on this really cutesy and meek persona? Almost bordering on whiny. Okay, it’s hard to explain.

Actually, no it isn’t. It’s well known. Basically, she pretends to be weak. Common examples are she has the guy kill a spider for her or open a pickle jar. More than that, though. She talks to him with this sad little voice that seems to scream “I’m a helpless weakling” no matter what words she’s actually saying. And it annoys the hell out of me.

I’m not making this up. I’ve actually seen it as relationship advice for girls! Not to mention any number of TV shows with plotlines in which a wife ends up the primary breadwinner or is otherwise independently strong in some way, and the result is the husband can’t get it up. And the relationship advice is based on that idea, that if you as a female are not at least giving the illusion of being a faint little flower petal of a being who needs some heroic masculine manly man to justify her existence, then he will lose interest in you.

Needless to say, this is pretty damn offensive to both genders! That an independent and capable female is incompatible with romantic relationships. That a male’s entire sense of self-worth is based on being superior to a female.

And yet maybe it’s effective? I’ve seen these guys eat it up. Offensive to both genders it may be, they grew up in a society where said offensive gender expectations are commonplace, so that’s what they’re comfortable with, unfortunate though it may be.

I don’t think I could pull it off, though. Not that I have much interest in trying. The idea makes me think of in Garfield comics when he sees Nermal acting all cute and getting attention and food, so Garfield wants the same food he’s getting so he pretends to be all cute too but he fails miserably at it and comes off as creepy and unsettling. Yeah, that’d be me trying to do this cutesy meek thing. 😆

But even so I hardly see the point. Relationships have real built-in aspects of interdependence without all these showy fake nonsense. Everyone is sometimes the weak one and sometimes the strong one. It’s called being human, and being with each other through those times is called being in relationship. Isn’t that enough?

Oh, well, it’s not like these things make sense. Back to hearts.

“Be true” Yeah, better than being false. See above.

“Don’t tell” Huh. That’s kind of rapey.

“I M sure” You’re a candy heart. Your sureness is limited.

“Get real” Uh oh. Made a wrong move? Come on too strong?

“See ya” Welp, even the candy hearts get sick of your shit eventually!

The Real Heroes

January 19, 2015

So I just got back from seeing the movie “Selma”. It was amazing. Brought me to tears a few times. Made me cringe a few times at the horrible racial violence. Powerful. Highly recommend it.

And it had better win Best Picture, damn it!

Not only because I like it when a movie I’ve seen wins Best Picture, but because it’s damn good. And also because I don’t want American Sniper to win.

Just to be clear, I have not seen American Sniper. I don’t particularly want to. I just read through a plot summary of it. Seems to be your run-of-the-mill soldier movie.

Soldiers are commonly referred to as heroes, and I suppose they are, or at least they’re really brave for putting themselves in that position. Not going to dispute that. And we have two holidays for them, Memorial Day for the dead ones and Veteran’s Day for the living ones. “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers and other such items are ubiquitous. After all, they’re the ones out there protecting our freedom, right?

Er, no, that one I will dispute. For one, their mere presence in many areas is pissing off the locals and thus encouraging support for the terrorists who might attack us and lead to more restrictions on our freedoms in the name of safety. Mostly it’s that the greatest threats to our freedom are internal.
Continue reading “The Real Heroes”

That Takes Religion

January 8, 2015

You’ve probably heard the line that goes something like “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” And as I’ve mentioned before, it’s full of shit. In that those doing evil things aren’t somehow not evil just because they claim it’s because of religion.

But I think I’d like to amend it a bit. Let’s try it this way.

“With or without religion, you would have smart people saying smart things and stupid people saying stupid things. But for smart people to say stupid things, that takes religion.”

Sound about right?

It works both ways, too. One might think of people who, despite smartness, have some religious belief or affiliation, something that the Very Smart anti-theist types, ironically, just can’t wrap their heads around. Or just plain a smart religious person turning an inexplicable blind eye to or defending troublesome or even abusive religious practices. But it’s for the atheists, too. In that, yeah, they are very smart, until the topic turns to religion and in beating the religion-is-evil drum, some of them start saying some astoundingly stupid things.

We’re of course seeing a lot of examples of both with this Charlie Hebdo attack.

You’ve got the otherwise-intelligent religious participating in some good old fashioned victim blaming, with the “they shouldn’t have been killed, but they shouldn’t have attacked people’s sacred beliefs either”. Ugh. And we’ve got the anti-theist “religion is for idiots” crowd saying “see? see? proof positive that religion is evil, atheists never do anything wrong!” Ugh (if, in all fairness, less so than the former!).

The problem with the first one is hopefully obvious. With the second one, while this attack was without a doubt religiously motivated, it defies and violates basic statistics horrendously to imply such a thing is representative of all 1 billion plus who identify as Muslim, let alone all the billions who identify with some religion. Now, is religion statistically and historically the most likely reason for any given terrorist attack? Absolutely. But it rarely acts alone, in that cultural superiority and good old fashioned power hunger have helped it in those attacks just about every step of the way, and if you remove religion from the equation (and, you know, actually learn something about the people and situations involved and find out how complex it all is, like a smart person might do), very little will have changed.

But I’ll get into all that in more detail in another post. The point is, when religion comes up, whether for or against, people have a way of losing their damn minds, whether it’s the anti-theist pegging anyone who sets foot inside a church as a potential violent fanatic when otherwise completely against any such blanket pigeonholing, or it’s the observant Jew who fiercely defends infant circumcision as some kind of cherished holy tradition despite being opposed to such violations of bodily autonomy in literally every other scenario.

Although, come to think of it, my amended quote has the exact same problem as the original. In that, no, these supposedly smart people really aren’t all that smart if they’re spouting this crap. 🙄

Or maybe they are. Varies by individual. It is just one topic after all, as opposed committing acts of evil for whatever chosen reason. But we all have those friends who are typically very thoughtful and logical on a wide variety of topics, while there’s one or two that they just start on and they sound like their brains fell out and all you can do is sigh and say “ugh, here we go with this shit again…” It’s just that this topic is usually religion.

Let’s Go 2014

December 31, 2014

Well, that was something. Another year gone. Time for another recap!

January: Viewer Discretion Is Advised

-Better change my address after lots of laziness.
-Ooh, possible job. All the way in Frederick, though.
-Mmmm, almond cookies.
-Why does Downton Abbey have a viewer discretion warning? There’s never anything racy or violent in it…
-Oh. That’s their way of saying “trigger warning” I guess.
-Cat ran away! 🙁
-Volunteering at WES. Because unemployed and bored.
-I made chili! 😀

February: Backwards N Thing

-Making chili and guacamole and cookies for Superbowl.
-Prep ran long. Did I miss kickoff?
-Aww, I missed a safety?!
-Winter Olympics in Sochi!
-Ooh, US women’s hockey is about to take Gold against Canada…
-FUUUUUUU- They remembered they’re from a country whose capital is Washington DC. :irked:
-Didn’t get other suggested job, but got interview for another one with same company but much closer location!
-And I got it!!! 😀

March: 37 Cents Per Ounce

-Ski night!
-French brunch thing.
-New job!
-So many trainings and SOPs to read.
-Lego Movie!
-More snow!

April: Existentialism

-Huh. The lab doors unlock each other.
-Brookside on Easter Sunday!
-Philosophy discussion lunch. Followed by fajita dinner. Fun day!
-Hendrik and Sasha visiting DC! 😀

May: Next Door

-I shouldn’t have said that.
-Where’s my birthday cake? Everyone else got a birthday cake.
-Oh, I finally got it a couple weeks later. Okay.
-Trip to New York sounds great… just not with my family. :irked:
-Wow, hotel room right above World Trade Center site.
-Good thing I came. My family couldn’t steer themselves around this city for anything. 🙄
-Holy crap, this sauce is spicy!

June: Councilmanic

-Netflix!
-Kingdom Hearts!
-What do you mean my voting registration address wasn’t changed with my address change? They said it was!
-I hate provisional ballots. They’re as good as not voting at all. :irked:
-World Cup!

July: This Fruit Salad Is Spicy

-Fruit salad has no business being spicy
-Dinner with Pam!!!
-How to Train Your Dragon 2!
-I think I’ll go to… Ugh, it’s too hot to drive anywhere. Stuck in so much traffic.
-Memorial service for dad’s aunt with lots of distant relatives I never see.

August: Red Trail

-Welp, I’ve gotten myself addicted to GeoGuessr again.
-Smithsonian with little brother
-Every Simpsons ever!
-Nats game! 😀
-Finally successfully went to Calvert Cliffs for Day 100.

September: Photospheres

-Mmmm, Middle Eastern Bazaar…
-Perfect 25000 score in GeoGuessr!
-To Baltimore with little brother! To Aquarium and other stuff!

October: Wild Pitch

-Nats are in playoffs!
-And lost badly. Sigh. :irked:
-Winter Festival rehearsal time!
-There’s a trick-or-treater dressed up as the Eleventh Doctor!

November: Windmill

-Sugarloaf climb!
-Auction night! I’m a devil! 😀
-A drunk devil.
-Big Hero 6! I’ve seen a lot of movies this year.
-Wait, why aren’t they playing Christmas Canon much in the Christmas music lineup this year? :irked:
-Almond cookies! Trying to get it just right.

December: Give Us Hope

-Shoulder hurts.
-Holiday potluck at work. I think I’ll make hummus.
-I put a lot of chopped parsley into the hummus. Now it’s green. It looks like guacamole.
-Got to bake lots of cookies for Cookie Walk!
-And dress rehearsal.
-And Washington Ethical Society’s Winter Festival. I’m Pandora! And my little brother’s a prince!
-And I get to pull the Hope banner!
-Cookie Walk! There are my cookies! 😀
-Trans-Siberian Orchestra! Damn, Verizon Center is packed!
-Dinner with Victoria!
-Time for Christmas shopping. Oy.
-Running around at work giving Christmas chocolate to coworkers!
-And finally… Christmas Eve. And Day.
-For New Year’s Eve, saw Mockingjay in movie theater.
-And now I’ve posted an entry every day in December!

With 2014 about to be in the books, it leaves a few things dangling. Though I suppose every year should, what with the arbitrary nature of when we determine when a year ends and a new one begins. The next year could prove very quickly to be great or another let-down. I guess, of course, that remains to be seen. We’ll see if I have more to say this time next year. Or at least something more interesting.

We’ll see.

Happy New Year!