Author: Katrina

WTF 2010

December 31, 2010

And here we are. New Year’s Eve 2010, looking ahead to the still uncertain 2011. Though more on 2011 a year from now once it has actually occurred. Right now, let’s have a look back at 2010. It’s a year that from the get-go seemed rather, well, odd. Now through it, well, it was odd, certainly annoying much of the time, and certainly without a lot of the awesome encounters previous years had. Though with two heart-breaking losses. In any case, now for the recap!

January: Check Engine

-I think I’ll make guacamole
-Wow, this guacamole is fucking gross. Ack! Is this earwax?!
-Oh, I got the wrong kind of avocados. Okay.
-I need to get NYRA’s blog restarted.
-Ugh, NYRA online community is pissing me off, seriously.
-I’ll try this guacamole again, with the right avocados this time…
-Yummy!
-WTF?! Why is my check engine light on?
-Oh, I left the gas cap loose. Lulz
-I think I’ve got an idea for a hashtag Twitter campaign for NYRA.
-Still awkward and uncomfortable? Well, fuck you too then!
Continue reading “WTF 2010”

Extreme Temps, Extremist Bullcrap

December 30, 2010

Now for an environmental, temperate edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

You know what I’m really getting fucking sick of? Or, at least, that I’m choosing to mention at the moment? Every time the temperature dips a little higher or a little lower than is normal for a given season, you get wingnut assholes deciding this is some definite information about global warming.

You see it from both sides…

“OMG, it’s a 70 degree day in January! Global warming has killed winter!”

“OMG, it’s a 50 degree day in July! Global warming doesn’t exist!”

Uh, hi, I’d like to introduce you both to the Hasty Generalization logical fallacy.

I mean, it’s of course not about expressing any actual scientific knowledge, as those with actual scientific knowledge on this get drowned in partisan propaganda, and many scientific studies even then get performed often by or at least funded by those who want a particular result. No, the entire point is to be a pompous ass to the other side, all like “see? I was right about global warming and you were wrong!” Who cares if the “info” you’re basing this on is even remotely sound when it can be made to fit your gloating needs at a given moment, right?

So, really, STFU both of you. If you think one unseasonably warm or cool day or week or even season totally validates your insistance that global warming is a real threat or just something Al Gore made up, then you don’t have any damn clue what you’re talking about on this issue.

And, just saying… regardless of the truth of global warming… it’s hardly the only reason to be worrying about air pollution.

Interference

December 29, 2010

Oh, my good God…

Mother Sues McDonald’s for ‘Interfering’ With Kids

Happy Meals just got a little more expensive for McDonald’s: the fast food chain has been sued by California mother Monet Parham for using toys to make her two young daughters want nutritionally unsound Happy Meals…

Parham, mother of a six-year-old and two-year-old, said in a CSPI press release that: “I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat… what kids see as a fun toy, I now realize is a sophisticated, high-tech marketing scheme that’s destined to put McDonald’s between me and my daughters… I want McDonald’s to stop interfering with my family.”

Owwwww! My head hurts! Soooo much concentrated stupid!

*clutches head*

*takes ibuprofen*

Sigh. Okay, feel a little better now.
Continue reading “Interference”

My Five-Year-Old

December 28, 2010

Five years old today!

Yup, I have a five-year-old. Sometimes cranky. Sometimes ranty. Sometimes sweet. Sometimes thoughtful. Sometimes bored. Sometimes sad. Sometimes joyous. Sometimes excited.

Always colorful. Always awesome. Always full of whatever info or influence I happen to provide. Poor thing! Hehe.

Maybe I don’t give as much attention as I once did, but always there when needed, still there all these years. On to the sixth.

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY, EIGHT MINE FORTRESS!!!!

What I Won’t Miss

December 27, 2010

So last night at midnight, 97.1 finished up their six weeks of Christmas songs and switched back to their regular crap. Bleh.

It’s always a little sad. The festive songs get put away until next November and they’re back to the normal work-safe light rock and pop stuff. No more Sleigh Ride. No more Silver Bells. No more Winter Wonderland. No more Frosty the Snowman. Sigh.

But of course, there are the ones I will not miss. Namely, ones I’ve ranted about before. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (especially that obnoxious Perry Como version!). And others.

And… The Christmas Shoes.

Yeah, you know the one I mean. About the guy in line to buy presents who’s in a Charlie-Brown-ish “what’s the point?” mindset, and a boy in front of him is trying to buy shoes for his dying mother.
Continue reading “What I Won’t Miss”

The Choice Is Clear

December 26, 2010

Now for a gestational, abortive edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Let’s say you hear a news story, something like this: A man beats his pregnant girlfriend to death because she did not want to have an abortion. Or the perpetrator may not be a boyfriend but a husband or one of her parents or whoever. May not have beaten her to death but raped her or injured her severely in some other way.

And who should shut the hell up? These fucking idiot prolifers who point to this horrible shit and say “see! see! pro-choice people commit violence, too!” Often times the headlines of these articles will identify the assailant as pro-choice or pro-abortion (which a lot of idiots think is just another word for pro-choice, which is bullshit, but more on that in a sec).

*facepalm*
Continue reading “The Choice Is Clear”

Frohe Weihnachten!

December 25, 2010

“Just look at us now, part of it all. In spite of it all, we’re still around! So wake up the kids, put on some tea, let’s light up the tree. It’s Christmas Day!” -Neil Diamond, You Make It Feel Like Christmas

Here we are again. It is Christmas Day! Through another year since the last one, we have lasted. Yay!

As usual, yesterday was another run of Christmas Eve, the longest day of the year. The Christmas Eve runaround leading up to the relative lull that is Christmas Day. Started with waking up, running to work to change a temperature chart, back home, wrapping presents, watching specials, listening to Christmas music, etc. All the way until around 7pm when once again my family went to my mom’s Greek friend’s Christmas Eve party. Ate lots of delicious food as usual, then I went to the 11pm Christmas Eve service at church like always. Wearing my Santa hat.

And listened to the sermon, which was about It’s a Wonderful Life, which the priest admitted to only recently watching all the way through the first time (iknorite?!) even though the church had been doing some activity before then supposedly about the movie. So, in other words, the priest admitted to professing to know about something that he in fact knew little about. Bizarre! :cute:

Well, part of surviving a church service when one has ideologically pulled away from Christianity like I have is to look at the whole thing as just some story everyone there is making a celebration of. Pretend nobody actually takes this seriously but that this is all just for fun. Hey, for most of the people there, that may actually be the case!

Once more, after communion, we all held candles, turned out the lights, and sang Silent Night. With joy.

And once more, upon the choir walking back down the aisle, we all sang Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Which I felt tempted to finish with a loud cheerful “Hell yeah!” But I resisted. Sorry. 😛

Then I talked to the priest, who’s known me for a while. I told him my realization about O Come All Ye Faithful.

Then I thanked him for not being Fred Phelps, and he took that as a compliment. 😆

Went home and prepared last few gifts.

And the NYRA website, which had been down for several horrible days, had at last come back. Just in time for Christmas! Christmas miracle.

Then went upstairs to my living room, on which I had put my colored lights. I gazed out at the divine night sky, watching for Santa…

And off in the distance, under a tower with one of them blinking red lights…

I saw a star.

I think. A star there in the night sky on Christmas Eve…

Or, no, it was actually the big electric star that on a tower that some nearby company puts up every year.

Hmmm… what a time to first notice I’m able to see it from my house! 🙂

So I unplug the lights for the night and go to bed.

And in the morning…

It’s snowing.

Ever so lightly. No real accumulation. I wondered just what does and doesn’t qualify as a White Christmas. Do Christmas morning flurries count? Does it count if it’s leftover snow from several days ago? Does it count if it doesn’t snow until later in the day?

In any case, I drove to my family’s house with the tiny Christmas snowflakes whirling around me, and arrived at the house to my very excited little brother, who got a fancy new train set, and is right now running that train round and round and round and round…

And has been using the new saucer sled he got from Santa as a flying saucer full of aliens attacking the train!

And we had our feast, our feast of roast beast.

What does Christmas have in common with the United States?

They’re both crazy mixtures of stuff from a crapload of different cultures… yet white Christian conservatives seem to think they belong only to them.

And the Dallas Cowboys lost. Sweet.

Christmas.

Yeah.

Fifty Percent Capacity

December 23, 2010

Now for a half-gone, half-replenished edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

No, you can NOT tell whether someone is an optimist or a pessimist or anything like that merely because of whether they say “half full” or “half empty”. I know, I know, you want to look all smart and insightful, to make whomever you’re saying this to start to see you as wise or some shit. I don’t know.

In any case, cut the crap. It means nothing. You sound stupid saying it. It’s mind-numblingly cliché.

Leaky Nose Is Leaky

December 22, 2010

So I just came down with a cold. Lovely. I also need to finish Christmas shopping for my dumb family.

After getting off early from work today, also the last work day before Christmas (yay!), I went to a few stores to look for potential gifts. First Barnes and Noble, then some Middle Eastern food store, then Best Buy, then Kohl’s. And in each one… my nose was soooo drippy! Gross!

I mean, WTF? It felt like I couldn’t even go out in public without either having crap spewing out of my nose or a tissue stuffed into my nostrils. Neither would leave me fit for being where people are!

Instead, I made several trips to the bathroom to get paper towels to wipe my nose with. Bathrooms were too gross for me to use the toilet paper for that. And I didn’t bring enough tissues with me. Though an entire box probably would not have been enough. There I was, trying to look at DVDs and digital cameras, near other people trying to do the same, and I’m the creepy chick who keeps having to wipe her very drippy nose.

And with those hands I’m using to wipe my very drippy nose with a very snot-saturated tissue, I’m pawing through stuff to see what would be nice to give as gifts to my dumb family. Seriously, this drippy nose was making things difficult! Drippy nose is forcing me into hiding lest I become a pariah, a pariah due to being the creepy chick with a cold who can’t stop the runny!

Then comes the other disturbing thing about this. Here I am stuck touching merchandise with hands I’d been using to wipe an overused tissue across my nostrils, trying in vain to stem the flow of watery mucus. And handwashing or rubbing Purell over and over isn’t all that feasible. So my cold germs are getting on this stuff I’m not buying. Feel so guilty. And then I realize, if I’m doing it… how many other people already did?

Damn you, germs!

Winter Solstice

December 21, 2010

Uh oh! Seems once again two December observances are chatting! Let’s listen in…

Winter Solstice: Here I am! Time for the sun to stop at the Tropic of Capricorn and start heading back the other way again!

Christmas: Marvelous! And that means I’m only four days away! Time for wreaths and holly and celebration!

Winter Solstice: Uh, yeah, about that, isn’t that all actually mine?

Christmas: We can share, can’t we?

Winter Solstice: Well, of course. You and I are more or less the same celebration anyway.
Continue reading “Winter Solstice”