Collection

It's the processed-everything and SUGAR, stupid. I'm so glad this science seems finally to be getting out more, let's hope it prevails.

Four(-eyed) flushers. It's probably been about fifteen years since I learned that putting anything other than effluvia or the tissue we use to deal with it into a commode yields problems for the sanitation systems which process our sewage. Now and then, I do still flush the hair after I clean my brush, but usually I do try to stick by the rule, sensitive to the cost of waste management (astronomical, in case you've never wondered). Hit the link above for another reason.

So, consequences are over I guess. Inevitable, but dispiriting nonetheless. Weinstein gets to be "relieved" because Asia Argento is also facing allegations of harassment. Lauer wants to be on TV again. I'm sure there are people who'd watch that; personally, I feel a bit dirty just pointing it out. But the thing is, lots of disgraced men are eyeing comebacks. Not everyone resides at the same level of repellence. But that is the point - they ALL apparently (think they) are owed careers and money and our attention. Sigh. I guess it's true. If you own it, you get to get away with anything.

Please do not click on the links in that last paragraph. If you don't already know what they are (and I suspect everyone does, or is smart enough to guess), you can just hover and read the URLs. That is 100% of the content of the clicks, and *not* clicking will save these outlets the information that we "care". Thanks.

...

...

...

Okay, let's lighten up after THAT, shall we?

My brother and I spent a good fifteen - maybe even twenty - minutes laughing about this last night:

What a great country, where a fella can offer up hot spuds to whoever wants to eat 'em! Ka-pow!

3 full pounds of consternating comedy, y'all. Click away.

In other completely bizarre vintage culture, this:

I'm still agog.

Women's Equality Day

This morning, Wikipedia informed me that it is Women's Equality Day. Ever heard of it? Ever celebrate it? Did you buy sheets on sale, or have a barbecue? I'm not sure of the proper procedure here.

I just feel like... if we have to have a "day" for it: we are doing it wrong.

There's Writing, Then There's ... Babel Fish, Maybe?

Reading an article earlier online, I ran across this little punisher of a sentence:

While Capitolinus had kingly dreams even, he attacked Camillus actually with precisely such kinglike accusation.

Sometimes, I understand why there are people who hate adverbs.

Grape Pay

The question becomes:  whose monkey do you want to be ... and ... do you want to carry the rocks for the guys who PAY in grapes?





It's an important question.  Even when so many of us monkeys are told to make do with the grape stems.

Homework

Okay, so watching The Borgias now qualifies as homework for history.  And not even in Big, Dumb America (being facetious, don't beat me up ...), but in the UK.  And for A-LEVEL history, at that.  This, for those not in the know as to the British educational system, is short for ADVANCED level.

Please stand by while I nip off to go shoot myself in the neck.

I promise, I’ll be very humane …

Absolute Write

Every time I hit up Absolute Write fora for the past day or so, Google says it's broken.  It can't find a usable link, and even going back to the base address, just absolutewrite.com, it's still not working.  Did I miss something important ... ???

I've Finally Found Them ...

... the most seriously deranged sellers on eBay.  I've been buying for thirteen years, but never seen anything QUITE like these folks' offerings.  And the variety of ways it's whackadoodle is dizzying.  The 100-item lot of condoms.  The Christian literature.  The cheap vintage plastic beads for fifty and seventy bucks.  The freebie flip-flops you can see TOE MARKS in from use.  The hand-heart-silhouette-over-sunset photos which have nothing to do with given items.

And yet ... they do have a feedback rating.  Someone has bought this stuff.  I'm half tempted by the (fully functioning!) Tupperware keyring myself ...  But - wow.  I spent a good twenty minutes just scrolling and marveling at all this stuff!

Plantagenet History Now

The city of Angers, which spawned a significant portion of the Plantagenet dynastic line, has demanded England's crown jewels in recompense for the death of England's Edward IV.

No.  Really.

When history comes alive in the present - it can be simultaneously hilarious and bewildering.

(The article states that Shakespeare made the Plantagenet name famous.  Because Geoffrey and his sprig in the hat - and a centuries-long line of monarchs - still left them in obscurity.  Apparently.  Erm.  I guess if they can definitively declare who killed the princes (erm again ...), they can assert that too.)

10 Worst?

I've seen some lulus in my day, but these bad book covers ARE pretty ... special.

So special I won't even put up a pic to go with this post.  Because, really - there isn't a one of these which wouldn't offend *somebody*.

Algorithm-less

Hulu Plus appears to have some of the most egregiously awful recommendation algorithms I've EVER seen, and that's saying quite a lot.

Apparently ... ?  I'm supposed to be very interested indeed in rom-coms ... from Korea ... starring very very pretty people ... significantly less than half my age.

Um.

What, now ... ???

Battlestar

So now we have a major criminal syndicate on board - and it is run by a black guy.

Women are dangerous sexbots.  The Brit is a perfidious ninny.  And crime is embodied in an African American.


*Sigh*

(Edited to add - oh, goody - the first Asian man I recall seeing in this series gets to play the role of Henchman #WhoCares.)

Seriously?

Are we in third grade (in 1933) and the boys still need to have a He-Man Women Hater's Club? I'm honestly too baffled to even get as far as being offended.  It just seems like a bizarre story from several generations in the past.  And these men actually think that being expected to ... allow a woman to PLAY GOLF ... is akin to having a bayonet pointed at them?  What?

Way to minimize things that are actually dangerous, guys.

This is beyond my paltry feminine comprehension:  that there actually, really are still any men walking and breathing who are this scared and resentful of their gender privilege.

And all that over this cheesy, ugly garment.

Nice one, Augusta.  Yeesh.

The Pain! The Pain!

Heard five minutes ago on the local nooz:

"Is social media destroying your grammar?"



...



...



No.  But you guys are destroying subject-verb agreement AND insulting my intelligence.  Nice try.

Next!

Hmm

I just balanced three months worth of bank statements, and things looked normal.  I decided to go online and check the balance.  Now - with everything cleared - the balance there shows about $900 higher than my own homework.

I acknowledge not being a math whiz.  And a lot of people would take this as "good" news.

Just makes me uneasy.  Hmmm.

Still think I'm ordering out for dinner, though.  It has been a productive weekend, and pizza beats drinking my confusion away, right?

Today's Spambots ...

... gun safes and vaults.

I don't even get it when ripoff purses 'bot me, nor the inexplicable slew of sites hawking watches not so long ago.  But gun 'bots?  I need a bath.  And a therapist.  Ugh.

Not Mrs. X

When I first moved into this house, I got a lot of calls for someone who did have Diane for a first name, but her last name actually happened to be the one I later encountered attached to Mr. X.  It's been *years* since I got one of those wrong numbers, but just now someone rang and asked to speak with Mrs. Diane X.

Um - yeah.  But no.

Heh.

"Cultural" Landscape

This is what it has come to.  Last night, I signed up for a package deal in which one company will deliver me wireless internet access, cable television (over 195 channels - and this is the SMALLEST package option), and telephone service for one flat monthly fee.

Now, being a proud luddite, I have not had cable since the nineties, and that is not a fanciful joke, it is the plain facts.  In the ten years in my home, and the two years in my apartment before that, plus a portion of the closing months I believe, of my living in the apartment before THAT - back when I was still a wee lass of thirty - I have not had cable.  TEO and I once joked about the someday we still believed in, in our economic naivete' and middle-class entitlement (and when television was pre-digital) - when we would "get cable JUST FOR THE RECEPTION" ...  Ooh.  Ahh.

I did have it for a while, when I felt (in my late twenties, and in an economy long long ago and far far away from today's) I was Moving Up in the world.  I lived in an end unit, so I had a big "yard".  I was suddenly an Executive Administrative Assistant (for a company which, during that splashy economy, went on to make some nastily splashy headlines in the WSJ ...).  I was Going Somewhere ...  Clearly, cable was an accepted part of my lifestyle, right?

Plus:  there used to be fairly regular Trek marathons.  My only fond recollection of 1990s cable TV.



For one reason or another, I canceled the subscription.  I don't remember missing it initially; probably did - I am a vidiot of extreme proportions, and have never denied it - but certainly, during the past ten years, I haven't felt any pinch.  As naturally one does, there is also the mild sense of personal superiority which comes with (a) nonconformity (*GASP!*  She doesn't have CABLE!  Who ever heard of such ... ?) and of course (b) the absence of dependence on broadcast media.  The bliss which comes with never having experienced Mad Men, the Sopranos, or ... (*shudder*) Sex and the City can hardly be described, to those who have been forced into addiction and submission.

In all this time, I've always said that I'd only really WANT cable if I could pick something like six or eight channels I don't already have, and leave it at that.  Cafeteria cable - give me the History Channel, Sci Fi (I refuse their current spelling flatly), Comedy Central (Colbert, fella babies - I'd shamelessly go for Stephen Colbert, not least as I know someone who's been with the show since the beginning), maybe Bravo and VH1 for some of their kitschier offerings (if they still even do programming like I remember).  That'd be it.

The prospect of 195+ channels frankly depresses me.  My plan already, even before installation, is to simply learn how to use "favorites" on my remote(s), program those few stations I give a damn about, and hope to be able to flatly ignore the rest.

Like, you know, Fox news.  Oy.


So why did I do it.  Well, it has finally, in our country, become CHEAPER to have cable than not to have it.  The package deal I got runs about $80 a month.  Right now, I am paying $72 for a standard telephone service alone.  AND internet, which is a separate bill.

Yeah:  no.

Getting cable will restore to me the major networks which seem to have gone a bit squiffy since getting a new TV for Christmas (the new digital antenna picks up LESS signal than my giant black rabbit-eared antenna did, even with fundamentally broken pieces!).  It'll clean up a bit of the equipment/cord picture I have going on now (the new antenna is hanging within the frame of one of my "art posters" in the living room; classy - it has a white tail - yeesh).  But, mainly, it'll streamline my bills (Heil Phone Company) and save me money I'm currently spending quite pointlessly.  It's basic math - with the equation not solving for "I get cable" but for efficiency and ease of use.


So it has come to this.  In our nation, in our society - in our "culture" - it is cheaper to live drowned in television than it is to remain independent, at least of cable (yes, big brother - I know you have no TV at all; let me know how your math works in the comments if you like!).  Bits of me remain queasy at this prospect.

The bits that don't are already programming my remote(s) mentally when I could be sleeping.

*Sputtering Speechlessness*

I *GET* that this is hardly a serious assessment of my job.  But it DOES represent what all too many people expect is its worth.

There are an AWFUL lot of us admins in the world, doing what you need to have done and guarding the gates to the things and people you need the most.  Thinking of us as the irrelevancies the picture dismisses us as being is dead-sure certain to get in your way at some point or another along the way to your goals.  This includes business (you won't get to the boss if you don't respect the admin) ... and PUBLISHING, too, by the way, writers.  You do realize:  admins read your work too.  They might even be your first-line to "this goes on the desk" (or "stays in the inbox").

Cover Bots?

Oh yes.  Also good (be sure to enjoy this blogger's captions).

Crude Cover Choices

Now, I'm no prude at all, and some of the art of these covers is perfectly beautiful in the artistic sense, even beyond the drooly - "oh, look, NEKKID GURLS" sense.  But the Huck Finn one is probably the major howler here, and I do not mean via catcalls.

Sheesh.

On the other hand - what a great blog!