boo.

Can i just interrupt, for a moment?

Regarding the food aid situation in Haiti:

Food distribution thus far has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times shoved aside the women and weak and took their food.

No way, young men were shoving aside women? Is that a greater crime than the fact that the world always seems to have a really difficult time helping those in need? Is it so strange to think that a man could possibly be hungrier than a woman? After all, wouldn't women be more likely to have recently eaten, due to the fact that they are women, and therefore more likely to receive help? And aren't men more likely to be the ones called upon to perform laborious tasks and heavy lifting (because they are 'stronger', duh), thereby increasing their caloric needs? And does this mean that the men in question (or any others, for that matter) were not also bullying other men out of their food? And does it mean that not a single woman was guilty of food theft? My guess is no. But you win, AP article: my heartstrings are hereby tugged.

Sometimes i just get tired of all the gender crap. Women and children first, blah blah blah. People are people, people are hungry, people are desperate. Obviously i'm not condoning shoving women and stealing their food rations (dick move), but i'm not sure that women deserve those rations more than men, simply by the fact that they have a twice the x chromosomes. UNLESS: they are breast-feeding mothers. Seems fairly obvious.

Now, i'm not trying to say that chivalry is dead (r.i.p. chivalry, and good riddance), just that humans should be treated equally. Anyway, i'm sure someone, somewhere has said this much more astutely than i, so i'll let it be for now. Class dismissed.

'Fame', the four-letter word.

i'm sorry, but i find it extremely disheartening that the number one search on Yahoo! right now is "Balloon Boy Incident".


First of all: Why the word "incident"? Would simply typing "balloon boy" not be sufficient? i wonder why they didn't add "hoax" "not a hoax?" and "Octomom" in there for good measure. Suppose i'll have to give credit where credit is due.

Secondly: Why are all three words capitalized? Do people not understand case sensitivity, and/or the lack thereof?

And third: Ugh, just ugh. Playin' right into their hands, you are.

lord, save us (from ourselves).

So, i'm looking up the ifs and the hows of popping popcorn with coconut oil (what? i'm trying not to buy butter so much) and while the majority of the information i found was informative and even exultative, somewhere along the way i stumbled upon this gem of a paragraph on the "about" page of amishcountrypopcorn.com:

When Brian was nine years old he came to realize that he was a sinner in the eyes of God, deserving Hell; but that Jesus Christ came to die for his sins, would forgive him, and save him. All he had to do was by faith repent of his sins and trust Christ to be his Savior. If you have any questions about going to heaven, serving God or popcorn...

...seriously? When you were nine, Brian? Was that around the same time that you started referring to yourself the same way that Bob Dole does? Interesting. And what's the deal with that sentence that trails off there, at the end? Should we contact you for some sage wisdom? Or are you implying that we're already screwed because we don't know the answers yet? Please advise.

Further:

The people who know Brian would tell you that he is known for the following two things: serving the Lord and selling popcorn. His main goal in life is telling people everywhere how to be saved.

Holy hell. Sorry, but i guess i'd rather get my "Lady Finger Popcorn" and "Buttery Topping" (thanks for not including an ingredient list on that, btw) from someone whose main goal in life was, well, producing quality popcorn products, not proselytizing. Sorry, chappie! i'm sure you're a nice fella, though, and surely Heaven-bound, which is all that matters, really, in the end.

Whew! Were you wondering whether there was any possible subject on this earth safe from my acerbic and inexhaustive negativity? Really, you should know better.

Calamity.

So the night before last, i finally crack open my copy of Anna Karenina (it's been five years, at least, since i decided to read it), and as i open it to the first page, my eyes alight upon a sentence near the end of the introduction, on the opposite page. A sentence that, with a particular three-word combination, gave away the entire ending of the book.

The next morning i woke up bleeding, like a stuck pig, if you'll pardon the expression. There just seems to be nothing more apt, although i have yet in my life to witness an actual stuck pig, which is something i am immensely grateful for.

Later that afternoon i found out that the flower shop is probably going under, and possibly soon. Which means i will be out of a job, and with little or no warning.

What on earth could happen next? Please, give it to me! i can take it!

So this morning there was a freak hailstorm here in P.B.! Utterly bizarre for a place where the weather is fair (and dreadfully dull) 98% of the time... i thoroughly enjoyed it from inside, although i think i may have heard the loudest peal of thunder in my entire life, which of course wreaked havoc on my rabbitish heart. Then the sky opened up for about ten or fifteen minutes, after which the clouds abruptly parted and heavenly sunshine poured down yet again. So basically all i got to experience of this "storm" once i left the house was the lingering aroma of warm, wet, concrete and an afternoon sky filled with dreamy, resplendent clouds. Hey- i ain't complainin'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Side note: i just realized the sheer genius of having Alanis Morissette play a role in a movie where she doesn't utter a single sound the entire time... There is something wondrous in that.

more "excruciating minutiae"

Why is the pope such an asshat? Is it because he wears an asshat? Seriously, what could possibly provoke someone into saying that condom use worsens the AIDS epidemic?

The Roman Catholic Church believes marital fidelity and sexual abstinence are the best way to prevent the spread of HIV.

Hey, wow, that's really... nice. i'm glad that you "believe" that, i really am. But um, try telling that to someone whose spouse cheated on them and then gave them HIV because they didn't "believe" in using condoms. They're just following your rules, right? Your friendly and helpful suggestions? For getting into "Heaven" maybe?

How about we all stop worrying about the "next" fucking "life" and concentrate on this one, howsabout that for a change?

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Unrelated: i made lemon meringue pie tonight. After a spectacular crust failure, i got back on track and am hoping it will be delicious. Certainly looks and smells divine... i bucked tradition and used brown sugar instead of white, added vanilla bean to the filling AND the meringue, and added some ground almonds to the crust. But Will It Float? i'll keep you all posted (because i'm sure you are just dying to know...)

Related to the Unrelated: i am hitting brick walls on the suicide-hotline volunteering angle. Hm. Need to keep looking. Especially now i have more fodder for my cannon: Making Pie. Also, Eating Pie. If someone tells me that they just can't go on, i'll say: but have you tried making lemon meringue pie before? smelled the fresh smell of a lemon on your hands you've sliced into it and squeezed it dry? Separated eggs while mulling over the spectacle of life? joined the offerings of cow teats and threshed-and-pounded grain into a flaky crust? carefully measured in the sugar and salt, stirred with a tool over a primitive flame and then baked the whole thing until your kitchen smells dreamy? mehtinks that if you were gazing upon the fragrant, browned peaks of meringue and salivating at the mere thought of all that underlying tartness, you'd be okay. at least for the nonce.

and the nonce is really all we have, isn't it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me and my rhythm box

So one of the (few and far between?) great things about San Diego is, interestingly enough, the radio stations. Perhaps it is the proximity to L.A., but the main radio stations down here are not complete and total crap! They have a propensity towards '90s grunge (Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Bush etc.), which just takes me right back to high school. They don't cut off the freaking songs or talk over the intros, and the local music hour is not something that makes you want to run out and buy earplugs. The station i'm speaking of mainly is FM 94.9, KBZT.

Weekday nights from 10:00 at night to 2:00 in the morning, they have Big Sonic Chill (please come back, Midori, we miss your tiny voice), which is just what it sounds like to you, only probably better. A good 85-90% of the songs are totally enjoyable, plus you get to make fun of their self-advertising mini-spots: "Carnal... kinky.... salacious." –Hilarious! But they definitely play the goods: Boards of Canada, Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Air, Portishead, Cat Power, Maps, et al. Good for Nat, since those are the hours when he is usually trying to get all the studying done that he'd put off all day/week. Very chill indeed.

But the best part, the crowning glory, is Swami. If you are like us, and not going anywhere on a Saturday night (don't front, you know you stay at home too!), don't miss this rockin', swingin' program. Swami plays the oldies but goodies, the kind of songs that would actually be playing on the stereo of the Coolest Party Ever, and probably only on vinyl. Everyone would be smiling, and actually dancing, there would be tiki torches out back by the pool, where the men would be in porkpie hats and rolled-up jeans and the ladies would be in vintage swimsuits and have painted toenails. Someone would hand you a Tom Collins, and you would go and have a limbo in the rumpus room... He plays lots of '50s and '60s stuff, originals of songs you didn't even know were covers ("Love Buzz" is a prime example, even though i still think Nirvana's version is much sexier), surf guitar jams, old R & B, the occasional punk anthem, jump-n-jive, doo-wop, you name it. Seriously, try and stop your body from moving when you listen to Swami. Go on, try it!

::waits patiently::

Yeah, see–you can't. Let all the children boogie.


Also worth noting:
The other night, as we were fleeing along the bandwidth from some Feist song or another, we stumbled onto something great: the 11th Hour program on 105.3. Listening to Apoptygma Berzerk ("Nonstop Violence"!), Siouxsie, Bauhuas and Sisters of Mercy all in one fell swoop brought us right back to everything i loved (the eyeliner, the Amaretto sours, the music) and hated (the clubs, the clothing, the 'tudes) about the goth/industrial scene from back in the day. it was like i was twenty again. You could practically smell the clove cigarette smoke wafting from the speakers...

Now the only thing we have to do is figure out how to pull the plug on the Sunday morning Bob Marley-fest they got goin' on every week on 94.9... EVERY WEEK! Seriously, i have had to start training myself to set the alarm to "buzz" instead of "radio" on Saturday nights so that i don't have to wake up to "Buffalo Soldier" or some extended bootleg version of "I Shot the Sherriff". Ugggghhhh. No offense, but the only 2 Bob Marley songs i can handle are "Natty Dread" (for obvious reasons) and "Could You Be Loved". Beyond that, i think i've heard enough for the rest of my life, thank you. Sorry to all the Marley-o-philes out there. i know you love him; i know he's great. But if there's one thing i have had enough of in San Diego, it is Bob freakin' Marley. Oh! and Sublime, but don't even get me started on that one. ::shudder::

p.s.) This is all just personal opinion, obviously. Nothing i say has any merit, so feel free to write it all off as dreck, and carry on!

Boo, hiss.

Wow, i am so mad right now.

Someone sent me a "message" on Yelp, which basically poked fun at a shitty situation i had recently at a local photography shop. i didn't know that making an 8x10 print would result in the picture (from the negative) being cropped. So sue me. i never said i was a member of MENSA, okay? Nor am i a professional photographer. It just simply didn't occur to me that this would happen; i had never done it before, and i was rushing. The print in question was to be a christmas gift for my dad, so it was also kind of important to me.

When i went to get it re-done, they were totally haughty, and alluded that it was my "fault", or that i had mis-communicated or something. But the thing was: i wasn't trying to lay any blame. i went in there practically with my tail between my legs because i hate having to point out a problem with anything, ever. All i wanted was for them to re-do it, and they didn't offer to once. (i would have paid, obviously!) They brusquely offered me my money back and didn't explain any of the process to me. So i took the refund and high-tailed it, vowing never to return.
(For those of you that have heard this story before, my apologies.)

So the "message" i received on Yelp was this smug little nugget:

"I had to laugh at your review of [ ]. You show me a way to make an 8x10 print of something originally in a 2x3 format without stretching it or cropping it and I'll buy you dinner every night for a year! Not their fault. Think before you review and look foolish. I think offering you a refund was more than fair!"

Uhhhh, yeah. Message received, dude. You might as well lock arms with the employees, point at me and laugh. Seriously, is this how you spend your time? Making other people feel stupid? What a gem you are, sir, truly. Can't wait to meet you some day, then we can talk about how much better we are than everyone else! It'll be great to make fun of those who don't possess the same specialized knowledge that we do. Yay for us!

So i sent him a hot-headed reply, probably not the wisest thing to do. But hey, i was bristling. This episode already embarrassed me, and to then have someone treat me like we're back in 4th grade, after the fact, was just too much. As i pointed out, nowhere did i say it was "their fault"- i was merely upset at the level of arrogance and indifference i noticed among the staff there. And judging from some of the other reviews, i am not alone in this view.

Oh well. Guess we can't all be perfect, and this guy's message finally made me realize that. Everything seems so much clearer now, now that i know i am sub-par. "Think before you review and look foolish"? Wow. Yes, sir. Aye aye, Cap'n. Duly noted, motherfucker. How about this one: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all"?

(although, to be fair, my review of the shop wasn't exactly nice, but that's not the point, dammit!)



Alrighty, that's enough of that. This is such old news. Time for heather to simmer down a little. Time for a bike ride, fast-like, while listening loudly to something appropriately angsty or even just angry: maybe a little Adam Ant, or Bauhaus, or some old PJ Harvey. Possibly even Elastica, Faith No More, Fugazi? ::mosies away making a playlist::

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In other news: Some excerpts from an interview with Andrew Bird that i found:

"I've always been obsessed with moss and moose's horns. The number eight, the sort of roundness of the number eight," he says.

and

"I think of like, when I was a kid, and I would get my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and throw myself down in a pile of mulch or something and go in there and pretend that I was microscopic," Bird says. "I wanted to capture that kind of woody, mossy, decaying kind of sound."

::sigh::

Why couldn't the world have just revolved a little differently, and he and i could be dear, dear friends?

Dear Airport Bathrooms:

Can you get your shit together, please? No pun intended?

When i put the seat cover on the seat, usually i unbutton my pants before i sit down to piss, so how about not flushing before i even get my cheeks on the seat, thereby taking the damn cover down with you?! It took me five minutes to rip that thing in the right places without reducing it to shreds, for fuck's sake. And while we're on the subject of flushing: how about not doing that while i'm still actively using the damn toilet, thereby spraying my ass with toilet water? Yeah, that'd be tops, thanks. Peachy keen.

As for the sink area: If you're going to have Automatic-Sensor Everything, can you make sure it actually works, please? When i put my hands under the soap dispenser, nothing comes out. But when i move my hands away from the soap dispenser, a pathetic little squirt of white soap (note to phallic automatic soap-dispenser liquid soap companies: Pick a different color, i implore you.) falls down onto the counter. Great, now i actually have to clean up after a robot. This is just not okay.

So hey- thanks for listening, stay super sweet and have a great summer!

p.s.) Some city workers found the remains of a mammoth in downtown San Diego, while excavating some earth to build the foundation for a new multi-million dollar law school. This makes me sad because i would rather be living in the time of the mammoths than in the time of things like "New Multi-Million Dollar Law Schools". Blah.... at least this find is one more chink in the creationists' armor. Sorry, guys, but we're sad for you because you're just lying to yourselves! It'll be okay, i promise.

apples to... apples?

See how great "faith"* is? It requires that human beings actually have to work at bridging the gaps it creates between, well, other human beings:

Obama said the office would also work to reach out overseas "to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world."

Hmmm. i love how complicated religious beliefs make human relations. Instead of simply a dialogue on a basic human level, we have to translate, soft-step, and by gum make sure not to offend anyone. Does this sound like something anyone needs? Not to me.
And then there's this:

Before signing the order at the White House, Obama told the annual National Prayer Breakfast that the program would not show favoritism to any religious group and would adhere to a strict separation of church and state.

Um, i'm sorry, isn't it a little late for that? Replace the word "program" in that sentence with "government-funded religious kow-towing" and you have hypocrisy, or at least a little blindness, and for sure a lot of glossing over.

If this money was simply being spent on secular community-enrichment programs, perhaps we could actually begin the slow shift away from the divisiveness and fervor that has caused such a mess in this country (and others) for so much of our history. Are we really to believe that there is such a need for faith-based organized outreach? If a program was non-denominational, would those struggling communities who were adamantly pious turn up their noses at the help? i would really like to think not, and so the question becomes: Is this another form of pandering? Is the administration (and believe me, i know Obama is not the first to do this, but i will say that i am somewhat more surprised by it, by him) simply glad-handing a specific population of supporters who may be fickle, especially when it comes to their God-given rights/belief system?

i am just saying: why are we paying people, on the government level, to shake hands with any religious order, i don't care which one? This honestly makes no sense. Yes, i am agnostic. Yes, i do believe that a lot of religions contain good lessons to be learned form their beliefs, and good, honest practices being used by people, every day. However. This just seems a little bit like... dare i say, special treatment? Do they need to be hand-held and patted on the head because of some special significance? Is a Christian community center any more in need (of money, volunteer work, supplies, etc.) than a secular one? i really just don't get it. Someone, please clarify.

Also, sorry for using so many hand references. Toodles.

*the version of the word "faith" i use here is the one which is specific as being heavily burdened with saccharine religious connotations.