Gunter glieben glauchen globen

Sister K has acquired a foreign exchange student from Germany, and he has already annexed her Norwegian heart.

Twitting away

After much thought, I have decided to not only resume Twitter, but to actually follow That Woman's posts. Why, you ask? How, you query? What in holy hell are you doing, you scream?

Well, for the entertainment factor, of course. I subscribed to her feed and have found she has only twitted thrice. Here, for you enjoyment, are those selfsame entries:

Posted: 2/15/09: Packing for the Seychelles!
Posted: 2/22/09: Leaving Wednesday!
Posted 2/23/08: Tired of the rain and ready for the sun.. very soon!

How intriguing and clever! I cannot wait to read more of her exploits.

---

I have also decided to Twitter again. For those of you who follow me, I must warn you that I won't be saying anything interesting. Here's my plan: I will pick the most boring things or phrases that come to mind-- or maybe good movie quotes or references-- translate them to Esperanto, then post them. Here is my first entry:

ĉirkaŭiris kaj distribu sukeraĵo(j). Mi vidas vin manĝis unu, Mi est-as?

Which translates into

Walked around and distributed candy. I see you ate one, am I?

Some may recognize that last phrase as being the inscrutable license plate of Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock. I look forward to supplying you with both her entries and mine.

Se7en

I guess I've been tagged to write up seven things no one knows about me.

Well, you asked:

1. I invented the word "rummage".

2. In 1973 I had a choice between quarterbacking for the New York mets or continuing my life as a three year old. I chose the latter, but was fired right about the time I turned four.

3. My favorite color is gunmetal jones.

4. I look very much like Paul Lynde when I'm not wearing make up.

5. I really don't need any badges, stinking or no.

6. Some people don't think there is a six. Well, there is.

7. I often dress my cats in hand knitted vests, which is criminal. They much prefer capes.

If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged.

Weather update

Portland received 8 inches of snow on Saturday. To illustrate, I took pictures throughout the evening. Now, everyone knows the best way to gauge a storm is by the chicken index.

Below is a slideshow of my own backyard chicken index.

Fuck. Yeah.

My region 2 DVDs came today, and so I dived into the installation of the new dual-region DVD player. I cleaned out the fust from behind the TV and pulled out the old player. Installed the new one without any pain and followed the instructions posted on the Amazon page.

I prayed a little prayer to the Great Emu in the Sky and put in the DVD.

Fuck. Yeah. I hope we're snowed in for the rest of the week. We've got BRITISH COMEDY to watch.

I'm now a major tributary of The Amazon

I just spent a lot of money on Amazon. I guess it was a bad idea to take that handful of cheap- vicodin-substitute right before turning on the laptop.

It's K's fault, you see. I stopped by her office to hand her socks or something (it's part of some charity thing, and yes, I am embellishing just a little, as the socks handoff was actually yesterday, but shut up), and she told me about a DVD player she just ordered that plays DVDs formatted in either region 1 or 2. This meant she could order that elusive Eddie Izzard DVD only available in Region 2 format. Nice.

So, I had her send me a link, as there are a few British comedy DVDs that we would very much like to have. And soon we will have all two hundred dollars worth of that comedy.

Don't look at me like that. I could have spent much, much more. I only took a handful of pills, not the entire bottle. I've got standards, you know.

I can't do that

So far I've spent my whole weekend playing with my new laptop. I had built my dream laptop about a million times on the Dell website, they kept raising the limit on my credit, how could I resist? Seriously: I'm only human you know.

So a couple weeks ago I built another one, but this time I actually hit checkout. Oops!

In preparation for the impending laptopery I decided to wire the house with wireless. I rang up Qwest and requested said wireless. Now, call me naive, but I thought I had to talk to sales to get that set up. He asked if I had a modem already, and I said yeah-- and it was one that had wireless built in.

He actually said, "Then why are you calling?"

Well, pardon me for thinking I needed to tell billing or get some switch hit or something. The tech guy kind of snottily said he'd get me a tech person who could get me all set up. I was patched though to someone who was clearly used to dealing with simpletons and attorneys. Redundant much? Yes, I am. Anyway, to get started, he told me, I needed to open Internet Explorer, "the blue 'E' on your desktop".

I sympathized. I let him lead me through all the steps without once letting him know I kinda knew what I was doing. At least, I knew how to open IE.

My laptop arrived on Wednesday, which could not have been a better time. I got it at about 9:00 AM and spent very little time working for the rest of the day. My laptop is blue and pretty and has Vista, which I thought I was prepared for, but I'm not. I still get lost really easily, but that just makes it funner.



So now I can site in the big blue chair downstairs, pissing off the cats because there's no lap left for them, while The Husband is upstairs getting lost in the Wikipedia. In fact, Tbone just jumped over from the loveseat onto the blue chair and, once she saw my lap was not empty and my fingers not available for scritching.

I'm sorry this story isn't all that exciting. As an apology, please accept this clip from Amazing Race.

Hee, I say, Hee!!!!!!!

Diabolique

Don't recognize the artwork? That's Simon's cat.

Yesterday I discovered that my cat can turn on our electric matress pad.

Also? I haven't talked about Wordstock yet. It was at the Portland Convention Center-- also home of the Portland Brew Festival-- and was basically a bunch of tables stacked with books from small and specialty publishers. There were speakers that most of us have never heard of before, and it didn't seem that crowded. I tried my hardest not to buy any books.

And here are the fruits of my FAIL:

The Night of your Life. It's a book of dreams collected and illustrated by Jesse Reklaw. I got him to sign it. He asked what I had dreamed the night before, and my mind just went blank. So, he drew a picture of me with an empty thought balloon. That's so me-- how did he know?

Maintenance. A comic book written by Jim Massey (who also write the Tek Jansen comic books) and illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez. I'm not a comic book person, so why did I buy three issues? One word: Stephen Colbert. I want to support him any way I can.

But the main reason I went to Wordstock was to hear John Hodgman, whom I love just as much as Colbert, Jon Stewart and John Oliver. We'd seen him before, but since then he's come out with a new book and I really wanted to hear him reading from it.


The husband even made him laugh with his hoodie touting the Muncie Fruit Jars.

My Pantsmakers hoodie just confused him.

The real "game changer"

YAY - Our first African American president.
eta and also? Kinda hawt.
BOO - California enshrines discrimination.
YAY - Liddy Dole out on her ass.
BOO - Kay Hagan still a religious discriminator.
YAY - Virgina went Blue.
eta: YAY - Merkley in for Oregon.

But seriously, the biggest game changer of the night? I put the winter bedclothes on the bed.

No, really. It's got:

a featherbed; then
an electric matress pad; followed by
a flannel fitted sheet; and then
a flannel top sheet; and also
cotton blanket number one; right after that
down comforter number one; in addition to
cotton blanket number two; not to mention
down comforter number two; and finally
a cotton bedspread.

Seriously, it's like six feet tall.

I now have a favorite cephalopod

An octopus in a Coburg, Germany aqaurium gets frisky.

"We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out a the 2000 Watt spot light above him with a carefully directed jet of water."

"Otto is constantly craving for attention and always comes up with new stunts so we have realised we will have to keep more careful eye on him - and also perhaps give him a few more toys to play with.

"Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants."

Aw, he's bored. More hermit crabs, stat!

Safeway sells crack

There exists in my sister's cookbook a recipe for what she calls "crack cookies". They are small sugar cookies with a taste that compels you to eat more of them. The secret, apparently, is cream of tartar.

Well, sorry K, I've found the real crack cookies: Mother's Iced Lemonade cookies.

Unlike the picture above, our local grocery establishments only carry the mini-crack cookie bags. This, like a big-8 in a glad bag, just makes them easier to traffic from kitchen to TV room. They are small enough to ferret away in your hoodie pocket or under your sweater vest, to be eaten in the bathroom, in the dark, after sweetly delivering two small circles of tart citrus crunch & munch to your simple and ignorant husband. Oh, there is so much they don't know.

But the crack cookie is a hard mistress. Once the bag is opened, the drive to go all Cookie Monster is impossible to restrain. In five minutes, you come to; a shredded bag of purple and red at your feet, crumbs stuck to your chin, mingling with the cat fust on your sweatshirt and hanging from your hair. And you will start to cry.

You can't say I didn't warn you.

Best friends

"JEERO WANTS TO HANG OUT WITH YOU and Domo. WHY? HE NEEDS YOU and Domo. JEERO THINKS LIFE IS SO COMPLICATED, SO HE SOMETIMES GOES TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY TO RESEARCH THINGS. YOU MAY THINKS HE IS SMART. WELL HE'S NOT. WHAT TIME IS IT? JEERO HAS NO IDEA. HOW DO YOU GET HERE FROM THERE? DON'T ASK. WHERE'S DOMO? JEERO DOESN'T KNOW! JEERO JUST WANTS TO SIT ON THE COUCH WITH YOU AND EAT SOME SNACKS. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? JEERO DOESN'T KNOW MUCH, BUT HE DOES KNOW THAT IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO CANCEL YOUR PLANS AND HANG OUT WITH THE UGLYDOLLS."

We is bloggist

These past few weeks have been pretty tiring, what with all the anger. I've spent so much times obsessing about how stupid the work situation is that I've neglected to bore you with all the other stuff that's happening. Or not happening.

I am currently in Seattle for a week of training secretaries and attorneys to do things they'll never do. That's OK - I like being out of the office right now. I may get myself in trouble, though, since a few office Seattleans have been asking me about the recent hires and fires and I haven't exactly been toe-ing the upbeat line.

Like I ever do anyway.

But I have been doing other things in the past couple weeks. We went to see We Are Scientists about two weeks ago, and they were great. I wish I had done more research on them (besides listening to them), since the place we saw them was small and they were very approachable. And yet, I did not approach. Had I watched their videos or read their hilarious site I would have said something.

Or not. I tend to get giggly and stupid when I'm talking to a famous person*, so maybe it's for the best. They're not really big here, but they are huge in Europe (well, big enough to open for REM there). That'd be enough to turn me into a swooning teeny-bopper. It's for the best, then.

I bought a t-shirt at the gig, the one pictured above. I paid for it twice, because during the purchase the t-shirt lady was insisting I should get a small shirt when I assured her that no, due to my hulking shoulders and poor posture I really should get a medium. Not only did she win that argument (I was confused by something shiny, I think) but she insisted I hadn't paid-- when I totally had-- but I couldn't prove it. Harrumph.

Oh well, I guess it makes up for the fact that I downloaded their most recent album from what I am assured is a legal download site (I mean, it's right there in the name: these sounds are legal. They are legal sounds! Srsly!)

Well, that shirt has already paid for itself, if the currency we are talking about is cool points and attention from strangers. I had four people comment on my shirt, two of which were clerks at the local Borders Books. They each approached me, one asking "Can you please explain your shirt?"

I wish I had a better answer than "It's a band". If anyone has any better ideas to explain "I are scientists" I am totally listening (reading--whatever).

I overheard a couple people say "'I are scientists'. I don't get it." I would be interested to hear what they thought it might mean. Maybe this is a hipster Rorschach test; maybe it means all things to all people. What does it mean to me?

More attention. Yay!

===============

* I once had Garry Shandling come through my line when I was working as a cashier at a health food store in Santa Barbara. Here was my greeting:

"What brings you to Santa Barbara?" He replied, "The circus?"

Bleah.

Lookitme!

Just found out-- albeit a month late-- that I've been published in New York Magazine!

Wait, I should clarify: they quoted my entry on Clinton and linked to me on their commentary page from April 28. I don't think I got too many clickthroughs, to be honest, but if you're reading this and you're here because of that, then Hello, World!

Prove me wrong

NASA is run by supermarionators



from Thunderbirds.

A Parade of horribles

I keep starting entries about Canada, but I can't finish them. Instead, I have a few questions for you:

Do you get the Sunday Paper?

Does it carry Parade Magazine?

Have you read Walter Scott's Personality Parade?

If so, you may have noticed that the questions all seem to be written by either publicists or the functionally retarded. And leading that charge is the man with the answers, Walter Scott.

The following will prove to you that Walter Scott had better watch his back, because I am ready to write. That. Column.

Q: Marilu Henner may not have won The Celebrity Apprentice, but her high energy and good nature won me over. What's the secret of her vitality?

A: Marilu is on record as saying that she stays young and vibrant by eating a diet rich in fiber, vitamin C and the babies of the rich and powerful. I'm sure her diet will continue to keep her hydrated and healthy as she writes her follow-up to her latest best seller Wear Your Life Well.

Q: Are the women on CBS's Survivor required to wear skimpy clothing?

A: "Indeed they are," responded producer and host Jeff Probst, "You can't masturbate to dailies of starving contenstants wearing long johns." Be sure to keep that in mind when you watch the latest installments on CBS every Thursday at 8 PM. Who will be voted out next?!?

Q: I can't keep up with Rihanna's hairstyles. Why so many different looks?

A: Rihanna, fresh off her stunning performance at this year's AXE Body SprayTM Booty-tease with Jay-Z, tells us she is wanted in several states and is constantly on the move. "Also," her stylist Whizzah confided to us, "Rihanna has been looking for a sassy look she can use to invade Poland. We are working on her mustache next week."

Q: With so many young actresses making news for their bad behavior, would you single any out for their good deeds?

A: Ashley Simpson gives great head. Oh, was that not what you meant?

Q: I love PARADE's cover story on Mariah Carey, but I'm puzzled by the title of her new CD, E=MC2. Does it have something to do with Einstein?

A: You're fucking kidding me, right?

Poutine on the Ritz

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Don't blame me, I'm in Canada! I'll be back near Monday. Oh, and? If you're thinking of going Amazon shopping, you should consider getting there via that right hand margin over there-->. Am I a whore? Sure, but you were going shopping anyway, and don't you want my cats to eat tonight?

Evolution proved once and for all