Blah Blah Blah

There’s a website called That Can Be My Next Tweet that will predict what some of your next tweets will be on Twitter.  These tweets generally make no sense, but some of them are hysterically funny or just downright weird.  If you follow me on Twitter, you know I just tweet about my blog posts and chat with people there.  If you were to follow me in this imaginary Twitter, here’s the sort of stuff I’d say.

Whistlers should be SO much for a heartbeat!
Go with him.
Ok, if Ambien was in FurrySpace. That story is WAY WAY hotter.
Come to do memes on 6″ x 11″ glossy cardstock. Thanks!
Go with dreams… My couch is freakier to hell.
I’m sure you’re subscribing to stay way more Spike. And be a heartbeat!
Baba Ganoush: I would be REALLY funny. Same old, same issues I can stalk him on 7″ x 4″ x 4″ glossy.
Would you collating paper!
We need to a couple of my arm.
Ok, if Ambien was comparing them for the little PayPal Donate button over on the way I still do sci-fi or!
I accepted your own.
OMG, I would set up the first holiday was doing in the face. With a small snake for sending that read?
I’d forget. Once a bottle of us are some stories on a bad, bad place. Ah, you’re evil…
Funny vid tomorrow, since it keeps your invite on.
If I accepted your closet? Wow.
Our office likes to be the Zip discs. I’ve got all medically.

Yep, That Can Be Your Next Tweet definitely makes me sound crazier than I actually am.  Cool.

Filed by Kelly at 10:56 am under Babble
2 Comments

While driving around town, I often see cars with bumper stickers that read, “Don’t blame me, I voted for <one of the people who didn’t win the election>.”

And wouldn’t you know it… I have some thoughts on that.

First: Really?  Do you really drive all over town assuming that the people in traffic around you are holding you responsible for whatever ills they perceive are happening in society?  You do?  I have a word for you: therapy.

Second: Are you driving around town holding all the people in traffic around you responsible for all the ills you perceive are happening in society?  Because, again, I have a word for you: therapy.

Third: Go put a bumper sticker on your car that will make people in traffic around you smile and have a better day.  A joke, a pun, a picture of Buffy staking Edward… whatever.  Consider it part of your therapy.

Filed by Kelly at 8:00 am under Babble
Comments Off

Entitled: A Day in the Life and Times of the Common Fruit Fly and Household Gnat Including the Relationship Between the Yellow Fuzzy Bumblebee and the Shiny Black Multi-legged Waterbug with a Dissertation on the Sex Life of the Wood- and Varnish-Eating Termite (or How to Fold a Newspaper While Tying Your Shoes in the Sauna of a Wellknown Resort Prior to Major Surgery Entailing Removal of the Entire Colon and Spinal Column)

This little ditty is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  That is not to say they are in any way equal to the female of the species, for they are, in fact, far inferior.  Nevertheless, they serve their purpose.  For example, they can be very adequate bedwarmers.  On the other hand, often they will become surly and uncontrollable for no apparent reason.  This can usually be remedied by threatening to abandon them in the nearest dark alley in which large grey rats lurk in small dirty dustbins, waiting to prey upon the living flesh of unwary wanderers and other unfortunate creatures.

It was in the month of May (the very merry month of May to be precise) in an era unknown to the reader (and the writer, also, for that matter) in a large open area commonly known at the time as a park.  In said park, in said month of merry May, as I nimbly and lightly strolled past thickets, pear trees, rose bushes, geraniums, snapdragons, children swimming in the creek, mothers hoping they will drown, basket weavers twiddling their thumbs and toes, nice young men in their clean white coats, muggers, rapists, murderers, flashers, high school dropouts, greasers, thugs and other unsavory characters, I was taken by surprise (that is to say, one of the above mentioned unsavory characters approached my person and spoke limericks and Polish jokes and bad puns in a low and menacing whisper) by a pair (after closer inspection I discovered that the above mentioned unsavory character was, in fact, two unsavory characters) of Chinese (how they got past the Self Proclaimed Red Chinese Haters Anonymous Private Pizza Party and Beer Bash that was being held at the front gates to ward off all persons of, or suspected of being of, Chinese descent, I’ll never learn) spies (perhaps this is how they got past the Self Proclaimed Red Chinese Haters Anonymous Private Pizza Party and Beer Bash, as they looked more like overcooked chickens, or at the very least overcooked linguine, than Chinese spies, but on the other hand, perhaps this is how Chinese spies are supposed to look) as I (and I alone, for no one had bothered to offer to accompany me through this said park for protection, as this was, and still is, none other than the infamous Central Park of New York City in the North American Confederate of Old Home Terra) was strolling (well, to be honest with you, I was swimming, but that would take us into a whole different ditty) through the park (and I was really swimming down the street, but who’s counting?) one day (it was actually the middle of the night, but that didn’t fit with the music and/or tune of the original ditty that this originally was a parody of).

For Maria, who always said, “As I was swimming down the street one day in the merry, merry month of May, I was taken by surprise by a pair of Chinese spies as I was swimming down the street one day.”

[Note: This was written a million years ago, when I was possibly either a sophomore or junior in high school. I was definitely in high school, and I was definitely as wacky then as I am now.]

Filed by Kelly at 8:00 am under Babble
Comments Off

No one ever called me back from Microsoft.  On Tuesday, I called them again.  I actually stopped writing down their names because, really, what was the point?  So the person I spoke with on Tuesday wouldn’t let me talk to a senior engineer.  Apparently, that sort of thing needs to be scheduled.  Right.  And apparently someone had been trying to contact me by email and I wasn’t responding.  Could that be because you people at the Microsoft call center couldn’t write down my email address correctly?  And that whomever was supposedly contacting me by email was not actually contacting me?  Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason.  So, still on Tuesday here, I requested the email address of the senior technician.  After all, if I send her/him an email, then s/he will have my email address.  That makes sense.  I repeated the email address back to the call center employee twice, so I knew I had the right email address.

Oh, except that I didn’t.  When I sent the email off, it bounced back with a message saying that the email address didn’t exist.  WTF?  So, yet again on Tuesday, I called the call center.  I don’t know why they want to go through all the gory details of the ticket each and every time I call.  This conversation went something like this:

“I just need the senior technician’s email address.”

“But, ma’am, I don’t have that information.”

“Ok, just transfer me to the technical team so they can give me that information.”

“But I need to know why you are calling tonight.”

“You have my case number, and I’m calling to get an email address.”

“But, ma’am, I need to know which team that is.”

“Well, you have my case number.  I’ll wait a moment while you read the file.”

I don’t think he actually read the file, but he did transfer me to the technical team.  I finally got a technician who read my file and gave me the correct email address for the senior technician.  (And this is why I should be talking to customer support people who speak the same dialect as I do: when you say VEE and I hear THREE, then I repeat back THREE to you twice and you hear VEE, this does not make for a very happy customer service experience.)  I resent the email (which never bounced back), requesting that the senior engineer call me at 6pm the following evening.

Now, despite the fact that I was feeling extremely unwell on Wednesday, I sat by my phone and computer from 6pm until 7pm without a call from anyone.  Since I was pretty sure any further sitting up would cause me to vomit, I headed back to sleep for another 12 hours.  On Thursday, I sent another email to the senior engineer requesting a call for Friday at 6pm.

Now, on Friday, I received an email asking me to rate the service I had received from Microsoft… seeing as they had closed my ticket.  Again… WTF??  So, yes, I filled out that survey.  I gave Microsoft the lowest possible rating in every category.  Ah, if only I could have used negative numbers!  They wanted to know how they could make Microsoft support better.  Well, gee.  How about if you hire people who can actually help?  That would be swell.

Instead of any kind of fun on Friday night, I gave Microsoft yet another call.  I bullied my way past the gatekeeper.  I refused to speak to the technical support person.  I only wanted to speak to a manager.  From this point, in all fairness, my association with Microsoft improved ever so slightly.  Rochelle was very accommodating.  Since I’d been waiting for a call back from a senior engineer since Sunday, I told her I really didn’t want to have to wait another two or three days for a senior engineer to get around to contacting me.  In fact, I’d really prefer if she would get one on the line right away.  It wasn’t right away, but she did call me back in about 15 minutes.

I then proceeded to spend the next three hours on the phone with Anthony.  After about two hours, the phone lost its charge and cut us off, but he called me right back.  He tried all manner of things — again, in a spirit of full disclosure, some things I would not have thought to try.  Finally, he decided to conference in a technician from Dell Support.  After about 15 minutes, Mark at Dell found one of their knowledge base articles that stated that there’s some peculiarity with the Vista installation on my specific model of laptop and that the only way to install Windows 7 is to perform a custom (i.e., clean) install.

As disappointing as this was, Anthony was good enough to provide me with the phone number for Microsoft’s “Money Back Guarantee Team” who, according to him, would be happy to assist me in getting a full refund for the software.  Of course, I have to wait until Monday for that.

Filed by Kelly at 8:11 am under Babble
Comments Off

I found a fantastic article by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.  It made me smile and it almost made me want to run down to the local Unitarian Universalist church to join up.  Since I went to UU churches in Chicago (a shout out to Second Unitarian in New Town!) and Denver (went to all of the UU churches in Denver, Jefferson and Boulder counties, and never could decide which was my favorite), the article brought back some great memories.  I’d reprint the whole thing here, except, you know, that’s wrong.  So quick, go read the article, and come back.

Was that great, or what?  I really think I’m going to go join the Unitarian Jihad.  In fact, my new Jihadist name is Sister Flaming Shuriken of Acceptance. If you’d like to join us, you can get your own Unitarian Jihadist name from the Naming Committee.  I have to go make some flower arrangements now.  And then I will probably bake some cookies.

Filed by Kelly at 6:22 am under Babble
Comments Off

I’ve been watching Psych with the Offspring the past few weeks.  I had watched maybe a half dozen episodes of the first season when it first aired, and then stopped watching it… probably for some silly reason like I needed to go to sleep early.  But I had a coupon from Amazon for a Video On Demand offering, so I bought the first season of Psych.  We’ve been watching it on the internet-capable Blu-Ray player Santa brought us for Christmas.

So here’s what I don’t get: why the hell did I stop watching Psych in the first place?  It’s freaking hilarious!  Shawn and Gus crack me up, and at least half of the time so does Lassiter.  We’re done with season one, on to season two.  We’re going to watch another three or four episodes tomorrow night, so leave us alone.

Filed by Kelly at 6:33 am under Babble
Comments Off

There are some people who sing with such purity and emotion that their voices reach right into my heart and squeeze.  k.d. lang is one of them.  Her performance at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics is testament to her astounding skill.  When I read the words to Hallelujah, I thought, “Meh, ok, might be a nice song… but might not.”  But while listening to k.d.’s rendition, I had tears streaming down my face.  That’s not a nice song, that’s a shatter your heart into a million little pieces with the longing of it all kind of song.  She did the same darn thing to me the first time I heard her singing Crying, too.

I think I’m going to have to dig out all my k.d. lang CDs today.

Filed by Kelly at 8:50 am under Babble
Comments Off

According to the decidedly bizarre people at Westboro Baptist Church, God pretty much hates everything and everyone… including the good ol’ U. S. of A.

This brings all manner of thoughts right to the forefront of my mind, causing a collision that makes it difficult to write about any one thing.  But I’ll work on separating it all out.

First, can you say “hubris”?  Wow.  Going with the assumption that the Entity Known As God is greater than anything a mere mortal could comprehend with the three-pound (give or take) lump of goo in our heads, how could a mere mortal say that he or she knows anything about the mind of said Entity?  On a tangent to that, how do we even know whether or not something godlike even has emotions?  The honest answer is, “We don’t.”  Also tangentially, it would appear that mere mortals have a fondness for anthropomorphizing, well, everything, really.  So the Entity Known As God has emotions because we mere mortals have emotions.

I’m not arguing for or against the existence of the Entity Known As God, by the way.  But all mythology makes the Entities Known As Gods look and act and think and feel an awful lot like the people who are writing the stories about the ENAG.  I’m just saying that we mere mortals are kind of arrogant in thinking we might know what the ENAG is or is not thinking or feeling.

Next, I think I’ve figured out those bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church.  Since they say that God hates America, they themselves must be anti-American, and not even Americans at all.  But I don’t think ENAG cares much about arbitrary geopolitical borders on this, or any other, planet.  Kind of like how I don’t care what the ants in the colonies are doing under my lawn… as long as they don’t put their little piles of sand in my driveway, I won’t run them over.

And then there, “God hates…”  Wait.  What?  No.  Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.  (Catholic grade school… give me a break.)  Does that mean that Jesus isn’t God?  Well, some people believe that.  But I thought Christians believed that Jesus is God.  So that means that the bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church aren’t Christians.  Ah!  Now we’re getting somewhere.  Now it all makes sense!

Being the happy science fiction loving nerd that I am, my theory about the bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church is that they’re aliens from another planet (atheists, of course) that have come here to sow negativity and dissent so we mere mortals are ripe pickings for their evil overlords who will show up here one of these days to harvest the lumps of goo in our heads as a gourmet appetizers.  And then they’ll build a galactic bypass.

Filed by Kelly at 3:10 pm under Babble
Comments Off

I had my quarterly checkup with my fibro doc this week.  He’s not one of my insurance company’s providers, so I have to pay for everything out-of-pocket.  He’s got me taking one prescription that I get from a compounding pharmacy.  All the other supplements, I get from him.  Normally, my office visits run close to $500 every three months.  Thank goodness I can afford it!  And thank goodness for my Health Savings Plan, so the cost of visiting him is from pre-tax dollars (every little bit of savings helps).

This time around, I got a couple of new prescriptions… both generics, both covered by my insurance, and both available at the pharmacy around the corner.  One is for pain, the other to help me sleep.  We’ll see how that goes.  I also need to get some blood drawn for my semi-annual blood tests.  Looks like he added about eight extra tests, so I’m hoping to have some blood left to donate to the Red Cross.  My weight stayed the same, which pleased me because I haven’t had the energy to exercise and pleased the doc because he seems to think “the holidays” are a mad food fest for everyone.

Since the last appointment, I had a slight decrease in severe-pain days, but an increase in absolutely-no-energy days.  The lack of energy is typical for this time of year, and is exacerbated by lack of sleep.  Since the last pain medication made me puke all day, I’m hoping this one will be better and knock the severe-pain days down to zero.  The last sleeping medication made me wake up feeling like I was extremely hung over, and I’m also hoping for better results from this one.  As I’ve said before, good sleep is something I yearn for.  I’m pretty sure getting sound sleep every night (or at least most nights) will go a long way towards alleviating the feelings of hostility I feel towards the world.  I know I would appreciate that, as would my family, friends and coworkers.

Oooh, and maybe if I get more energy, I’ll be able to exercise again.  I really do feel better when I spend 30 to 40 minutes on the treadmill in the morning!

Filed by Kelly at 4:53 pm under Babble
Comments Off

I didn’t do much over the Christmas break… which was the whole point, really.  I managed to finish reading six books, but didn’t manage to post about any of them on my book blog.  I watched some ER, some Angel, some Bones, some Law & Order: CI, as well as a few movies.  I got the new Blu-ray player hooked up, but had to run a cable from the player to the router because the wireless bridge didn’t work consistently.  The cable snaking across two rooms is pretty annoying, but I can watch my Netflix Play Now movies on the TV.  That’s a good thing because the recliner is more comfortable than my desk chair.

I made my Secret Family Recipe sloppy joes (vegetarian style) for Christmas dinner and the whole family went out to dinner to a new-ish local restaurant with the Spousal Unit’s stepmom a few days after Christmas.  Jolly good fun!

I mentioned the books I read, but I should point out I’m a complete book nerd.  I printed out labels for about 250 books, attached them to the spines of the appropriate books, and shelved said books in Dewey Decimal order.  (I picked Dewey over Library of Congress numbering because my first job was in a library, and we didn’t have any of that crazy LoC stuff at the time.  It’s nostalgia, pure and simple.)  I have another bookcase full of books that I need to put in my most excellent Collectorz book database so I can label them, too.  I do so love being a complete geek.

I had a couple of other things on my To Do list, but… meh.  Whatever.  I relaxed a lot.  And that was the whole point.

Filed by Kelly at 6:19 am under Babble
2 Comments