Scientific Assistance Needed

My question is this: What are we going to do about Mother?

You know: as in, "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas." Now that Pluto doesn't count, what do we do about Mother? I mean, we could go to something like "My very educated mother just served us nougat," or "...noodles" or "...niblets" or "...nectarines", I suppose. I'm sure the conservatively-minded among the science-mnemonic-developing community will carry the day, and Mother will serve new generations some N-based foodstuff, instead of a superabundance of pizzas.

Personally, though, I think we need to get Mother out of the kitchen. After all, she's "very educated" and yet for years she's been pent up at home, churning out the pizzas. You have to think she's unhappy by now, at least a little bit. In fact, I'm in favor of leaving Mother out of the planet-memorization process entirely. Let her enjoy her golden years in peace, unsullied by the need to constantly remind ungrateful children that the fourth planet from the sun is Mars. Let her take watercolor classes, or tai-chi.

So: we need a new mnemonic.

"Most vulgar evildoers meet justice some unexpected night." (That should appeal to the axis-of-evil crowd, at least.) Or "Many vivid echoes make joyous songs under Newfoundland." (Meh. Too hippy-dippy.) You get the idea. We need something a little more forward-thinking than Mother, barefoot and pregnant despite that degree from Vassar.

C'mon, guys. Help me out. Free Mother!!!

I (Heart) Spammers

I love spammers because they are so innovatively repetitive. I was able to filter out a huge wad of garbage from my e-mail account every day by creating a filter for the word "oppsy", which they were using in place of "oopsy" in about every third go-to-my-porno-site mail.

Today? I got, if the subject lines are to be believed, offers for "new mi", "new du", "new la", and "new bu", along with "the nusoy" and "the gewiz". This is combined with the usual offers for "loww rates" and "penny st0cks" and "c1a11s" and the rest.

I was a little disappointed that Yahoo had decided all these things were spam; I was really hoping that "gewiz" offer was on the up-and-up. I could have used an extra gewiz.

Official Announcement

Ladies and gentlemen, it is now official: With the exception of Meerkat Manor (because they're fascinating) and Deadwood (because it RAWKS MY LAME ASS), my favoritemost TV show in the world is now officially Project Runway.

Having said that: I am SO MAD!!!!!!!

For those of you who aren't fans, I'll summarize: there are clothing designers, each week they are given a design challenge, and based on their success or failure within the parameters of that challenge, they either continue on, or they are "out". Actually, for most of the males, being "out" wouldn't be an entirely new experience, as there are reportedly only two hetero males (I know who one of the two is, but the jury's still out on the other) and so, stereotypically, things tend to get bitchy.

The remaining cast:

Angela: Inconsistent designer with an unfortunate love for little cloth poofy-things, which she calls "fleurchons" and with which she sprinkles her clothing liberally. Most people think she should be gone by now, and at least half the cast is annoyed by her to a greater or lesser degree.

Kayne: The gayest of the gay, and I love him. He's amazing, even if he did turn out the most fugtacular green-and-mylar dress in history last week. I even love him despite the fact that he's one of the bitchiest ones there....in fact, that's a big part of WHY I love him. With the exception of that one dress, I've loved his designs.

Michael: If this man is gay, then there is no god. He is an EXCELLENT designer, having won 2 challenges in succession, and besides that he is HOT. Probably my favorite designer this season.

Vincent: Oh. Goodness. Um....what to say about Vincent? The consensus among PR fans is that the editors are keeping him around for shock value/comedy/to see what happens when he snaps. A weird little man, with questionable design skills.

Uli: Nordic blonde lady with an accent. Solid designer, no drama, very nice. A sleeper, but I bet she makes final 3.

Robert: Kayne's foil and straight-man, though I use the term VERY loosely as he's the second-most-flamboyant guy there. Except, that is, for his designs, which have been roundly denounced as "boring", which is why I've liked most of them.

Laura: A very elegant, very funny and sarcastic mother of 5, whose specialty is understated and chic designs. I've liked most of her stuff but it's starting to seem a little too consistent. She's the best tailor there, however. Kayne and Robert can't stand her. Actually, almost none of the guys can stand her, and I'm not sure why.

Jeffrey: AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH SHUT UP JEFFREY!!!! :::pant pant pant::: Let me try that again. Jeffrey: HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE!!! :::snarl::: Okay, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to go with his bio from the site. Jeffrey YOU read it. I'm just disgusted, after this week.

The challenge usually involves models, who the designers choose from a pool and who are in a contest of their own, which I'm not even going into because they're not in this episode. Instead, the designers are told, this week they will be designing for "everyday women"...and out come their models. Who are the designer's mothers (or sisters, in two cases.) Of course, everyone cries, because that's what people do on reality shows when presented with their mothers--it's like a rule of some sort.

The moms are uniformly adorable. They really are. I don't see any overbearing bitches there, and I want Michael's mommy to take me home and cook me something delicious and let me sleep on their sofa. Or Kayne's mom, for that matter, or Uli's (although Uli's mom would probably cook something weird like sauerbraten, since she speaks German almost exclusively.) The moms are great, is what I'm saying. Many of them are plus-size ladies, which is the real "complication" of this challenge. You'll see why in a minute.

The designers are allowed to pick their models, but they can't pick their own mom or sister. They choose in random order, and Jeffrey is the last to choose, which leaves him with Angela's mother. Now, this would be disaster waiting to happen regardless of WHAT Angela's mother looked like; there's no love lost between Jeffrey and Angela. Jeffrey thinks Angela is an idiot and a weak designer; Angela thinks Jeffrey is an ass. Neither of them is entirely wrong about the other, but the venom is extensive. So Jeffrey/Angela's mom would have been a bad pairing no matter what.

But Angela's mom is large-sized, and her personality is the one guaranteed to set Jeffrey into full asshole mode--she's quiet, and retiring, and a people-pleaser. You sense that if she doesn't like something she wouldn't say anything to your face, but she would make her opinion clear when talking to someone uninvolved. (A lot like me, really, and that's no compliment to me.) The designers are told to meet with their clients and find out what they like in clothes, then design them an outfit.

Angela's mom says she likes deep green and deep purple; she wants something modest and kind of conservative. Now Jeffrey, though you can't see it in the pic that goes with his bio, is the season's punk-looking guy. He's got tattoos everywhere, including a large one on his neck that is mostly words--I see "DETROIT" in there, and something that looks like Latin or Italian. His aesthetic has been described by the judges as "ugly beautiful"--very edgy and challenging. He used to be part of a punk band in the early 90's--and, we learn from his mom, Jeffrey is a recovering alcoholic and addict who has turned his life around.

It is a testimony to how much I have already grown to dislike this man that I don't feel an instant kinship with him upon hearing this news, the way I usually do with ex-junkies. He has an unearned sense of his own superiority, constantly belittling other designers and their work--yet for someone whose designs are so clearly head and shoulders above the rest, curiously he has yet to win a single challenge. (In reality--the place outside Jeffrey's head--his designs aren't bad, but they're not great either.)

The meeting with Angela's mother finished, he goes with the rest of the designers to the fabric store, which is a place in which I would die of sensory overload mixed with covetousness. Seriously, if God were a clothing designer, this would be the fabric store he shopped at. They have EVERYTHING. Well...almost everything. As Jeffrey tells it, they have no deep green whatsoever. Even if I believed that, which I don't, what would be my next choice of color after deep green?

Yeah, you're not Jeffrey either. Because HE chooses this mother-of-the-bride polyestery-looking stuff in PERIWINKLE. It's gross. It wouldn't go with deep purple even if deep purple were the most popular color in school, owned its own car, and lived in the best subdivision in town. In fact, there are very few colors I can see this periwinkle working with at all. Some shades of navy, maybe, which is the other color Jeffrey goes for. (Has anyone else noticed: Angela's mom mentioned neither periwinkle nor navy? Yeah, I noticed that too.)

He goes back to the workroom and immediately he and some of the other designers start snotting about how they never expected to have to design for plus-size women, and they have no idea of how to do it and no understanding of proportion on "that type of body". Personally, I think anyone who complained about having to design for large women should have been immediately disqualified, because seriously--you didn't "expect" to have to design for larger sizes? To me, this implies that you ONLY plan to design for these coat-hangers with legs you see on the runway and in Hollywood, and to hell with the rest of the world. And there are WAY more size-14-and-ups in this country than there are size-4-and-unders, believe me. So these whiny little brats who plan to spend their careers designing for the physically-perfect? Need to shut the hell up. Even some of my favorites get in on the complaining, Kayne.

About two-thirds of the way through the challenge, the clients are sent in to check up on their designer's progress. At the same time, the show's design mentor Tim Gunn comes in and critiques what he sees so far. The challenge is on a tight schedule--they only get one day to do it--but that's not unusual for this show. Some of the mothers are happy; others are less-happy. Under the second heading comes Angela's mother.

Jeffrey is working on something across the room when his model comes in, and Tim goes over to talk to her. She is looking at the outfit on the dress form, and she's clearly not too thrilled. Tim asks her what she thinks of it, and she answers--those aren't her colors, she's concerned about the styling, basic criticisms along that line. Meanwhile, Jeffrey has noticed Tim at his workstation, and sprints back to put an end to their unsupervised chat. Angela's mom repeats her criticisms to Jeffrey, as politely as she can. She is not bitchy or loud or unnecessarily venomous; she merely states the reasons why she's not happy with the design. Jeffrey starts accusing her of sabotage, of trying to get him put off the show by making him create a losing design so that Angela could win, and this was EXACTLY what she'd told him she wanted...he's spouting all sorts of paranoid crap. Angela's mother responds with shock, and says she was being honest with him and she didn't appreciate the way he was speaking to her. He tells her that he doesn't appreciate her standing by his workbench, and that's that.

The next we see, she's in the back area with Angela, behind a screen, and she is CRYING. Some of the other mothers are trying to calm her down, but she's very upset and so is Angela.

Now, if I had anything to do with this show?? Jeffrey would have been gone, right then and there. It wouldn't have mattered if in the end, he'd come up with the most gorgeous periwinkle-and-navy Chanel gown, something that would command a ten-thousand-dollar price tag, because HE MADE HIS CLIENT CRY. You do NOT do that. You do NOT make your client cry. And it's only made worse by the fact that she's somebody's mother. How do you justify breaking someone's mom down to the point that she's in tears?? You can't. It's just wrong. Even the other designers think so. "You broke her down," says Michael. Meanwhile, I am screaming at the television, and the cats are looking at me funny, because: she's CRYING, dammit. Not cool.

So they have the runway show, and some of the outfits are gorgeous and others...well, aren't--you can see pictures here, along with how people have rated them on the website. Vincent, of all people, won the challenge (though I'm not sure how, since I thought there were at least two designs--Uli's and Michael's--which were much better than Vincent's). In the end, the choice for who would be "out" came down to either Robert or Jeffrey.

Guess who they sent home?? Robert, for being "boring". I would much rather wear something boring than something "interesting" but fugly and poorly-constructed!!! And also, JEFFREY MADE HIS CLIENT CRY. He wasn't even the least bit apologetic about it, afterwards; he pretty much blamed Angela's mom for his own poor performance, claiming that he'd given her exactly the dress she'd asked for. Which...no, not unless she asked for a fugly, poorly-constructed sack.

THIS is why I get pissed at reality TV sometimes. I know that Robert's sin wasn't so much that his CLOTHES were boring, as that he was perceived as not being enough of a character. Of the remaining designers, I would say that the only two who aren't characters are Uli and Michael, and even Michael gets a pass on that front because he's the only minority on the show this year. Angela is the hippy-dippy ditz; Laura is the weird mom (who just announced that she's pregnant again); Kayne is the flamboyant gay guy; Jeffrey is the edgy guy with no social skills; and Vincent is just completely insane. When it came down to it, Robert had to go this week because his design was one of the worst, but also because his character was the most superfluous of all the remaining designers. After all, they already HAD a "flamboyant gay guy"; Robert, his flamboyant gay sidekick, was expendable.

Normally Jeffrey would have been one of my favorite designers--I'm a sucker for turned-their-life-around stories. But if this guy has turned his life around, I'd hate to see what kind of an asshole he was BEFORE he quit drinking and getting high!

They're all pretty good designers, even Jeffrey; don't get me wrong--I'm not disrespecting their skills, because I know I couldn't do what they do...but there's more to who goes and who stays, I think, than design. Which sucks, but that's how it is, I guess.

Still: SHUT UP AND GO AWAY, Jeffrey. You made your client CRY, you big jerk. And there's nothing punk-rock about that.

Random Stuff I've Realized

First, to my thoughtful commentors (and those of you who read it but couldn't come up with anything to say, too--it's the thought that counts): Thank you. I'm getting a wee bit impatient with this medication deal; as far as I can see, in the four-odd months I've been on it, it has done precisely Jack Q. Squat. (Other than give me nightmares that keep me from getting a decent night's sleep for 9 out of every 10 days, and causing me random muscle-twitches that make me feel slightly freakish, that is.) It certainly hasn't done much for the depression; fortunately, Dr. J has been informed of this fact and is working on it. We shall see.

Other things I've realized:

1) Farts are funny sometimes. (More precisely, the concept is funny. The actuality is just stinky and uncalled-for, and have I mentioned what a joy it's been to have LJ out of town for the past two weeks? Many, many fewer farts in my world.)

2) I really, really don't like Gene Simmons. He's just such an asshat.

3) (File under "Really Doesn't Paint A Flattering Picture of Me as a Person") I would be much more able to tolerate all the things about LJ that make me want to break up with him, if only he would bring some money into this house. Seriously. I'm behind on almost every single solitary bill, and he is the main reason why. And the truck is about to break down. And by "about to" I mean "actively in the process of", as in "when I get up tomorrow it's about a 70-30 chance that I'm gonna have to call my mom for an emergency ride to work." If LJ would just drop a couple of thousand dollars on me, it would quell a lot of my wish for him to begone. And that's totally not like me...I'm just that broke.

4) Kittens should not get big. I mean, they -should-, but MY kitten should not get big. Even if he does it lovably, which he so is--and I'm including in that "lovable" his charming and adorable new habit of climbing the straw shades in the living room windows and hanging eight-and-a-half feet up, at the tippyest top, upside down like a small gray bat. For which I have threatened on at least three occasions to feed him to the dog next door, which has had exactly zero effect in modifying his behaviour. I'm trying to get a picture, actually, because it's quite amazing to see. But he's just getting so....LONG. And so...CAT-like. Also bitey, because he's teething.

5) (after watching, this evening, the "Little House on the Prairie" episode where there's a fire in the school and the baby and Merlin Olsen's wife die) Did no one in Walnut Grove know ANYTHING? I mean, we all know Carrie Ingalls wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, but I always thought the -rest- of the town had pretty decent sense, at least. But this episode makes them look like a pack of blithering idiots. They miss basic concepts--like, when you see fire in a room, one of the best things to do is to close the door to that room so it doesn't spread as fast? Or, if you're sitting in a room with your baby and someone tells you the house is on fire, that it might just be prudent to grab the baby and take him WITH you while you do whatever rescuing/escaping you have to do? I remember watching that episode when it premiered, back when I was ten, and being really moved and stunned by it; now, I find myself yelling at the screen "Shut the door, you nitwit!! Um, excuse me, aren't you forgetting a BABY???"

5) Sometimes the people who seem to have their shit together the most can do the DUMBEST things. I spent the better part of this afternoon draining spyware and adware and all sorts of yuck off the laptop of one of the people I really respect in my office, because he saw one of those things that pops up and says "Warning! Your computer may have dangerous spyware! Click here for information"--and he CLICKED. Everyone? If you see that? DON'T CLICK. EVER. NEVER NEVER EVER. In fact, if it gives you a yes/no option, don't even click "no" or "cancel" or anything inside the box itself. Click on the X in the upper right corner of the window and thank whatever deity you believe in that you knew enough to do so. From that one click, he had at least 219 instances of spyware, and his antivirus program was disabled. I'm not even done fixing it yet.

So, in case you're keeping score of today's lessons: Farts=funny; Gene Simmons=not funny; kittens should stay small and right-side up, always take the baby with you, and don't click. I hope this wisdom helps you on the road of your life, because it hasn't done a damn bit of good for me. :)

Time

It was fifteen years ago today that I met JP.

To think that 1991--a year which took on the proportions of myth in my life before it was even over--is now fifteen years behind me...Fifteen years is a long time. A child born in 1991 would bow be a high-school sophomore, nearly able to drive legally. Fifteen years before I was born, rock 'n roll hadn't even been properly invented yet. In fact, fifteen years before I was born, the civil rights movement hadn't been invented yet. Fifteen years' difference would have made it impossible for me-as-I-am to even exist in this world--to live where I live, believe what I believe, care about what I care about.

Think about the number of everyday things, things we take for granted now, which didn't exist fifteen years ago. If, on that August night in 1991, you had mentioned to me "blogs" or "Hurricane Katrina" or "September 11th" or "JonBenet", I would have had no idea what you were talking about. Nobody would have. If you'd mentioned "the Internet" you might have got a glimmer out of me, but the Internet was what those nerds in the basement of Allen Hall were doing far into the night--a cool idea, sure, but as remote from me as Pluto or Mars.

Fifteen years ago I was about 100 pages away from finishing my first novel. That novel is still sitting in a box in the back bedroom of my house, having survived eighteen moves, five or six subsequent attempts at other novels, and the total upheaval of my life on at least three or four occasions. It's still about a hundred pages from completion.

Fifteen years ago I had just moved into my first post-college apartment. It was a sixth-floor semi-walkup in Rogers Park--the elevator worked about seventy percent of the time. I'd been there such a short time that my things were still in boxes, mostly, and my roommate hadn't moved in yet. That roommate--the career girl, who wasn't going to get married because it would slow her down, who was going to be a famous journalist--is now married with two or three kids. We haven't talked, except for once, since 1995. I still miss her.

Fifteen years ago I was still engaged to my high-school sweetheart, my first boyfriend. I was beginning to have doubts; we'd gone on a camping trip with friends a week or so before, and I realized that I had feelings about my friend Darius that went a little deeper than I would have admitted. I'd written him a note on the way home, telling him that I couldn't talk to him anymore because I was supposed to be getting married, and my feelings for him were getting in the way. The silence between us lasted a week; at the end of that week I'd called him, because he was one of my best friends, no matter what else I felt for him, and I couldn't stand not to talk to him anymore. His response to my collapse of willpower was to invite me to a party, one where I'd know nobody. It was at a friend's apartment, he told me, and when he told me where that apartment was--near Michael Reese Hospital, just off Lake Shore Drive--I knew this was going to have to be a trip made on the sly, without my mother's knowledge, because if she knew where I was going to be driving--alone, at night--she would have absolutely forbidden it. Looking back from fifteen years, I have to laugh; the neighborhood into which I drove that night was safer than where I went to high school, probably just about as safe as my mom's neighborhood. And looking back at the idea that my mother's edicts would have mattered to me, despite my age and newly-free status, I smile--especially knowing now what would come a very few years after; I would go to some wild places in those next few years, without anyone's permission, against everyone's advice. But on that night I was afraid, because I'd been told to be afraid and I didn't know any better yet. I learned, that night. I learned a lot of things. One of the many things I learned, maybe the most important: there was, somewhere in the world, a place where I would fit. I'd been promised such a place for years, but this was probably the first time I'd really believed in it. I learned that it was fun to be spontaneous and wild and alive.

From fifteen years later, and the wreck and ruin of everything that night brought me, I remember what it was like. I remember what it felt like, driving home up Lake Shore Drive at four in the morning, knowing somehow that my life had just changed, that the people I'd met that night would be tied up in everything that came after. I know it sounds like hindsight but I remember going home and writing in my journal an entry beginning "Remember this night." I'd just met JP, and somewhere down deep I already knew that knowing him would change me.

And it has; and lately I think, maybe not for the better. Not that I regret knowing him--god, never--but what good is it to know how it feels to have all the time and all the hope and all the potential in the world, when all you can do with it is remember? What good is it to remember things that only serve to remind you of what is gone forever? I sit here on the far side of 30 and the rest of my life looks very bleak indeed, no matter what changes I make. I could break up with LJ and get a better job and go back to school and get enough money to fix up the house, and not a single one of those things will bring back the feeling I had when I was 21, that everything was possible and the whole world was out there for the taking; or the feeling I had when I was 25 and I was loved exactly as I was, in all the ways that matter. Nothing I do is going to bring those feelings back, and I sometimes wonder: what, without that hope, is the point of living?

I hate how I feel. I hate this total apathy, this lack of motivation that makes even the most basic tasks seem insurmountable. Every night I go home and I look around the house and I identify at least fifty tasks I could be doing--laundry or dishes or sweeping the floor--and instead I take a bowl of ice, some cans of Pepsi, and whatever there is to eat, and I go upstairs to my room and watch TV. I know that I'd feel better if I did something, but somehow I can't make that knowledge tip over into action. Then I feel even worse--lazy, undisciplined, pathetic.

My mother talks about one of my aunts, refers to her as a "non-coper"--someone who, faced with stress, just throws up her hands and looks helpless. I was raised to think such behavior is contemptible, yet here I am...wallowing. Wallowing in the past, in my distaste for the mundane world; in helpless inaction, in the lack of hope for anything better, in the knowledge that the days of grand passion are behind me. More and more I think about what the end of my life is going to be like, assuming I live to the ripe old age my maternal genes suggest. When I was young it never crossed my mind to think that I would be any different than the other women in my family; there would be a husband, and children, and eventually grandchildren. I foresaw my future, senior-citizen self to have a life like my grandparents had: a house, a pension, a dining-room table surrounded at Christmas and Easter by the evidence of a life well-lived. It's only lately that I've started to realize: that's not going to happen. And what happens to the people who don't end up with that kind of life? What happens when they get old? I look at the senior housing projects as I drive past them; high-rise buildings, drab and gray, with a bunch of draggled, wilted, lonely-looking old people sitting in the courtyard. They're generally men, mostly, but there's a fair number of women, too. These are the ones who are alone. They have no one to care for them, and they're not strong enough or healthy enough to live on their own, and so they end up shut away in buildings like these. I try to imagine what one of those little rooms will be like. I can't imagine they're very homey.

Mostly, though, I think about what it's going to be like, living the rest of my life without ever being touched again the way JP touched me. Even if I break up with LJ, I can't imagine anyone ever feeling anything intense about me. I remind myself sometimes that I weighed about the same when JP and I reconnected as I do now; then I think about the passing of those years, all the things that have happened since to change me. I see old pictures of myself and I look hopeful, alive; I look in the mirror and my eyes are just a wall. I tell myself I need to get out and meet people, give myself some options; instead, I go home and lock myself away, because it's too hard to risk even trying to let someone in, much less to risk being rejected once I let myself care.

I'm 36 years old and unless something changes, I've got the rest of my life to go through alone and untouched. It doesn't seem quite fair; there are some people who love each other after years and years together and still find each other attractive; whereas I can't seem to keep a guy interested. I can keep them AROUND--just not interested. Just that knowledge takes a lot out of me; it feels like a big rock pressing down on my chest. To know that two men in a row have gotten almost instantly bored, so much so that they can't even be bothered to hide it...it makes me want to die young, actually. I don't want to go through the rest of my life feeling like this, hating myself by default, wondering what is so wrong with me, and when it happened. When it was just one man who found me so untouchably dull, I could tell myself "well, JP thought differently" and dismiss CR's boredom as something that came from HIM. But now, I'm forced to wonder if maybe JP wasn't the one who was wrong about me; at the very least, he's been outvoted. I could break up with LJ tomorrow and there'd still be no one to disagree with him about me; I'd have to go through the effort and the risk of finding someone new, and maybe then discover that HE thinks I'm boring, too. That....That would be the end of me, to be honest. That's not a life I'm prepared to live.

Fifteen years ago I knew none of these things about myself, and so I could still imagine that someday, someone would find me beautiful; that someone would want me, and we'd be together and we'd have a life, and someday I would sit back and look at what we'd accomplished together, and I would be satisfied. Fifteen years ago that was still possible. I didn't know then what would happen between then and now.

I've made a point of not regretting anything I've done, any choices I've made, but that's getting harder and harder to maintain. There are moments now when I question whether I've done one single thing right, and moments when I wonder how, exactly, it came to this. I'm pretty sure I'll have a long time to ponder that question; that, maybe, is the most frightening thing of all.

Okay, I Think I'm Back Now...

My recent absence can be explained by several factors. First of all, until late last week I had no home computer. My last computer, a donation from work, suddenly developed gangrene, and its hard drive had to be amputated. I have done everything in my power to get my data off this drive, but I've concluded that it's a lost cause. Fortunately, I hadn't had this computer for long enough to build up a great stock of irreplaceables on it--some kitten pictures and a few revisions to my business plan are about the extent of the loss. Since I need a computer for work, they gave me another hand-me-down laptop, which I finally got set up to my liking last week.

I'm still blogging at work, though, because all my home time has been taken up by a new writing pursuit. I've confessed many times my abiding love for reality TV, which extends to websites where shows are recapped and discussed. Television Without Pity is one of them, though I lost my taste for their message boards a while ago. Another one, the first one I ever started reading in fact, is Reality News Online. They're less snarky and more factual, but still fun--and they recap shows you can't find anywhere else. Well, at the end of one of their recaps a few weeks ago, they mentioned that they needed a recapper for one of their shows, and I volunteered. I didn't get the show I asked for--and in fact, "The One" went off the air soon after--but the editor-in-chief, David Bloomberg, offered to give me a try, since there was another new show they needed a recapper for. And so I am now the official recapper for "Gene Simmons Family Jewels". Not necessarily my cup of tea, television-wise, and I can't stand Gene Simmons, but I'm so happy to get a chance to put my writing out there that I'd have recapped "Desperate Housewives", if he'd asked me to. (Okay, maybe not; even I have standards.)

Anyway, my preview article has already scrolled off the front page, and I can't seem to find a link to it in my history,(update: Here it is--Thanks, Google!) but here's my first episode recap. The second episode recap went out last night, so I would imagine it should be up soon (update: here it is!).

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about this. I didn't realize, though, how time-consuming it is to write one of those recaps. I taped both episodes Monday night, and watched them, taking notes, at the same time. Then I re-watched them a day or two later, making more notes. I did the first draft of the first article, then went back to watch the episode AGAIN, this time to check the accuracy of all the quotes I'd used. (Or rather, the INaccuracy; my reportorial skills are evidently QUITE rusty, and almost everything I thought was a quote was actually a paraphrase. The meaning was correct; the words, though, were usually off.) Then, back to the computer to make the changes; an out-loud reading to see if the rhythm was okay and if I'd added or left out any words; a little polishing for format and punctuation, a last-minute run through the spellchecker, and I was done. It took about four hours to recap a 30-minute show, and that was just the FIRST episode! I've got a whole new level of respect for the people who recap three or four one-hour shows every week. Maybe it gets easier once you've done it for a while.

Oh, and incidentally? I still think Gene Simmons is a misogynistic butthead. He's got some great kids, though.

Now that I'm back online at home, I'm hoping I'll be able to spend more time blogging; I've had a few good ideas while I've been away. I also have to get caught up on my blogroll reading; at least three of the blogs on my blogroll have either changed names or faded into the mists of blogdom. I'm amazed at how long it's been since I've been able to just sit and go down the list, catching up with what all of you have been doing. Sorry to have been so neglectful; it's nothing personal.

The Passion of the Dumbass

I was never a Mel Gibson fan. Nor--as you might well imagine!--have I ever been a fan of Focus on the Family, a neocon "think"-tank.

And here is an excerpt that lets me have the fun of hating them both, at the same time.

So in other words: You can still be a Christian if you slam the Jews, if you call them Christ-killers, if you accuse them of starting every war, if you deny the Holocaust. But if you get drunk? You're RIGHT out of the clubhouse, buddy-boy.

Hypocrites make my brain hurt.