Too Long; Didn’t Read

One of the many useful internet acronyms is TL;DR.  That’s when your truncated attention span decides to step out for a soda.

There’s so much going on right now I think my head is going to asplode.  I’ve been giving money to charity as if it was going out of style.  (Yes, I know giving to charity is like Fight Club, you’re not supposed to talk about it, but when the hell did that ever stop me?) Right now I actually have disposable income – who knows how long it will last. So I pledged to my church, the United Way and Philip Dawdy (and I’ve been giving to other people and groups as I think about it).  Who the hell is Philip Dawdy?  The guy who runs Furious Seasons, the best written blog about mental health in the world.  He needs money to keep on doing what he’s doing, which is some of the best independent journalism about the hopeless fuckup that is the American Mental Health System.  HE’S HAVING AN EFFECT.  He’s considered to be an expert – his blog floats to the top in searches – conventional journalists are basing stories on what he writes about – he follows the science – and everybody hates him.  That is to say, his editorial balance is such that psychiatrists who are in the pockets of Big Pharma break out into pustules at the very sound of his name, and anti-psychiatry/ anti-psych meds moonbats leave pathetically spelled death threats in his comment section.  Poor guy!  He’s SO free speech, and every once in a while he has to painfully announce that somebody has been banned from the site, as he can no longer afford to pay for the bandwidth to give them their soapbox of hatred, typos and disdain for rigorous examination of the world as it is rather than as their lone opinion sees it.  Lone opinions are for artists, not public policy experts like Philip.  Imagine my amusement and self-important self-congratulation when I visit boingboing.net and see this…. this is now about the tenth time I’ve posted something around the same time boingboing does.

I have not had a single cigarette, not so much as a drag, since Unca Dave’s diagnosis. Currently he is being kept company by a steady stream of visitors.  Paul will go up next week, or as soon as his cold clears. mOm will go up next week too; Unca Barry is there now; Unca Dave’s daughter Alyssa and her two achingly beautiful girls will be there this weekend.

Cousin Lexi has taken two thousand pictures of Darwin since he was born.  Given that she’s sent me three of them for the blog, I’d like you to take two seconds and mentally praise her for her restraint.  But, dammit, he’s cute!!!

Chris S., one of my neckrub recipients, wandered over to my desk yesterday because I always go over there and he wanted to return the favour.  Also, he’s one of the ‘ballsitters’ at the company (I have a big blue ball for my back) so we were joking about that.  Then, Allegra being the incredibly It’s All About Me person that she is, fixed him with her glassy, blood inflected green stare and said, “You’re a mac dude, right?” and he said, slowly, “ye-e-s” which is what nerds do when they think tech support requests are coming up, and I said, gabbling, “Chris I am at my wit’s end I want to know how to get a .band file into mp3 or maybe any kind of format so that I can post the bizarre stuff I’ve been doing in Garage Band to my website or email it to people and I can’t find a conversion utility and man ya gotta halp me!!!!”

Chris (who’s a remarkably good looking young man and was able to carry off dressing up as Hugh Jackman as Wolverine with no difficulty on Halloween) cocked an eyebrow, frowned, and then said, “Well, I’d import it into Itunes – you’ll probably have to mess with the preferences – and that should work fine.”  Then we continued with one of our favourite activities, making fun of LTGW.  (He’s Chris’s podmate).  I said that 80 percent of the time LTGW is scary smart; ferocious actually – and quite appropriate.  The other 20 percent of the time he’s like a four year old in terms of his naivety & spookability. Chris agreed with me about the smart part – but he’d see more of it from his vantage point.

Anyway, be damned if The Suggestions of Chris didn’t do the trick!  I can now import into lossless and lossy formats with no difficulty so once I actually clean up the tunes enough so that they aren’t too shabby I’ll post them.  Ya! One more problem solved.  Solving the problem.  Solving the problem.  Problem solved.  (This is a reference to a Robot Chicken episode… I guess really only Jeff will get that.)

Very very frequently I put references that only one person in the world will get into my blogs.  Sometimes that person doesn’t read my blog.  I guess they’re not in this space time cave at the moment.

Keith can has job.  He didn’t get the optical job in Metrotown; nope he got it at BRENTWOOD where I stop on my way home from work a couple of times a week to pick up beer and glucosamine and dark chocolate. And other things, but those are the last three items.  I don’t even want to think about what the says about me.  PS, Bah Humbug Christmas Bitters are okay.  The job means that Keith can bid a fond adieu to Metrotown Superstore after all these years. I am going to ask him to guest blog about that experience someday; Keith can actually write very, very well for his age and his dry humour, choice of words and basic good natured humanity are a constant delight to me.  Best of all, I heard it from my mother and not him, which means that Keith is calling his grandparents and including them meaningfully in his life, which means that I actually trained him up right.  The process of raising and letting go of Keith has been one of the jewels of my life.  I shouldn’t speak for Paul but I imagine that he feels the same way, and why should I hog all the glory; many of Keith’s best traits he got from his dad, most especially his long fuse.

My mother has seen a number of circuits around the sun, as of yesterday.  We had a long, lovely chat yesterday evening.  You rock, girl.  I tried to convince her that it’s okay for atheists to pray but she’s not having any.  Oh, it’s SO hard to be a Unitarian…. (you may virtually throw things at me now.)

Kodak laid off a bunch of people in Vancouver yesterday.  The manufacturing plant will be moving to Mexico.  Apparently this is not big news yet but here’s a blog to help you track that.

Paul was helping Dax with his resume yesterday.  Katie and he can’t really stay there…. Jim and Jan are coming for the weekend so the front room is booked.  I am so stoked, I can hardly wait to see them.  As far as we know Jeff’s never met them.  Something to look forward to, yip arrooo.

Jeff is feeling kinda bleak at the moment.  Gizmo had to stay overnight at the kitty hospital as he’s having his teeth cleaned in the am.  Without Gizmo to curl up in the crook of his arm as Jeff watches tv this house just doesn’t feel right, and Eddie’s wandering about being noisy and spooky.  Anyway, we expect a rapturous welcome today when ‘the Gizzard’ comes home.

NCIS is on Christmas Hiatus.  Bah, Humbug!

Fetish club in Florida sues for non-compete. As someone who occasionally patronizes Fetish Nights at Sin City (nights devoted to fetish gear at a club which is usually just a regular dance club), as well as having visited a permanent private establishment for couples (now sadly gone) and private house parties, I think the suing dude is being tiresome.  I know he has rights but I think he’s going to find them unenforceable.  There’s a new game in Vancouver these days, and while in the old days you could only get into the private establishment as part of a couple, this gal is running BBW2M1W events.  Acronymically it’s awkward, but here’s the translation; BBW means big beautiful women; 2M1W means two men will be admitted for every woman.  So get this; for a measly 75 bucks I can get into an event where there will be two men for every woman and every single guy there will think I look hot in lingerie!  Under the circumstances the entrance fee seems cheap; after all, I’m not exactly having a lot of luck pulling these days.  And besides, when the girls dish at these events you can find out where to get a fabulous corset – off the shelf!  In your size! for less than a hundred bucks.  This is news I can use, especially since Fetwear in Coquitlam closed.  And if you think this is Too Much Information, thank your lucky stars that I’m not telling you what my fetishes are….  I do have them, and some of them are so weird they have names in Japanese but not English, and boy was I freaked when I made that discovery. Wikipedia is DANGEROUS did I ever mention that?

I am wracking my brains trying to think of what I’m going to buy my coworker for Secret Santa.  I want to buy something HR would blanch at; at the same time, I want to be respectful.  I think I will go to Lee Valley and pick up something useful instead.  But I want you all to know that what I WANTED to buy was a Chippendale calendar.  Beefcake, ie.

Katie passed out at school this past week.  The bloodtests say she’s not anemic, so I am assuming sleep loss and stress.  It’s worrisome.  And NO she’s not pg, thanks for asking.

My god…. I just typed 1700 words.  Just imagine if I was working on a novel that much every day! Imagine further that I have more to say but decided to go do something useful instead….. like soak chickpeas for hummous.