Five minute Friday

Swiping Five Minute Friday from Claire...my theme is...fall.

Fall! I love the Friday before Labor Day weekend - I think about sleeping in, summer turning into fall, a lovely drive up the gorge to a museum, weather-willing, leaves starting to turn next month.

Fall is my favorite season. I think jeans and sweaters, my favorite coat, walks around the lake before the rainy season sets in. Halloween, holidays. Chilly dusk and cocoa and slippers.

Cuddles with kitties. Watching Dr. Who and other BBC delights when it gets dark earlier. More cooking.

Avengers + Thor + Captain America + Iron Man box set coming out in October!

Planning my brother's winter break visit, and Thanksgiving. Enjoying the sun while it lasts.

Maybe all of this is sappy, but you know what? I got rid of the peeing volunteer, and I'm happy today.  (You would be, too!)

Regarding the bit in the last post

I won't mention you here by name,
let's just say you're a colossal pain.

Your program helps out "older" workers.
That doesn't mean bathroom shirkers.

Your group says some people need explaining,
I don't feel like I should have to be complaining
WHEN YOU HAVEN'T FLUSHED AND THERE IS PEE ON THE FLOOR!

I'm not the daycare center whore.
I want to hit your ass with the door,
and ask you not to come back anymore.

You need to make amends.
You're not old enough for Depends.

You leave garbage on the desk
like some common variety pest.
You act like a total slob,
then tell me how to do my job.

True, you're helping us for free -
but I think you should pay a fee.

Instead of multi tasking,
I believe you should be asking
How to aim to please!

One thing I'll say for certain,
one more piss and it'll be curtains!

(This was inspired by Mike D's comment on my last post. And also because I couldn't write it in a regular format without getting pissed off - no pun intended.)

Things I like Thursday (Birthday Edition)

I like cards. A lot. What can I say, I'm from a Hallmark family. I have only gotten three birthday cards so far, but as my dad says, "The year after a landmark birthday, everyone forgets." (Is 35 a landmark birthday? Inquiring minds want to know.) There are another couple of days.

However, all of these cards were awesome, which made me think of Things I like Thursday (check out Claire's blog, she is much better at keeping up with this meme than I am, and her posts are delightful as she is!)

So, I like cards.

I like this awesome bookmark that Mike D designed and sent in one of my birthday cards. In fact, here's a shout out to Mikey because in the 14 years we have been friends, I don't think he has ever forgotten a birthday card. And he gets bonus points for sending me a Snoopy card when I was sick.

I like my new kitty! Yes, he is really this fucking cute. Which makes the fact that he wakes up at five a.m. and yowls a bit more tolerable.

And I like reading clever stuff by my amigos over at A Beer for the Shower. Both of them recently published e-books; visit their blog and check it out. I wonder if, at this point, I qualify for groupie status. They've assured me that they won't snort coke off of anyone's navel (at least in front of me.)

And it's almost Friday! Like that quite a bit.


I DO NOT LIKE IT when volunteers pee on the floor.

But that's another post altogether.

Riot who?

My American friend in England left me a message yesterday - she and her mother were talking about a punk band in Russia getting two years in prison for staging a protest against Putin (there's "glastnost" for you) and her mom said, "Can you believe that about Riot Kitty?"

My friend: "You mean Pussy Riot."

Her mom: "Oh right! Your friend's blog was in my head." (Hi, Annette.)

Mon dieu! I hope she has not read the posts about sex toys. 

But seriously, how fucking outrageous is it that three women have been in jail since March, and now face two years in prison, for protesting the "president" (read: dictator who rigs elections) in an empty church. The head of the church and many of its clerics support the sentence, by the way. Shouldn't this same church be glad they're able to openly practice their religion (e.g. free speech), which was similarly outlawed for several decades? Not to mention the sexism of the case: the presiding (female) judge, Marina Syrova, who handed down the sentence "accused" them of "practicing feminism."

Vladimir Putin, Marina Syrova, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, you can suck it. You can't hold down democracy forever.

(Blogger, you can suck it also. This formatting is totally fucked up.)

Wordless Wednesday (in homage to Julia Child)

A few words - she was magnificent. She would have been 100 today.

She apparently loved this SNL clip, and showed it to friends - obviously she had a great sense of humor.

Do you care what they do in private?

I've always thought the press should stay out of peoples' private lives. But does it matter what legislators do in private, if they tout "morals" in public?

The local press have had a field day with a group of legislators who decided to swing by a topless bar on an out-of-state vacation (note: no state funds were used on this trip.)

More hilarious was a local columnist who noted that members of this same bunch were the beating-our-chests moralistic crowd,  one of whom had even sponsored legislation to allow local governments to restrict "strip acts." (As long as out-of-state governments allowed him access?)

What do you think?

I must note my own unintentional bias here, having been a (clothed) waitress in a topless bar for a stint in college.

Meanwhile, we are MELTING here. Perhaps we need a topless resolution. Wait, women are already legally allowed to go around topless in Oregon.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless except for the laughs you will have...unfortunately this can't be embedded, but it is well worth going to the link and watching!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs7Y9iYf_uk&feature=youtu.be?fail

Ever wish you could turn off technology?

First off, let me say that I never want to be without 1) air conditioning,  2) indoor plumbing, and 3) electricity in general. (OK, 4) = lolcats.)

But here, to piggyback from Grannie Annie, is the question of the week: do you ever wish we were back in the times of less technology?

Last night Mr. RK and I watched a movie that was set in 1973. One of the characters gets up to change the channel on a knob on the TV. (Yes, I remember our family having a set like that when I was little.) I started thinking about that, and it bled into a dream that a friend texted me that he had sex with another friend. OK, that is true, but that wasn't the important part (for me, anyway, can't speak for either of them): the text came in on my calculator. Then it came in on my phone, and then another calculator, and then the microwave - all of the electric appliances in my home. I couldn't turn it off or get away from the texts.

I like convenience. I love texting my little brother, because it's one of the only ways I get a hold of him. I love that I can e-mail my great aunt in Southern Oregon at 3 a.m. without waking anyone up.

But sometimes I wonder if I'm just a slave to technology and convenience and if it owns me, rather than being at my service.

Literary losses

Two of my favorite (and disparate) authors died this week - Maeve Binchy and Gore Vidal.

Binchy was always very self-deprecating - she sold more than 40 million books, but said she was "lucky to be living in the age of the mass-market paperback" because she knew readers used her books for escapism. Having Irish roots, I devoured her detailed descriptions about life in Dublin and other parts of Ireland, where I would love to go one day.

Is reading for escape a bad thing? Binchy was a private person, but from the glimpses that the outsider could see, she'd had her share of trying times and disappointments, but she remained cheerful and charitable until the end. Her books tended to have happy endings. And what is wrong with that? Writing can be an equal escape, I'd argue.

She said the best advice she had ever heard came from a British TV series: "Get over yourself."

On the other end of the spectrum, Gore Vidal - champion of individual and civil rights, intellectual giant, huge gossip (so we knew he was human.) Critic of the status quo and adamant that a patriot's duty was to participate in and hold their government accountable. But humorous all the same.

I know my own world was enriched by these two people I had never met, and I'd thank them if I could.