Just STFU~!

You all know what that stands for...

So we (two former reporters and some volunteers) were complaining at work yesterday about how the media are totally sensationalizing this swine flu stuff. Fear sells, I guess, but - hello! - there has not been ONE CASE in my state, and yet it's being written about, talked about, broadcast about, everywhere.

Yet 200,000 people die of regular flu in this country every year, and there's no panic. Regular flu isn't as sexy as swine, I guess.

So before there was bird flu...and SARS...and hoof and mouth disease...and leprechaun cooties...oh wait, I was supposed to keep that one secret.

As we are ranting an ad for an evening news show comes on the radio: "Killer bees are out there! One man was attacked by killer bees! (Clip of 9-1-1 call: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!) What to do to survive an attack of killer bees!"

Again - I am in Oregon. How often does that happen? How often does that happen anywhere, for that matter?

A word to the mainstream media: just shut the fuck up. Do your job. Words shouting into the wind, I know.

And I think this just says it all

A bit o'sunshine

There is just a bit of sunshine peeking through here at the moment. Also, I got this e-mail from someone in a partner organization that we work with on advocacy issues:

I hope you know you make my day...every time I get a message from you...

I'm fairly certain he is not straight, so this was just a nice e-mail from a nice guy! It made me happy. Is that silly?

(Oh and PS - I e-mail him porn all the time...)

If I ran the store

Do you remember that awesome Dr. Seuss book, "If I Ran the Zoo"? (Yes, I love kids' books - good ones - I just realized I've posted including a Dr. Seuss reference twice in a week now.)

Well I propose to write a new one - "If I Ran the Store."

It would just be a book of rules to be enforced everywhere that I shop. Or maybe I could just read them aloud and freak people out.

Why? Because when I go shopping, if there are more than, say, 3 other people there, it is a miserable experience. So we should set the bar a little higher, hmm?

Here goes:

You will not, will not, park your shopping cart sideways across the aisle. This makes me pissed - I will not smile.

You have some kids, your kids make noise; I don't care if they're girls or boys. When they holler, forever more; please GET THEM THE FUCK OUT OF THE STORE.

You wanted bread, you touched it lots; I am now thinking evil thoughts. You buy the bread - I spare your tires; put it back, well...you get the point.

Those little carts the children like, will be the first to take a hike. (If your kid loves them, you can follow them out the door, too.)

I move ahead, you step in front; I say, "See here, you fucking..." (Oh ok, ok...)

You leave your cart. You don't return. I'm moving up - your stuff can burn.

Your phone is loud and so are you - I'd like to put you in some poo. (That would silence the phone anyway.)

The checker asks about my day - I think of something crude to say.
"I just had sex with 20 goats."
"That's sounds quite nice," the checker notes. (Why can't you just shut the fuck up and leave me alone?)

What do you think? Shall I go read it out loud at Trader Joe's?

Big mouth

Once more, the little social editor in my head is not working.

I visited with a friend twice on my California trip - and his inertia just started to get under my skin. He jokes about his "boring life" but makes no effort to do anything different...doesn't want to meet someone I think he might befriend, because it would "take time," doesn't want me and Pheromone Girl to try to think of ways to get his book (he's an author) out in front of people ("that would take time to talk to her about it"), etc.

So over lunch, I looked him right in the eye and said, "So if a gorgeous woman took you out on a great date and then offered to suck you off, would you say, 'Sorry, that would require me to spend time taking off my pants?'"

Without blinking, he says, "No - that's sex - that's different!"

He must not have been too offended because he bought lunch :)

I'm here, I'm here!

Not blogging for a few days was like going without coffee ;)

Actually, I'm "there" - visiting my family in California. On the plus side, it's sunny - I don't know about you, but sun totally affects my mood; on the negative side, everyone is tense and stressed about the economy and my grandparents, who are stubborn and slowly going nuts, and there's nothing we can do.

The highlight of each trip, though, is my little (age 13) bro, who is keeping me smiling. I shouldn't say little - he is almost 5' tall (I'm just 5'3") and on one of these trips he'll be looking down at me, grinning that he is finally bigger than I am.

Even though we're not genetically related, we are so alike that it's scary sometimes. Who also loves mochas as their favorite espresso drink? (Albeit he orders his with whipped cream, caramel sauce, AND caramel syrup...in other words, a sugar extravaganza.) He has a wicked sense of humor...he likes to use inappropriate language (no, this is not my fault!)

I don't care what anyone says - blood isn't thicker than water. I have way more in common with him than my birth (read: bitch) mother, for instance.

I tend to reflect a lot when I'm away from home. It's funny - I realized that when I'm not working I am open to being a lot more social. I had lunch with a friend, coffee with another, and I'm having lunch with my friend T again tomorrow before I go home. I wish both of them lived closer. I admire D's guts and T makes me laugh.

Ta ta until I return to the wetlands (home) tomorrow night...hope you're all having a great weekend!

How not to get chosen for jury duty

This is a guest blog by Mr. Riot Kitty, who was unknowingly skilled in the art of not getting selected as a circuit court juror. Here is his diary:

Hour 1: I had to remove my shoes to go through the security checkpoint. I checked, but I saw no fuses in anybody else's shoes, either. Watched a very patriotic short video explaining to me that the Revolutionary War, and the whole of U.S. history, was culminating in this moment that I'm sharing with 300 other people in this small, stinky room. (Did I mention that hour 1 began at 7:45 a.m.?)

Hour 2: Looking through Popular Science magazine, I'm impressed by the amount of bodybuilding ads.

Hour 3: Looking through Car and Driver magazine, I'm impressed by the amount of penis enlargement ads. (By the way, RK is correcting my English and trying to get me to use the word "fuck" more than I want to...oops, I've said too much.)

Hour 4: Eavesdropping on the inane conversations of my 300 co-jurors, I determine that I cannot be of the same species as any of them.

Hour 5: The bright point of my day! In the stack of magazines, there is a 1953 Science and Mechanics magazine. Apparently, a 1954 model year Studebaker is quite the pimp ride.

Hour 6: There are only 30 of us left. (I did eat lunch, but nothing funny happened, so I skipped writing about it.) The lot of us are moved into a room sized for 14 people just in case we missed the locker room smell from earlier. We are filed into the courtroom, after a 30-minute wait, and I am juror #4. Hooray! A backup juror, when walking past the judge, states that "only god can judge people," and that she doesn't believe in the judicial system. The judge says: "You're excused."

Hour 6.5: The defense attorney starts talking about "reasonable doubt." I ask him, "How do I know if my doubt is reasonable?" (Note from RK: He really did say this!) This annoys the defense attorney, who gets defensive.

Hour 7: The prosecutor asks if I think circumstantial evidence is sufficient to ensure my certainty ... blah blah blah blah blah. I reply, "The only way that I can be certain is if I was there." She does not like this answer. She tries a different tactic, and gets the same result. She did not like that one, either.

Hour 8: Riot Kitty calls. I tell her I expect to be sent home and asked not to come back tomorrow.

Hour 8.1: I am right!

Two great presents

Present #1 - after the longest, grayest, coldest, nastiest winter and spring I have spent here - it's sunny! And I don't mean sun break - I mean all-day sun. And it is supposed to last through Wednesday, on which day I will be en route to visit my family in sunny (I hope) California.

Yippee!! If you live outside of the Pacific Northwest or Alaska, I suppose this means little...but I am SO much happier when the sun is out. (Don't just take my word for it...the "breaking news" headline in our metro area paper is, "Lots of sunshine in store for today.")

Present #2 - Mr. RK bought me "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss.

Do you remember this book? The illustrations are in black and white, except for the oobleck, of course, which is green.

It is the same Bartholomew from "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," I believe.

Who could resist buying a book with the word "oobleck" in the title?

I love kids' books. I have many of them.

Do you have a favorite one that's still on your shelf?

H.F.F!

As in, Happy Fucking Friday! This has been a looooooooooooooooooong week.

So I thought in light of the last post, it was definitely time for a laugh, and I didn't have to look very hard to find one. I'm reading The Golden Bowl by Henry James, and one of the character's names is - I could not make this up - Fanny Assingham.

Which is even funnier because "fanny" is slang for female bits in the UK. (My dad, an American, found this out the hard way...on a business trip, after meeting with a female British executive, he said, "I'm so tired, I'm going to go back to the hotel and sit on my fanny." Fortunately, she clarified for him...but he was SO embarrassed.)

Anyhow - does anyone really have such an unfortunate name in "real life," you may be wondering? Look no farther than my fourth grade vice principal, Mrs. Assenheimer.

I'm not kidding. As an adult, I have to wonder 1) why she would marry a Mr. Assenheimer, 2) why she would change her name to match, 3) what person at Ellis Island hated the look of these people and stuck them with this translation.

By the way - before you start to feel sorry for her, she was a Grade A Bitch. I have always wondered about Mr. Assenheimer. Was he living a life of quiet suffering? Or did he deserve her? Anyway...

When we - my brother Nik and I - told my dad at the time (Nik was in first grade and I was in fourth), he just couldn't believe it.

But signature dad - imagine growing up with Weird Al, but a little more crude (which he regrets now, since he has a daughter who can't stop swearing) - replied, "I guess that's better than Assenhole!"

Happy Friday!

PS To make up for the asinine post, here is a cute picture of one of my cats.

Give me love, give me hope, give me...

...peace on earth.

I always turn to George Harrison when I need to keep things in perspective.

This has been an odd week. It's April and it's freezing. It has hailed. I have taken more helpline calls at work from people who are crying than I have in the entire year I have worked there, and I feel more helpless than ever.

We have an information and referral line - all I can do is give them information and referrals. I tell them I am living proof it will get better...and then I don't know what happens next.

All we can do, my boss tells me, is function as part of a link in the chain of their recovery. We can give them information and hope they use it.

But at times I feel like I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. OK, most of the time. I never in a million years thought I'd be telling complete strangers bits of my own story to try to give them hope that things would get better.

Will it get better for them? Will they make that call? I have no idea, and I hate not knowing.

Tomorrow I am going to a memorial service for someone who was dually diagnosed and overdosed on drugs.

I didn't even know this person but I am good friends with one of his relatives and I just ache for their family.

I will be playing this song in the car:

Give me love
Give me love
Give me peace on earth
Give me light
Give me life
Keep me free from birth
Give me hope
Help me cope, with this heavy load
Trying to, touch and reach you with,
heart and soul

PLEASE take hold of my hand, that
I might understand you

Won't you please
Oh won't you

Give me love
Give me love
Give me peace on earth
Give me light
Give me life
Keep me free from birth
Give me hope
Help me cope, with this heavy load
Trying to, touch and reach you with,
heart and soul

PLEASE take hold of my hand, that
I might understand you

Sweet!

For those of you who think I am a cynical schmuck, I do have a soft side...and sometimes there are stories that just put me in my place.

Check out this article about a blind Vancouver, Washington man who holds no grudge against the drunk driver who hit him three times and broke several of his bones. This sweet man's only Easter wish was to attend mass, but the care facility he lives in does not provide that service.

Well guess what?

Here's the follow up. Not only did he get his wish - an anonymous woman paid for a paratransit service to take him to mass today - but literally hundreds of people who read the story called with offers of help.

They want to start a fund to help him get back and forth to church.

There's a bit of humanity just in time for Easter.

And the wanker of the week award goes to...

Trevor of Spokane, Wash.

Trevor was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine who met him online, after a few weeks of exchanging e-mails and talking.

He decided at the last minute to change the location of their meet-up (not an official date, mind you) because of ... a ... drum roll... game he wanted to watch!

Mind you, my biological mother once divorced a man because he left the game on their TV all weekend, every weekend...

So this, in my book, earns Trevor the wanker award.

But it gets better (wankier?)

He won't give my friend his address so they can meet. (Trevor: do you, like, live in the Smurf village or something? Up the bean stalk perhaps? Do you need to hide from the daylight, secretly being a vampire? Or do you live with someone already? Why the secrecy?)

She, being smart, sees a red flag and says forget it.

He, being an ass, e-mails her and says he is "really disappointed" and that she should "be ashamed of herself."

(Wankier and wankier...)

Then ... most pathetic and wankiest of all ... he e-mails here AGAIN and says, "Uh, if I give you my address, you still wanna go out?"

Don't think so!

So Trevor, this award is for you. You've earned it in oh so many ways.

- RK

PS This being my lunch break, I didn't think it was wise to search Google images for "wanker," so I will leave you with Tink instead.

And speaking of lurkers

Scarlet wrote an interesting post about people who lurk on your blog but don't leave comments. Oddly enough, that topic has been rolling around in my head for a couple of days, too.

No one is compelled to comment, but I've been put in uncomfortable situations when someone I know who was a friend of a friend of a friend (you get it) "found" my blog and didn't tell me they were reading it. I think if you know the person it's sort of dishonest, you know? So at that point I found myself in the position of censoring what I wrote so I wouldn't make trouble.

Well, fuck it.

I also had a "friend" who totally disappeared once I got laid off from my previous job in 2007, where she also worked, give me the lame excuse "I've been lurking on your blog," when I e-mailed her to see what was up, because she said she wanted to get together. Yeah. Unemployed = damaged goods? Or perhaps it was because her slacker boyfriend didn't like it when I recognized what he was. (By the way if you're reading this, you're welcome for the mentoring, the coffees, and introducing you to the site you now write for.)

Sorry for this random, rambling post. I've been trying to think of everything else but the lame agitators who have been making my life at work difficult. Thankfully, they don't actually work in my office...

I have received some interesting gifts this week. My acupuncturist sent me home with vegan minestrone soup - her Sicilian grandmother's recipe - yum yum! And Pheromone Girl, who is saintly enough to listen to all of my rants about everything, including work, and knows the pain-in-the-ass people who are bothering me, gave me a Care Bear coloring book and a box of crayons! (Implication: I am working with children.)

I took it home and Mr. RK said, "There's a Grumpy Bear? I have faith in humanity now!"

We actually own Grumpy Bear. I offered to put him on our bed, but Mr. RK said no thanks.

And to think that I did it without saying "fuck"

You got the Dr. Seuss reference, of course? Come on - I even gave you a visual clue!

Anyhow - as you well know, sexist tripe, large and small, just pisses me off.

Mr. Riot Kitty and I were in the grocery store Sunday and I used my debit card. (Big whoop, I know...just wait...the laugh is coming.)

I got cash back.

I handed Mr. RK a $10 bill.

The (male) clerk looked at us and said, "What, is that your allowance for the week?"

And I replied, "No, it's his change from last night."

Silence ensued.

Hopefully you are all laughing by now! Also, you should be proud of me, because I wrote an entire post without using the word "fuck."

Oh - right.

Oh well...

Fortune+-cooky

Is that how you spell cooky? As in, a little bit nuts? (Not cookie, mind you.)

So this has been an intense week. I took two crisis calls at work even though we were not a crisis line - from people who, god help them, called a suicide prevention crisis line and were referred to us!!! Yikes.

Among other things, I found out that someone Pheromone Girl and I both know is a perverted creep who has been hitting on women who are emotionally vulnerable...and he's MARRIED!

So far I have counted 3 people he was absolutely inappropriate with, and possibly a fourth - and he pulled some of this shit at an event I did for work. Ugh. When I digested the shock of this I was fuming. Seeing the pattern...and hearing how damned PUSHY he was, PG and I agreed that he needed a swift kick in the nuts.

I sent him the most blunt, the nastiest e-mail, laying it all out. This is completely classless, but I am anonymous in blogospace, so I'll share it with all of you:

I heard what happened with you asking (Girl X) to go have a scotch with you at our luncheon. Not only is this extremely embarrassing to me, because I introduced the two of you and it was an event connected with my job plus the fact that she is on our board - and - HELLO! you are still married! why are you asking someone on a date? - but I find it absolutely disgusting that you dredged this up again after she had told you it made her uncomfortable. The emerging pattern of you going after emotionally vulnerable women - instead of divorcing your bitch of a wife - absolutely disgusts me. Until you change, frankly, you deserve to be miserable. I don't want to hear about it, and neither does anyone else. I don't want to see you, hear from you, or hear of you. I hope I am making myself perfectly fucking crystal clear.

After that, PG and I had lunch today, and my fortune cookie had four fortunes - and one of them was this one:

"You have a charming way with words. Write a letter this week."

We laughed so hard I am surprised we did not choke!

And the funniest part is...this guy is impotent.
I can't help but think this is the universe rewarding him with his karma.

Victory is mine!

If you recognize that, I give you bonus points...and you all know me: after a sad, sappy post (and couple of days), I don't know about you, but I need to laugh!

So I am inventing a new meme..."Six random funny things about other people."

The rules:
1. You must post six random funny things about other people.
2. Then tag six other bloggers.
3. Link to the person who tagged you.
4. They must be FUNNY! Make us laugh! I don't care if we really shouldn't be laughing...that will earn you extra points.

I tag Joey, Darth Weasel, JLee, Mike D, Sidhe, and Scarlet. Note: I am tagging people who make me laugh and who I think will post this stuff. If you have been tagged before and haven't replied, you have temporarily lost your tagging privilege! (And Darth, I'm tagging you because you MUST write about something other than divorce, dumb criminals, and poo.)

And...drum roll...here are my six:

1. My ex-boyfriend knew someone who accidentally burned down his parents' house when he was making macaroni and cheese.

2. I used to work with someone who lost his virginity in a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

3. A good friend of mine once got turned on all day because he wore silk lined pants and no underwear. He never wore them again!

4. The same friend couldn't figure out why, while walking around in a notorious pick-up area in downtown Portland, wearing spandex biker shorts, but without his bike, he was getting cat calls from other men.

5. A former boss (and friend) of mine changed clothes in his office after we went to a meeting and accidentally mooned the secretary in the next office. (Sorry, J, this was just too good not to share!)

6. After a life of crusading against pornography, my grandfather, at age 65 (and a preacher), decided to see what all of the fuss was about. He went to a theater and freaked out about seeing "a 10-foot penis" on the big screen. Telling my dad about it, he said, "I fled for my life!"