Thursday, January 28, 2010

Google is a Harsh Mistress

Mom and Dad used to play S&M and Kings in the Corner, vicious little card games that led to lots of trash talking and certain bragging rights.

Dad and the Peach have been playing Kings in the Corner, but Dad wants to branch into S&M.

"Didn't you say you found the rules online a couple of years ago?" he asked.

"Yeah, through the magic of Google," said I.

[SUMMARY: This is not subtle foreshadowing.§]

*************

From: "Dad"
To: "Marin"
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010
9:08:43 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: S & M

Daughter,
I googled "S & M", "Sadism & Masochism" , then put "card game" behind each... went through about a dozen pages of sex topics without finding anything about the game.
Help?
dad

*************

[SUMMARY: You knew it was coming, but you still laughed.#]

I had to remind him it stands for "Spite & Malice."


FOOTNOTE (crossed): Stop it. That's my DAD you're sniggering at.

FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Enough! I don't laugh at your father's predilections. Of course, if you blog about them, I might.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): But you're going to laugh when you get to the punchline anyway.

FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I know we're not talking about my Dad's weirdities, but does anyone else think there's a sitcom moment in the fact that he apparently continued to browse through dozens of sex sites before he called for help?

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Told you so.

@RANDOM ADDITIONAL FOOTNOTE (atted): What do you suppose this post will do to *my* Google searchability?

I Laughed.

Thought For The Day:

Angels:

Women are Angels.

And, when someone breaks our wings...

we simply continue to fly... on a broomstick...

We are flexible.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Guess Where I Am

First clue: usually I play this game on Twitter, but I'm in a place with no cell service, no 3G... T-Mobile radio silence.*

That's right, Billings, Montana. Trying to fix something I broke five years ago because I sucked then, but I don't suck quite so much now.**

[SUMMARY: Pride is a sin. I am a saint-in-waiting.]

Also? This computer doesn't recognise CTRL-C for copy or CTRL-V for paste,*** so I can't get my normal**** footnotes on the page.

I really like Billings,***** but I'll be glad to get back to Denver where the cell phones work and the footnotes come with pretty crosses****** and swirls.*******


*FOOTNOTE (one star): This happened the last time I came to Billings. And the time before that. The definition of insanity...

**FOOTNOTE (two stars): When the person you respect most in your field, ever, tells you you screwed up, tells you you're good at what you do, tells you you screwed up, tells you you're better now than you were when you screwed up, tells you everybody screws up, but you definitely screwed up, but you shouldn't beat yourself up about it... you spend a LOT of time beating yourself up about it. I suck.

***FOOTNOTE (three stars): Yet somehow recognises CTRL-B for bold. This is the most confusing alphabet book ever.

****FOOTNOTE (four stars): OK, so there's nothing normal about my footnotes.

*****FOOTNOTE (five stars): More fantastic restaurants per capita than Manhattan and an art museum that hosts the kind of collections only old oil money can provide.

******FOOTNOTE (six stars): I'm a saint-in-training. I *need* my crosses. Besides, isn't it a little confusing when I use the asterisks for emphasis and you're off looking for the footnote that goes with "need"?

*******FOOTNOTE (seven beautiful stars... MWAHAHAHA! *bats**lightning*): How'm I s'posed to get my swerve on if there's no swerve button on this stupid computer?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Best Thing I've Heard All Day

"Relax. There's no debtor's prison in America and they're not going to eat you."

Clean Sweep

OK, my inclination here is to rant and rave and piss and moan and spit and claw and scream...

[SUMMARY: My checklist for crazy.]

...but I'm going zen.%

The zero comments for the last three years, that's a fresh, clean start.

We can all go forward like we've never spoken of balloon animal sex and thermocromatic glass and past indiscretions and knitterly wiles.

Like a kid in a new school, it's a little scary, but each of us can invent a comment persona anew. Nobody needs to know. There's no evidence.

[SUMMARY: *tick* *tick* *tick*]

JS-Kit can take their Echo and their promises and shove them up their collective ass.§ They bought Haloscan, promised wonderful things, told me numerous times I had to upgrade or lose everything and NEVER got it all working.

Consequently, other than Yvette's comment on kidrobot,@ anything that's happened over in the comment section for the last... three years is gone. I'm sorry if you commented in the last week and I missed you.

In the end, the only solution was to remove them entirely, including all the comments ever. I'll just use the plain vanilla Blogger comment option. Suits me just fine.

[SUMMARY: *sniff*]

The grapes were probably sour anyway.


FOOTNOTE (crossed): In other words, just an average Wednesday.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): What a theological goulash... the perennial candidate for sainthood going zen.

FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): It can be like that time at camp when you told all your bunkmates you were a wildly popular and sought-after designer of mazes and the adoring throngs kept you up all night every night begging for more of your confounding and elegant creations. Maybe I'm projecting.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Don't start. That *is* the zen version of what I feel about JS-Kit right now.

@FOOTNOTE (atted): Which somehow made it through the gauntlet to the Blogger comment thingie. Yvette has superpowers.

FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Plain vanilla and sour grapes. A taste treat whose time has come.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Aaaaand...

...that's as far as I got Tuesday.

Shiny new speedy computer and psychofast N+ wireless router that arrived at Chez Barfly last night§ should help this absence thing.

Meanwhile, a little news: Kidrobot, a NY toy company that went viral and exploded into a designer toy company with its own line of clothing, is moving to Boulder.

I know that may not tickle you so much now,# but just look!


Sleepy Bear Titus from the kidrobot website

Man-eating skull bear with a spork!


FOOTNOTE (crossed): Stainless steel finish. Which I partly got because it's shiny and partly because, for some stupid reason, the stainless one has an extra year of warranty for an extra $40, so it seemed the economic choice as well as the aesthetic one.

FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I have about zero idea what that means in practical terms -- mostly it's new, fast and shiny, and that's what life's all about.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Don't get me started on the shipping clusterfuck that happened with that... suffice to say that a truly frustrating and horrible, hungry day ended with me sitting with the fastest wireless router known to man purring contentedly on a shiny new supercompter next to Vol 1 of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes while the BCS National Championship game played. I probably cashed in a ton of kharma points for that last hour of the day.

FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I'm probably not using that right. Like "hot mess," I have my version, the cool kids have theirs.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Hey! It's AntiM! Give it a minute and you WILL BE TICKLED.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

This Morning

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, "I. Will blog. Today."

"Damnit," I added.

Despite the fact that I left the office at 7:30 last night and came in at 6:45 this morning, there were five emails requiring my attention when I got in this morning.

For fuck's sake.

[SUMMARY: Some excuses are more equal than others.]

So let's catch up a little, shall we? That'll be good for a pig-lick of a blogpost and will probably take up a lot of space, even if I were 2 use Prince-speak.

*tick* *tick* *tick*