Throwing a tantrum

Why the fucking fuck don't memory foam pillows fit in a standard pillowcase?  I gotta shell out for a special fucking pillow because my neck's so fucked up from years of training-related tension, now I gotta buy special fucking pillowcases that don't match my sheets?  Fuck that noise.

While I'm at it, what's with all this #firstworldproblem bullcrap?  Back in my day we didn't come up with whitewashed fauxronic nonwitticisms, we just called shit like the above paragraph what it was: being a spoiled fucking brat. 

And another thing: YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

Bronte-Saurus! RAWR

This prettymuch made my week.



Via

Ways to set off my bullshit meter in less than 5 seconds

Sending me, a student, an email addressed to Dr. Queenrandom with the opening phrase "Due to your stature in the oncology field...."

Winter Wonderland

 I meant to post this photo a while ago.  I snapped it one saturday afternoon when walking home from work.

We do meat substitute right

The Olympics are the ultimate junk TV.  I sit in front of them, mindless, for hours, pretending to know something about the hammer, Salchows, and backside rodeos*.  They keep me up late at night, cheering for the good ole USA.  But also?  They have a lot of commercials.  A LOT.  And I noticed a new commercial for KFC promoting their new boneless fillet, which they promised would be

 BIGGER

MEATIER

JUCIER

Meatier? What in the everliving fuck was there besides meat in their "chicken" before this fillet?  Sawdust, crayon shavings and glue?  How the hell can one meat be meatier than another meat?  They sell plain fucking chicken, for chrissake, it's right there in the name!  I NEED ANSWERS, PEOPLE!  I...I think I need to go take a shower now, I feel unclean.



*Not, as I learned, a gay porn maneuver.  Heh.  MANeuver.

Go Megashark!

 

Via (plus video proof)

Original

Blizzard Blog '09

First things first: Flikr is being a douche (or maybe it's user error but hey I don't feel bad hatin on a conglomeration of code so I absolve myself of responsibility :P) so the album link is here, sorry I can't link individual pics today.

Here's our own personal snow gauge. Our deck furniture doesn't get much wind, so the snow accumulates nicely on it. How many inches does that look like? I think it's over a foot.

Resolved: We are investing in kilts.

LB and I have both recently had pants-related disasters which have left me wondering whether we are responsible enough to be allowed to wear them.

Mine:
So the other day I was wearing my skinny jeans. But these particular skinny jeans are a little weird; they seem to get skinnier every time I wash them and never relax again. Also? While they have plenty of room in the butt, hips and thigh, what I didn't expect is that they would be tight on my monstrous calves (srsly. I have had distance runners astonished by my calf muscle size). So after work I change into my sweats. This day, as I am attempting to pull my skinny jeans off my calves, and they are just not coming off; they are much tighter than usual. I gather my strength give a good jerk, managing to yank so hard that I pull my feet out from under me. As I am falling, in what can only be described as fortuitous clumsiness, instead of landing straight on the floor I instead fall into the corner of the mattress, bounce off in the opposite direction, then land on the floor - looking very dignified with my jeans around my ankles.

LB's:
LB has this ancient pair of dress pants he had somehow inherited, and whether they were structurally sound was in question. This question was answered several months ago, when LB bent over and ripped the buttcrack seam. Like, all the way from taint to waistband. Normally I mend clothes, since between the two of us, I am the least unhandy with a needle. But this was too much for me; I knew that A) I would not be able to get a straight line so his butt would look wavy and B) I would get an ADHD attack halfway through and the stitches would get large and ineffective. So I told him to take them to a tailor. Apparently at some point he instead put them back into the laundry hamper, and they were washed and folded as usual. The other day, LB put them on and wore them to work, NOT NOTICING THE FOOT LONG HOLE IN THEM as he put them on. He briefly tried to blame me when he got home, but I pointed out that not noticing a hole THAT big in the pants you're stepping into was no one's fault but his own. He capitulated, without admitting defeat. I had a laugh at his expense.

This story is awesome. The hero of our story, Dennis LeRoy Anderson, owns a custom, motorized La-Z-boy, which in and of itself is awesome. Not only could he drive it around town (and, as will soon be pertinent, to the bar), but it has a stereo and cupholders built in. Genius. GENIUS! As any person in their right mind would do, he tooled this chair down to the bar one Monday evening and proceeded to get smashed. When Mr. Anderson decided that he had partied enough, he drove his La-Z-boy home. Except poor Mr. Anderson didn't make it home that night; because he was so drunk, he crashed his La-Z-boy into a parked car in the parking lot. Sadly, Mr. Anderson was then issued a DWI and to add insult to injury, his chair was confiscated. All for having the genius of getting wasted in his own, personalized, motorized recliner. Moral of the story: In Minnesota, motorized furniture, while completely awesome, is still considered a vehicle, so don't drive it drunk. Call a friend with a pickup to get a ride home so you can enjoy many more days of getting drunk in your personalized, motorized La-Z-boy.

Deep Thoughts

1. I am really enjoying Glee. Except if they don't stop with the autotune already I may have to stab their sound director.
2. Actually, the whole damn music industry can stop with the autotune any day now. Really. What is so special about sounding like every song was recorded in an echo chamber? I mean, it was cool and paradigm-shifting when Cher did it minimally for effect for the first time but it's starting to get ridiculous. Kind of like Snoop Dogg and the "izzle" craze.
   
3. That balloon boy thing pisses me off. And not about the expense or the attention-whorishness. No, I'm pissed because these people used their child to get 15 minutes. They manipulated him into lying for their own ends. I feel bad for that poor kid; I hope all the money they made on their reality shows will go towards his years and years of therapy.
4. I could really go for a hot glazed doughnut right about now.
5. Oh did I mention I got H1N1? I was in bed basically for a week and a half. That is one nasty bug, and I would not wish it on my worst enemies.
6. When I had H1N1? I was bored. So I read 1984. Reading a book that deals with the perception of reality and cognitive dissonance whilst delirious from fever will give you metaphysical crises in seconds flat.
7. I used to bake a lot. I want to get back into that, but I am lacking inspiration. What are your favorite baked goods, readers?

With all the craziness going on in my life I set out in search of ways to relax and unwind:

• Not Always Right - The blog of customer stupidity for anyone who's ever had the, erm, joy of serving people for a living.
• STFU Parents - For the Facebooker who is tired of the TMI parents post about their offspring, including bowel movements, becoming a woman, and WTF this is.
• I need to install a skylight just so I can try this.
• What would really happen if zombies attacked.
• Toilet signs from around the world (the Legoland one is awesome).

And now I'm off to have some chicken noodle soup and ginger ale; I got attacked by a nasty flu and my eyes are starting to tire of the monitor :P

It's your breakfast, and it's happy to see you!

I tore the label off my peach and this is what it looked like afterward. Pretty cool, huh? (Well, a smiley face would have been cooler)

This Would Be Ironic, In Alanis Morisette's World

I will preface this by saying: I am 95% sure I'm fine.

I got hit by a car on the way home from work. Walking.

I was running late, and was walking across the street. There was a van stopped at the stoplight. I cut across the street behind the van, which randomly decided to back up. Instincts kicked in. I put out my left hand, slapped the van hard and used its momentum to push my body away from it. It wasn't moving fast and I was able to absorb the blow with my forearm and keep anything else from getting hit. I continued forward movement, when it suddenly dawned on me, "Hey! That car just HIT ME!" In disbelief I half turned to look at it, at which point I tripped on the curb, torqued my ankle and fell on my hip. I landed on mostly muscle and fat so I'm a bit sore there, but everything else seems fine. I'll stop by urgent care if anything hurts more than a bruise, which is what it feels like now.

But honestly, who manages to avoid being injured by being hit by a car, only to injure herself by tripping over a curb? FML

Why I Love Being Short

I'm short. 5'3", to be exact, although I was 5'2" from about 7th grade until midway through college. A lot of the time I get bogged down and grumpy about all the negative sides of being short - things I can't do, clothes I can't wear, shitty things people do and say (folks, my head is NOT an armrest, and I DO have plenty of reasons to live, tyvm), etc etc. Today I decided to think about the positives of my height:

• I always have an excuse to get someone else to change lightbulbs.
• I don't fall as far when I trip.
• My feet will never hang off the end of a bed.
• I can sleep as comfortably on most couches as if they were a bed (well..a lumpy bed. With cushions).
  
• My height wouldn't cause difficulties for me when traveling in prettymuch any foreign country (although my legs are still too long to sit comfortably in most airplanes - I think they are designed for toddlers).
• I generally don't have to look out for low-hanging branches when out and about.
• When we hug, my head rests comfortably on LB's chest and I can listen to his heart.
• I will never hit my head on a doorframe unless I am wildly uncoordinated.
• I can sit comfortably in most adult-sized chairs.
• I can sit and drive comfortably in most cars.
• At my height, I'm actually TALLER than the world average.
• I have a lower cancer and heart disease risk than my tall peers and am less likely to die in a car crash.
• I can experience and react to the world faster than tall people thanks to temporal binding.
  

Work is da poop...and other obscure computer game references

My 28th birthday is coming up. It's the first time I feel a bit...sad about my birthday. I had a lot of goals, a lot of things I wanted to do before I turned 28 (most people pick like 30; I just roll a little different I guess). Some of them I've completed, but some of the bigger ones, I haven't, and those make me sad. I usually meet the goals I set out for myself, so not completing one is very disconcerting and demotivating to me. Also, I have to work on my birthday, and work is da poop.

Speaking of work, I have recently gotten some great results that really make my thesis project into a nice little (sexy!) story. The gene interaction I have found will really up the impact factor of my eventual paper, regardless of what I find next. I have a biological effect, backed by a known effector of the pathway, which is a very famous oncogene, and this interaction fits very well into a model of both normal brain development and medulloblastoma formation (which is what I am studying). There's more work to be done, of course, but I have a very solid foundation at this point which, in the context of thesis research (especially in my circumstances), is pretty fucking huge. So that's good. With hard work I think I can get out of here in 1.5 years maximum, 1 minimum, depending on if I'm lucky and all my experiments magically do not require troubleshooting :P

Bits & Pieces

• OK first? My ISP majorly blows. I do NOT like random multi-day outages.
• Second, this? is awesome. "So, Bob, what do you do for a living?" "Well, Jill, I take pictures of penguin shit from outer space." Actually I do think it's a bit creative and cool.
• Definition: Irony (n) - Being shit-scared of falling down and hurting oneself when rollerblading for the first time in a year, then injuring oneself removing rollerblades immediately after sighing relief due to an injury-free hour of rollerblading.
• Sammiches are awesome. Especially the variety with hard salami and spicy peppers. Someday my stomach is going to just up and quit, methinks.
• This is totally sick and wrong (no pun intended): 60% of all bankrupcies are due to medical debt; over three-quarters of those bankrupt people had health insurance. We need to get the hell on this. From the bottom up. I had a 15 minute doctor visit a few months back when I hit my head on a shelf (aaaand that's a story for another day). The bill was $150 (thank God for my insurance). That's $10 a minute for someone to have me touch my nose with my finger and walk in a line. And, this is at one of the "cheaper" health systems in the country. This system is fucked from the ground up. Universal health care won't be a cure all. We need more.
• This song is awesome: Guess Who Ran Away With the Milkman by The Pipettes (if only for the title, ha!). Click to listen, srsly. They're a 60's girl group reimagined in punk style. Here's the refrain:

I don't want to get a mortgage

or think of when I'm sixty-three
Or in terms of dogs and babies
I know how much you love me
But I don't think I love you
Anymore

• I realized today that I adore break-up songs like most people adore love songs. Also? Songs that are depressing in lyric but happy and upbeat in instrumentals are my faves. There is something wrong with my brain.
  

The Truth is Brutal

LB(from the bathroom): Aaaaw. *heavy sigh*

QR: Huh?

LB: I was just weighing myself.

QR: That scale weighs light by about 8 pounds, you know.

LB: (imagine high-pitched scandalized valley girl shriek) Uh! No it doesn't! Fuck you!

The messenger! She...has..beeeen...shoooooooooooooot....ugh *dies*

Urgence de Mode

I used to work for a cirque that was based in Ontario; when they stopped by Minnesota, blocks away from my apartment, I got a job womanning the box office. In the box office, I had some flamingly french bosses. Pascal loved to watch the customers walk by and we were instructed, if we saw an outfit gone hideously awry, to yell "Fashion Emergency!" (we were in the box so no one outside could hear) so he (and everyone else cramped in the box) could run to our window and behold the nightmare. Well, one day, one of the managers left their walkie-talkie on and a customer overheard our titilation. We were instructed, the next day, to substitute Urgence de mode! since most minnesotans don't understand french anyway.

Well, at my current institution, we have missing person alerts from time to time. 99% of the time they're benign, like, someone wandered off to the bathroom without telling their spouse. There are a lot of people here and it's easy to get lost in a crowd. This morning, I hear the usual PA announcement: "Attention, attention. There is a missing person. Last seen in XXX building. 78 year old male wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt with a flag and a Harley." I immediately thought "Urgence de mode!" That man wasn't missing, he was just kidnapped for a quick round of What Not to Wear. (less than 10 minutes later we got the all clear announcement, I'm not a complete monster :P)

My fuckit list

I actually started this a while ago before the meme got old, but you'll have to take my word for it :P

So here's my (growing) list of things that, at some point I had considered I would/could/should do, but decided...eh, fuck it:

• Eat anything containing insects.
• Go on a road trip.
• Run a marathon.
• Learn how to change the oil in my car.
• Cut butter out of my diet, even temporarily.
• Not waste any time.
• Have a spotless house.
• Making everyone around me happy.
• Go hunting.
• Gamble at a casino.
• Keep a diary.
  
• Waste my time taking the stairs just to get that minuscule amount of exercise, when the elevator is faster.
• Try to understand/be understood by toxic people.
• Tweeting.
  
• Wear uncomfortable pants because they look good or are in.
• Read a boring book just because it's a "classic" (I'm looking at you, Gatsby).
• Put up and/or shut up.
• Purposely tan.
• Give a crap about "social networking."
• Learn to appreciate modern art.
• Vote for the lesser of two evils rather than the best candidate.
• Deal with people who piss me right the fuck off.
• Read/discuss/think about any more Jane Austen books, especially if someone claims "Oh but this is the good one, it's not like the others!"
  

Resolution and Rhyme

Momma's got a brand new bag

So I have decided that it is time to revive my blog and get my damn ass in gear. I haven't been that great at posting regularly to begin with, and I let my annual Works-In-Progress talk* be my crutch for writing even less in the past few months.

So, I have resolved starting this Monday (which is, today, after all), I am going to write every day for 4 weeks. Hopefully this will help me figure out how to get my creative juices flowing rather than being a crapfest for my dwindling readership. We shall see. Bets?

*An annual talk where I get up in front of my peers and professors and whomever wanders in off the street for free pizza and talk for an hour about all the things I haven't done in the past year.

Ode to Nuvaring, an Elizabethan Sonnet

Note: I wrote this after a bizarre and increasingly gutter-dwelling conversation with a friend that started out with me bitching about being sick and ended with, well, this:

O joy is the feeling in my bosom
Upon pon'dring my glorious Nuvaring
For no babe shall my empty womb blossom;
Without my permission, babies shan't spring.
Encirc'ling my cervix comfy and warm,
You keep me safe from too sore breasticles,
You fend off persistent, unwanted sperm
That hail, ruthless, from husband's testicles.
Like a kitten, my uterus can nap
Lazily, emptily wiling her hours
Spending bachelorettehood behind my lap
Waiting, wistful, to unleash her powers.
O, Nuvaring, pray do not fail me now,
Or poverty's sweat shall pepper my brow!