Inadvertently

• 2011-07-06

  My FB Check

  The guy I dated back in March has posted a picture of a slender man with a mullet wearing a Speedo and a bulky watch. Shortly after he posted a photo of a McDonald’s street sign upon which the word “angus” was misspelled.
  
  My nephew asked me to attend an event that isn’t actually and event but an ostensible attempt to break an FB record for participants. However, the event has links to a sponsor who is actually a youtuber trying to get famous.
  
  Females have gone on vacations and posted photos of themselves having fun. Males have done this too, but to a slightly lesser degree.
  
  A status update that referenced clowns was heavily commented upon. All prayer requests had at least two replies one of which was the OP going into quite a bit further detail as to why the request was made after which a few more comments gave assurances that prayers were said.
  
  Several invites to games, causes, events, and suggestions of pages to visit have been made sometime over the past few weeks. I remember reading how to block these; however, I’ve not learned how to do this and do not feel obligated to learn it as the knowledge gained will likely become moot when updates are made.
  
  Ads target my specific demographic which is apparently female, old, fat, poor, uneducated and lonely. Only one of these assumptions actually bothered me.
  
  Pokes still exist.
  
  I noticed a feeling of guilt when seeing  words from people I like but am hopeful these people will understand that I if they have my phone number, that is my real world default for caring.

• 2011-06-18

  Virtual Rabbit Hole Lesson #2

  Having not attained total media saturation, I decided to write something again. That and I got bored trying to find a gif of a Soon meme giraffe to link to a friend for an early Father’s Day salutation. At least I think it was a giraffe. By the time I get to these things I am exhausted and I refuse to wear my glasses. I also don’t star or favorite much content, so it makes it difficult to find things again. But I am paranoid and I don’t want to die and have my favorites and stars sifted through by my mourning relatives and have them stumble across some blasphemous piece if eloquent tripe and then hold me in lower regard because of it. Fuckers. (Yeah, the link didn’t help me, but there’s a few examples of the meme both with and without cats.)

  I have cats. Three of them. One of them is a sicko. He licks my arm sometimes and unlike a dog’s friendly yet still disgusting just-licked-my-butt-a-second-ago “kisses”, when a cat licks you it’s like going to a blind manicurist. To get the effect, rub an emery board across the inside of your arm for a few seconds. I’m not into it.

  Though, while looking for the picture of an emery board to link, I searched for the most expensive emery board. They’re usually pretty inexpensive. It turns out that you can buy a shit ton of them for 51k according to the Google shopping results sorted by price from high to low. That’s like 4000 cats with OCD and severe separation anxiety. A steal it ain’t.

  But I digress. It’s what I do. Which is why I end up at Yahoo Answers so often. If you have any question at all, someone on Yahoo Answers not only has answered it, but has done so hilariously 9.6 times out of 10 ( according to the statistics I pulled out of thin air - no - not my bum. Thin. Fucking. Air, man.). You know it’s really fucked up that so many snooty people (who you know damn well wiki everything they don’t know already) denigrate Wikipedia as a source. Good lord, compared to Yahoo Answers, there is no manner of rap artist page desecration or Palin history changing with edits that goes on with the Wiki that even compares to the kind of comedy that one can find at YA. This writer found some things funny and used “rabbit hole” too.

  I did not read that article myself past the first few lines as there was a picture of senior citizens making out in bed and it reminded me that I need to buy a new iron. Irons, like every bloody other appliance, come in very expensive models and models that have names that are plays on the names of the very expensive models. I can make a crap iron last for… well, this is the first one I might remember buying so let’s say 20 years. I’ll go with Sunbeam thank you. That’ll be what? Ten bucks? Sold.

  Yeah, that’s right. They went with the minimalist white photo and stayed with the aged logo that looks like it could cut you and cauterize the wound in one motion. All that white not only reminds one of their signature color, but of…wow… really really bad chunky hair highlights. And hey, is it racist to have all white people in the photo? It is sometimes when the cover of glossy magazines feature a multitude of performers and no people of color make the front of the fold. Or so I read somewhere. The people at Sodahead say something about it but I was too distracted by Spike Lee’s impersonation of Steve Urkel. Doesn’t matter. I do my own hair and it looks better than the Sunbeam mom’s hair. And that’s a value right there.

  I feel okay about myself now.

• 2010-08-30

  Virtual Rabbit Hole Lesson #1

  When he told me that he mostly focused on the Greeks and Romans while covering mythology, I wondered why the scope was so small. It made me think how remiss I have been with my coverage of anything regarding Hindu mythology, religion or philosophies in my classes. I am woefully uneducated in the area. I decided to spend a few hours a week reading up to address the issue. I’ve just started both online and off.

  Of course the obligatory Wikipedia entry and all links were read right away. And a good many searches have already taken place, but until last night I had forgotten about Godchecker.  I am happily reminded why I have it bookmarked every time I go there.

  I read through the lot of it and was stopped by the last paragraph in the Lakshmi entry. It took me a while to understand what it meant as I am unaccustomed to the idiomatic term “do in” being split. I enjoy the cadence of it now, but then it sent me on a tiny search for the Goddess Lakshmi to figure it out.

  Clicking down and scanning the links of that tangent, I inadvertently clicked on a fetish site. It was/is the site of a professional dominatrix who uses the goddess’s name. Having quite a few dishes in the sink and even more laundry to do, I became curious if dominatrices actually do have their subjects complete household chores or if that is just the stuff of comedies. Not that I want to change profession. There was just a LOT of laundry. So I clicked after having steeled myself for the rifling through ball gag hilarity to get to information.

  Surprisingly, there was no nudity. Nary a ball gag in site and the information was easy to find. Poe’s Law came to mind several times while reading the text. (I still think it might be a fake. But then I still think Down With Pinatas is could be real too.) In any event, it turns out that the professional dominatrix prefers Bath & Body cucumber melon scented thingamabobbers should someone want to purchase those for her. The Prada fixation was kind of expected, but not the cucumber melon B & B scent.

  I have that scent in a perfume on my nightstand.

  My life is not interesting. I go on tangent web searches between books and chores and work. I lurk all over and I watch the Hulus and the Netflixers. I don’t have a dating profile and the last date I went on resulted in my writing a science fiction piece about bologna. I have three cats for fuck’s sake.

  However, I do have the scent of a professional dominatrix on my nightstand.

  tl:dr Lakshmi sent you to a bdsm site so you may want to focus on Vishnu for a bit. 

• 2010-08-29

  Hey, Old Computery Ooteries. You’re still cute.

  I’ve recently read an article and comment thread I have no business reading really. I couldn’t resist. The article was from that breakfast cereal, TechCrunch. I haven’t tried it and I do not know if it shreds the roof of the mouth.

  Happening upon the story just a few hours after it was posted, I read it and even as I dismissed it as “not my business no way buddy” it stuck with me, and I knew I’d want to read reactions to it. The story was about how guys prefer young girls. Not really. But really. It was about how in Silicon Valley there is a habit of hiring young and a bias against hiring old. And to me, a woman who even when I was aged in the range for possible physical hotness was far too irascible to be approached, the article made me think of all the older computery ooteries as the first wives I’ve met.

  I sympathized with the potential anger and angst I thought might appear in a comment thread somewhere. And it did in several places. I chose a longer one so that I could read many different perspectives and counter reactions. My official excuse for spending the time was that the author I had been wanting to read had no books at my local library and I had to request they be shipped. I wish I were cool enough to be unapologetically bitchy and say that I read with glee the comeuppance of the male species as they’ve apparently been handed their own shite and don’t like it. But I am not that cool. I really just wanted to see how they took the bad news. How they handled the heartbreak.

  I feel the panic that the older fellows feel and sympathize. There is no heterosexual man who is looking for a woman my age no matter what qualities I have. Not for a real relationship. No matter how easy it would be for a man to have what he wants or to be happy and fulfilled with an older woman, the vast majority of men are going to pick fresher eggs even if they’re not going to cook them. And in my case, the eggs very well may have been recalled were there ever an opportunity to do it. So I do feel the ache a bit.

  As I read the thread of reactions the young piped in and slid underhanded jabs all phrased in such a way as to make it seem as a self evident fact had been pointed out. Nothing personal, your breasts just give me nightmares thinking about how much they must sag. After all, you are not superhuman and gravity doesn’t give a crap about your personality. Yes. Women do it very well as they’ve had thousands of years of practice.

  I must admit that I did enjoy the foreign terminology. It kept me afloat in what is clearly either going to become or is already an encroaching depression for these older men who will not be able to find good work. The argot alone was worth the read to me. Though I didn’t understand what each word meant it wasn’t difficult to see how the words could be replaced with relationshippy verbiage. Shoot, “ruby” could even stay in some places and it would still make perfect sense. I particularly enjoyed that.

  A couple of mentions of possible unionization were made and at those mentions I felt what likely every slightly worried person reading the thread felt: A cocktail of equal parts hope and self loathing for that hope.

  The bottom line for the companies it seems is about the booty no matter how casually yet politely stilted the replies were. The older will cost more and won’t last as long. The younger can be used thoroughly for a great long while and be trained to do one’s bidding, and most importantly, can be ditched before they get to prime cancer insurance sucking ages. And then I realized that in a way it is much harder for these (mostly) men than it is for a first wife. A company is going to tap that ass. The entity doesn’t age the same and it can go all night. But a man is going to eventually prefer good company.

  Anyway, I titled the entry as a greeting and the tone it should take is that of commiseration as well as flirtation, not annoyance. After all, one of the things I have been able to maintain from my youth is the capacity to fall over myself in a crush over a guy who uses words I’d like to know. There is nothing so agelessly attractive as being interesting.

  The tl;dr version is: Hey old computery guys, somebody out there will value you forever. Do not be afraid. Not really, but keep your collective chins up anyway. The scars you’ll get could be construed as sexy.

• 2010-08-26

  Babysitting

  I was happy to watch my friends’ three month old while they were buying a safer car. The tiny person being a girl made it easier. Baby boys, when it comes to diaper changing, are like defective squirt guns. They shoot in any random direction.

  All went well. Nobody went missing any toes or anything, but I may have scarred her a bit or perhaps embedded a distaste for Anais Nin’s erotica in her noggin. Little Birds was the only book nearby that could be held with one hand while I bounced the bouncy seat the baby rested in. I was unaware until later that there was a power button for automatic bouncing, so little girl got an earful of sad erotica.

  I didn’t think it would be too bad overall because that book was pretty predictable and I made sure to warn her that Manual, the first story’s protagonist, was likely going to be a bit of a pedophile and asked if I should stop? She frowned. So I kept reading but I became very uncomfortable with the text. We both squirmed.

  I am not sure why she was squirming, but I was because of how crappy the story was. I began to critique between particularly bad sentences. Manuel was introduced was a poor artist, but he still managed to rent an apartment on the sly, fix it up and then spend three days’ of food money on exotic birds to lure little girls up to his apartment so he could pee in front of them? I don’t think so. Not erotic nor particularly interesting.

  What was interesting was that every time I would read the baby’s face would go blank and every time I would sound off in a mumbled rant about how publishers will latch on to any garbage once someone is famous, she would laugh. She made a high pitched squeal of what appeared to be delight when, exasperated, I sighed and told her, “This sucks so bad. I’m sorry.” Aiming to please, I continued, “It would have been a much better story if the little girls had kicked Manuel to death before they ran.” And the baby squealed again.

  So for the next forty minutes I verbally adapted the story until it became a hyperviolent piece of gore fiction. The baby seemed pleased and actually laughed at some points. I kind of want to take her to see her first Tarantino film now.