Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

Month: January 2009 (Page 1 of 2)

No Patience For The Stupid. Or Zombies.

Actually, I have yet to see a horror movie where zombies really exhibit a whole lot of intelligence. I believe it’s inherent in the name …. a reanimated dead body, according to Merriam-Webster. And that says NOTHING about brains. For the most part, I think zombies just amble around in stiff, uncomfortable way, much like all of us over the age of 35 do in the morning. Just maybe not with arms outstretched, looking to kill you. Because that also seems to be their thing, to kill you.

Well, I lost a good chunk of time this week to the zombie, mostly because I got really really mad, and I posted on Ravelry under the title “SHE’S  NOT DEAD”. (that post is below). I ranted, like I did here earlier in the week, about this zombie faker and because most things in Lazy Stupid & Godless fly by at an alarmingly rapid rate, I thought it would be a nice cleansing post, I’d get about 8 replies, and we’d continue on with our lives. Yeah. I can be dense sometimes. I now know how the idiot out in California feels when she thinks it’s not too windy to make a little fire to cook some wienies, and suddenly half the state is on fire.I felt a little nauseous, because blowback is often what happens to people who do such stuff.

Whups?

Anyway, more proof is being gathered (though as someone observed, it’s very hard to prove a negative) – but if you can convict someone of murder without a body, I’m thinking we can find a preponderance of evidence that would eliminate any doubts people may still have. It will live on a website and will be fabulous!

What set me over the edge was that my friend told me that a knit-along was being formed in her memory for next month. And that meant… more people would buy her patterns that were still up for sale under the premise donations were being made to charity. The one I saw said it was going to the American Cancer Society, and friends, when you lose the one person in your life who’s always been there, taught you at least half of what you know and was the only source of unconditional love for 30 years – when you lose someone like that to cancer, and someone else uses cancer to make a buck? PlazaJen get real mad and blow up like Hulk.  And all the world fell away around me and I couldn’t see straight & my hair on the back of my neck went up and I think the air might have crackled a bit. So I pounded out a non-naming bitch slap, and discovered a whoooole lotta people who were hot on the trail & dug up more evidence and started tracking her on Ravelry, much the way the weatherman here tracks Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Change your name? Beep beep beep beep, seconds later it is announced to everyone and the private messaging exploded. Really, I was impressed at the sleuthiness of my fellow LSG’ers, because they were ON IT like beagles after a fox.  All of this will go to the joint effort that’s being amassed, for the evidence website.

The crazy part is, she’s still on the site. Why, is beyond me. Talk about a pariah. To paraphrase the old saying, “Bitch – you’ll never knit in this town again.” RIP Momma Monkey, Confined2Me, Miss Cissy, GinaBlaq, Ginablackq, whatever you want to call yourself today, tomorrow, next week. Those eyes I saw peering out of my computer monitor have to look at themselves in the mirror, and I know. I KNOW. No matter how hard you try and mind fuck yourself, you will know, in the smallest. darkest, dustiest room tucked deep in your soul, that what you did was wrong. Might I suggest something for your next tattoo?

“I repent”

Backwards. On your forehead.

~~~~~ for the non-Ravelers, this was my post~~~~~~~~

K.
If you knew there was a pile of proof, pointing to the fact that someone who was a popular indie knitter/designer/purveyor of goods had FAKED THEIR DEATH, and you could hardly talk about it with anyone, because nobody knows what to do with this proof, or really, even, how to present it to the greater community? What would one do?
(Besides self-combust, of course.)

No, I am not referencing Teh Crazy that is MCY. This preceded MCY, but it parallels quite astonishingly. I did not uncover the proof, but I trust the person who did, who has, in turn, had numerous pieces confirmed by others close to the person.

My problem, as a member of this fabulous community, is that designs are probably still being purchased, because said moneys are now going to “charity”. People cried real tears over the individual’s death! This as nuclear as a FatBoy over Nagasaki, and yet, I can barely keep my ire in check, knowing that this individual is walking around – blogging and tweeting about what pants to wear – while the community at large has been duped – once again.

Therefore, I would at least like to petition the general knitting community that, from this point forward, some sort of newspaper death notice, or coroner’s report, or police blotter item be required before tributes, fundraisers, knit-a-longs or other fantastic acts of kindness are performed. I do not want to become a hard-hearted bitch, anymore than I already am, and I think this is the only way we can keep these horrid people from yanking the rug out from under us. Are we in agreement?

To quote my friend Willy, “Truth will out.”

Bruised Orange

Today was a …. “Meh” kind of day. Last night’s sleep was interrupted repeatedly by dogs, and today just was one of those less-than days. Rudeness begot irritation, and it’s like watching a snowball roll down a really big hill. You simply know it’s going to get bigger as it moves ahead, and you feel your powerlessness. There were a couple things in particular that crept under my skin, there were a couple other things that made me laugh heartily, but the undercurrent was always an anchor pulling downward, and if a fork in the road presented itself, I chose the path more irritated.We all have those days….

One of my favorite singer-songwriters, all the way from childhood, is John Prine. I’ve written about him before, but my devotion to him never wavers. His songs run the gamut, from sarcastic yet cheerful, to plumbing the depths of a depressed mind or situation. So, given the greyness of the day, the general sense of malaise, I wasn’t all that surprised to find myself belting out my go-to song of his on my commute home. I even turned down the radio, so I could hear my voice resonate around me, to be undistracted in my ennui. And, as always, I heard my dad, reminding me of the lesson in the song. “For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter. You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there” (and I see his eyebrow raise as he looks at me, knowing I know the words by heart, just as he does, knowing that I handle things the way he does, knowing that I need to remember I have a choice…) “wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow…”

So, I guess I need a hacksaw tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)

My heart’s in the ice house come hill or come valley
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley
On a cold winter’s morning to a church house
just to shovel some snow.
I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin’ nuder,
An altar boy’s been hit by a local commuter
just from walking with his back turned
to the train that was coming so slow.
You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
throw your hands in the air, say “What does it matter?”
but it don’t do no good to get angry,
so help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
wrapped up in a trap of your very own
chain of sorrow.
I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there.
I sat on a park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair
and my head shouted down to my heart

“You better look out below!”

Hey, it ain’t such a long drop don’t stammer don’t stutter
from the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter
and you carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.

(P.S. When I was a little kid? I thought the words “Howl naked, gettin’ nuder” were absolutely SCANDALOUS and fabulous all at once. Now I just think they’re brilliant.)

Snake Oil and Cybercide

There’s been at least one incident in the knitting community of a yarn purveyor faking an illness, then death, in order to get out of her obligations and as a way of dealing with the complaints about the product quality. Ravelry folks know this is under the “Mystical Creations, Yo” group, and what a kerfuffle it was/is. Apparently this woman is perfectly fine, reportedly driving a new car, and was initially spotted at a Wal-Mart (isn’t everyone’s undoing going to be at a Wal-Mart?).  The announcement of her fraud caused an uproar, and mind you, we knitters have resources. It cracks me up to think just how mobilized we really could be, if someone would just stop distracting us with yarn sales – we truly could take over the world, what with all the various professions out there. Including lawyers, who know how to search legal databases and what charges should be filed in the case of fraud!  I stopped following the thread because, well, I have to work, and the conversation itself was rather life-consuming. But for an onlooker, what a rubbernecking train wreck, indeed.

Turns out, this is not the only death-faker in the yarn community! Another one has done this – did it before MCY, in fact, and was discovered through, of all things, a social networking tool. See, even if you successfully fake your own death online, and shut down your blog, your Etsy shop, all that stuff, if you DON’T CHANGE YOUR EMAIL ADDY, someone will eventually click that button on their Facebook/Twitter/Plurk screen that says, “Check to see if my contacts are on here!” And boy, will that person be shocked to see you alive & well, tweeting and blogging away.  With your same first name, and uh, pictures of your TATTOOS. Really? Have you not even heard of CSI? Or go to the post office and see the descriptions of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted? Tattoos fall under “Scars and Marks”.   (Point of clarification: This discovery did not happen to me. Again, I’m just rubbernecking. But I got the account of this firsthand from a former defender & champion of the Undead Knitter, and she is rightfully fit-to-be-tied by this twist of events.)  Now Undead has slammed the privacy doors shut on those portals, because she realized she’d been found, but here’s what you didn’t think about, sweetie: we all have an IP address. And the fact that you opened up a second dummy account on Ravelry, three months before your  untimely “demise”, right about the time things started piling up? Oh yean,  and you posted from both accounts? Means the source of those account postings can be checked. And they will be checked.

And all those people who paid for things they didn’t get are going to be pissed. All the people who wrote heartfelt condolences will feel their hearts harden, just a little bit.  Which really sucks. Knitters are typically pretty generous, and unused to being scammed by con artists. They would have been upset, but far more forgiving of a straightforward atonement for your predicament, whatever it was that drove you to hoodwink so many.  Your karmic acts will need to triple, for the rest of your life, to atone for this.

There’s a sucker born every minute, as the saying goes. But it’s best to remember that sometimes the suckers carry really pointy objects, and have resources to even the playing field.  Stay tuned, for this essplosion has only just begun to erupt….

Hacking Starbucks

A couple weeks ago, I found myself at a Starbucks, around 8 o’clock in the evening, and as much as I love my lattes, that’s just too late for me to consume caffeine. (Yes, I know, I can get decaf, but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I wanted to try something new.)

So I ordered the Berry Chai Infusion.

Oh. Mah. God. Tart but sweet, spicy and smooth. Love at first sip.

I decided I had to figure out a way to recreate this at home. My first attempt was so-so, but my second attempt is pretty darned good. And a lot fewer calories, to boot! I’m slurping one right now, and it’s de-lish.

You can make your own, too! I’m not much on exacting specifics, but here’s what I did:

8-10 cups hot water

3 Tazo Black Chai tea bags

3 Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zinger tea bags

8 single-serve packets of Splenda

Pomegranate-Black Currant Juice (We had some Old Orchard juice I’d scored on clearance at Target, seemingly because they’re not making it anymore. Their Healthy Balance line looks like they’ve got some great blends that would work just as well. You want something with a tart base, and a blended juice tempers one flavor from dominating. And, bonus, 1/3 the calories! I’ll probably try the Pom-Blueberry-Acai next.)

Place the tea bags in a teapot, cover with hot water. Add the Splenda packets (or wait & do this after you taste-test), and allow to steep. When the tea is sufficiently strong, pour about 1/3-cup to 1/2-cup of juice into your mug, fill to the top with tea, and then microwave 30-60 seconds so the whole drink is piping hot.

Bravo Tazo, baby! You just hacked in. Let me know how yours goes! I think you could try all kinds of variations, with the constant being the black chai, and a tart juice.

Douchebaggery…..

I have a short list of things that – just in the space of today – have made me utter or think the word “Douchebag”.

1. Waiting until you are at or near a complete stop to signal your turn. Hi. The rest of us are actually paying attention? And you are inconveniencing us. Especially if we don’t want to turn in front of you in your Beemer as you slowly approach the intersection, but oh, I see, it’s because you’re on your phone and drinking a coffee, so I get it, your HANDS WEREN’T FREE to turn the signal on. Fuck you. And you, the other one, in front of me later today, careening all over the place, unsure of where to turn.You are not the only one out here!

2. Leaving someone no room to get out of a parallel parking spot. Here’s how I know (this was once again, a Beemer, but I will not jump to conclusions): the big ol’ Land Rover was there when I parked. We had lots of distance between us, but you chose to kiss my bumper and leave him three feet. Fuck you. I hope the next time you’re at the grocery store, someone parks so close to you, you have to get in from the passenger side. Careful not to slip when you go over the gear shift!

3. When someone has nearly finished Austin-Powering her way out of a tiny fucking parking spot, just keep zooming around her so she can’t complete the extrication, despite having half a front end of a Murano sitting out in traffic. Interesting Trivia: if you slow down and read her lips, she’s screaming “Fuck you! And you! And you, too!” Please note, she smiles and waves if you let her in.

4. This douchebag takes the cake and the crown from all the bad drivers & parkers I encountered today. He makes me physically sick to my stomach. People want him to get the death penalty? But I think someone like him should go away to a little cinderblock cell that he’ll share with someone he’ll have to call “Mr. Sweetums” for the next 30-50 years.  Douche. Bag.

This has been your public service message, you may resume your regularly scheduled knitting, working, happy houring or sleeping. Thank you.

You Were Right.

You told me it would all be ok. I didn’t believe you. Part of me still didn’t believe you after you died. I wanted to, no doubt about that, but how could ‘ok’ happen when my heart was being pounded through an industrial shredder? Then along came all the people who told me time would help. At six months, I thought they all smoked crack, because life had gone on for everyone else, and I was still hiding in the bathroom late at night, muffling my sobs with a towel. Dark times in a small room, torn between wanting to join you and weariness at trying to walk this path I never asked to visit.

But here we are. Today would have been your 64th birthday. Young by a lot of measures. But you lived your life hard, fully, always pushing the limits, always teaching someone and making people laugh where ever you went. It’s been 2 years & 7 months, and I will always honor this day in my heart, just as I will also honor the day you died, but I’m happy to tell you, a whole lot more of me believes you now, than I did then. Missing you can still feel as fierce and wrenching as it did in the days and months that followed your death, but it no longer feels like it will swallow me whole. You taught me well, Dad. I love you. And today, I miss you to the point of tears. Tomorrow, though, I’ll be ok.

All I Can Do Is Laugh.

When I got to work, about 20% of the lights were on. Apparently, we’re on the same electrical grid that the stoplight two blocks away is, as that was also out. On the plus side, this was the first time in YEARS I’ve even seen an officer directing traffic. I guess the fact it’s a five-way intersection that’s full of fail to begin with necessitated it. I did think it was funny that the police officer stayed in his car, while the traffic cop had to be the one in the middle of the street. Hierarchies everywhere.
So while my computer was on, nothing else was – servers, email, internet, or really the heat, as far as I can tell. My fingers and toes and nose are all frozen solid. I used the time to go through some mail & toss some stuff.
Then, the power came back on! Glorious! And within seconds, a jackhammer started up, right outside my wall. I don’t think this day is really going my way. But all I can do is laugh…I’m waiting for the sprinklers to come on next, and a swarm of locusts to attack on my way to the garage…..

O Happy Day

When I was a very young child – 3 or so – I would stand in front of my father’s speakers (big, boxy speakers) in the living room of our home in Knoxville Iowa. He would crank up the volume to the Edwin Hawkins Singers, specifically on the song,  “Oh Happy Day” and I would get up close to the speaker while my sternum vibrated from the bass, and dance.

While I was getting ready this morning, I broke into song, that song, and while I lacked a choir behind me, I felt the song swell in my heart as I experienced a wonderful rich moment of connection to my father, on this day he would have loved to live to see.  My tears have many sentiments today, but the overwhelming one is joy.

And I couldn’t help but obamacize my photo. :) It’s been a long 8 years and I deserve one day of dancing while my sternum vibrates.

ohappyday

Veectory ees MINE!

Well, I can’t take any credit for the negotiation process, it all goes to my sales rep, who may be petite, but can also be quite fierce.   She was rather astonished that the person who first responded to me only cut our bill back by $25 (taking the rate hike to 40%, vs.  60%). So she found the right person, and from the results, I can see she went in swinging.

I got off the phone this morning and this is where they stand, my new long-term friends at Time Warner Cable: I get my old, nice, shiny, cheap rate back. For a whole ‘nother year. And then I have a $5 increase. (Plus a 30-day window in which to change my mind & go with someone else.) This happens for the next FIVE YEARS. Always one to boil it down, I said, “So, in five years, my rate has increased only $25?” “Yes.”) This I can live with.

Oh, and you bet your ass I asked to get credited for December’s overages.  I was all ready to pull the plug on them (and to see what their best offer to keep me would be), which is necessary if you’re going to threaten them.  That they fixed it didn’t completely surprise me? But that they fixed it for five years did, so, with that, I grudgingly give them some props. (And await my credit, kthxbai.)

Energized, yet Drained. Cheerful, yet Rageaholic.

Yes.  I am covering a wide swath of ground these days. And through it all, I am bizzy bizzy bizzy! I always love being busy, but sometimes it pushes the edges and boundaries of normalcy, and I find that’s when things like …oh… “politeness”, or … “consistency” start to fall by the wayside. Work’s been really busy & I have had some great conversations with my bosses about goals for the year & I already hit a couple balls outta the park, so I feel like th year’s off to a very good start. I’m behind on sending out presents and holiday greetings but hell. Isn’t it better to get a thoughtful note from me when I get around to it, than nothing at all? Or just my signature in a timely manner? That’s my approach & I’m stickin’ to it, dammit.

I joke about the rage-a-holic part, somewhat – I’m still PISSED at Time Warner Cable, because even using my connections, I got a VERY disappointing solution yesterday. Instead of our bill going up 60%? She could knock off a little and make that increase just 40%. FORTY percent. People, this is not gas, or milk, or any other commodity that is finite in its production. Yes, the internet has bandwidth, I understand. But TWC is still going to have to buy MTV and HBO whether or not I’m in their customer base, and there is absolutely NO reason I should stick around for a rate hike so substantial when there are other options. Options that involve hassle on my part, but what’s the best salve for hassle? Nostril-flaring joy that the fuckers over :there: aren’t getting your money any more. I’m not quite at that point yet, because I emailed my contact again with less-florid language describing the above, and it’s now gone on to a different department, presumably one higher on the food chain.  I shall keep you updated, because if I’ve picked up on one thing in this life, is that folks out there have some shared rage against The Man, who sometimes comes in the form of The Cable Company.

I spent a good chunk of my weekend making more DPN Holders for The Loopy Ewe, and my local yarn stores, so I’m chipping away at my cost to go to the LE Spring Fling at the end of April! Woohoo for cottage industry!

I’m off to a blogger meet-up tonight – should be fun & interesting,  since I didn’t get a chance to meet everyone at the last one.  I’ll be the one with my knitting, but I promise, I am oh-so-far from dowdy, shy & retiring.

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