It's after me!

My new mouse is creeping me out.

I got an optical mouse because my old, roller-ball mouse finally conked out after three valiant years of service, clicking away on hundreds of thousands of hours of wasted time.

This new mouse however, has this little red light. And there's a curve in the casing of the mouse so that it looks like the little red light is staring out at me from under the mouse. Basically, it looks like a turtle with infrared eyes.

When I'm trying to go to sleep, it's really distracting because it looks like the damn thing is looking at me.

And I swear, this is not just the Vicodin for my wisdom teeth talking. This was bothering me even before I went on drugs.

I could try consciously pointing the mouse away from my bed when I go to sleep, but I have a feeling that would just make me more paranoid, and I'd have to commit myself to a mental institution.

So I think I'm just going to have to get used to the little infrared turtle staring out at me, next to my keyboard.

Either that, or get psychiatric help.

My Job In A Nutshell

Click Here. I'm the one at the board.

Why?

Deep-fried Twinkies.

From Seattle, of all places. I would have expected this from Alabama, but not Seattle.

Required Remembrance

Where were you on September 11th? I was driving across the South. Read the story here.

I basically avoided most of the September 11th coverage today, largely because I was doped up from having my wisdom teeth yanked and watching that all day when on drugs is not a good idea.

But I probably would have avoided it anyway, since, putting aside it being really fucking depressing, it was all more generalized and sort of lumped the victims of this thing into one big group, which I think is stupid.

It is used by politicians to justify acts that have no justification (cough cough "enemy combatant" cough cough), and it makes each individual seem less worthy and more like one of a mass.

The loss of the individual lives is what really makes things like this hurt. I would pick up the New York Times all year and every time there would be more pictures with little stories of what each person was like. I mentioned a piece in the Washington Post a couple of days ago that is also a good example of what I think this is all about.

The one thing that I did watch was the Naget Brothers' documentary 9|11, which aired on CBS. I watched this a few weeks back when a guy at work lent it to me, and it is a phenomenal piece of work.

It does what must be done to focus the emotion of something like this: Concentrates on one firehouse and one probie firefighter in particular, who the brothers had been following for months before. You get to know these people, so you can actually care about what happens to them when the attack finally comes.

It is a powerful film, and it really shows the magnitude of the destruction.

Anyway, I'll let you all get on to my irreverent bitching about getting my wisdom teeth pulled. But today, pure irreverence seems somewhat inappropriate.

Even the Onion agrees with me in its Infographic (see last one).

Loss of wisdom

Well, at least I don't feel any stupider.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled Tuesdsay, and it really wasn't all that bad. I'm still pretty sore, but the fine makers of Vicodin have been of a great deal of assistance in making it not hurt quite as bad.

The silliest part was waiting for them to actually start the procedure. They did IV anesthesia instead of the little mask, so that made it pretty easy.

The problem was waiting for the dentist to finish talking with another patient...for half a fucking hour. I talked to the nurses for a while, and when they left me alone for a bit, I started whistling.

Then I started singing "I Wanna Be Sedated," and they got the picture and got the dentist off his ass.

I had been somewhat concerned because one of the two nurses was apparently new. She had asked "Now you're having all four out today?" To which I replied, well, I only have two, so I certainly hope I'm not having four out.

Then, she put the heart rate monitor thingies on the wrong hands. Then she gave me the release form, which told me of the possibility of numerous complications (broken jaw, ripped tissue at the edge of my mouth), which I had not contemplated.

This did loads to improve my confidence.

The surgery itself was a breeze. They numbed my arm before they put in the IV, which they didn't need to do since my left arm is my blood-givin' arm, so I'm used to having it poked and prodded.

The funniest part was when they actually let the drugs go (Demerol for the pain, Valium as a muscle relaxant, and some sort of mild but fast-acting barbituate to knock me out), and were like, "OK, let us know when you start to get drowsy."

I said, "OK, I will." And that's the last thing I remember before waking up with a mouthful of gauze.

I had to watch a little video on aftercare, which they probably should have waited about another ten minutes or so to show me, since I have absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever, except that it had a lot of jump cuts.

I am such a film nerd.

Anyway, my fabulous friends Marc and Ross were there, who I owe big time for helping me out, and they walked me over to the NU pharmacy to pick up my generic penicillin and generic vicodin, and then walked me back home.

I've managed to avoid the Chipmunk Phenomenon (cheeks swelling up) by keeping my face iced down. Or more accurately, burgered down. I kept frozen hamburger patties (wrapped in wax paper of course) on my face for about a day, and that seemed to do the trick.

So now I just get to wait out the soreness and the dissolving (thank god) stitches they gave me.

I rented a bunch of movies from Blockbuster, and I've got a shelf full of DVDs, including quite a bit more of the 24 part WWII documentary I got a while back, and which I just recently watched the D-Day episode of, so that should keep me entertained.

That, and the Vicodin.

Steamroller blues

One thing the Austin Powers steamroller sequence does not show you: Steamrollers make the ground vibrate.

A lot.

They're repaving Chicago Avenue, the street directly outside my bedroom window, and they finally put the last bit of pavement down today, so they brought the steamroller out.

Except it vibrated my building so hard that it knocked shit over and woke me up from my doped-up bliss at 9am when I had been planning to sleep until, oh, 2pm.

So I got to get up and try and figure out what the fuck was going on for 20 minutes before I finally saw the steamroller. Yarrgh.

Programming note

I should probably let you all know that I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled in about 12 hours or so, and will be given a great many painkillers.

I will thus be unable to walk, think, or speak, let alone type for at least the next couple of days. I will try my damndest to post some amusing, drug-induced ramblings up here over the next few days, but I do apologize if I'm unable to do so.

Thank you. You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

It's all coming back

Yet another reason I'm glad I'm out of D.C.: No more constant 9/11 tributes every time I try to listen to the radio.

D.C. has every reason to have more 9/11 coverage in its newspapers and TV stations and news radio stations. After all, almost 200 people were killed when a plane hit the Pentagon.

It really gets me that the Pentagon has become almost an afterthought. The Washington Post ran an absolutely shattering account of five people touched by that particular aspect of the attacks, and it really hit me how much these people were forgotten about.

That being said, it may bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims to hear their loved ones remembered on the radio every 20 minutes, but not this way. WBIG, the oldies station in D.C., which my mom listens to constantly, was airing the tributes at that interval, naming each victim and giving a little rememberance of each.

The station is trying to take the sympathy towards the victims and make it seem like they're doing a public service for these people. Other music stations in D.C. are doing similar things, though not as often.

Individually, these stories can be touching. Collectively, they become obnoxious and exploitative.

In part, this is because they're very poorly produced and use mawkish music to make them more affecting than they already are. The effect is to make them over the top and obnoxious. Not tributes, but ploys.

There's all this hemming and hawing in the media about how to properly mark the anniversary of such a tragic event, and what these people fail to realize is that there really is no proper way.

Some people would like nothing more than silence to honor the dead, others would have their stories retold until the end of time, still others would debate what good ideas like the War on Iraq, which Dick Cheney is busy printing up t-shirts for, could possibly do.

I'm certainly not going to offer any suggestions on what to do. However, shame on WBIG for clearly screwing this one up.

Odd questions that pop into my head

Ok, so I know from talking to other women that I am not the only one who gets that weird naked feeling when I shave my legs if I haven't shaved them in a while.

My question to the gentlemen: Do you get that when you shave your face in the morning? Is it more pronounced if you've had a beard or a goatee or just haven't shaved for a while?

Since this question popped into my head, it has been bugging me (don't ask me why, because I'm not really sure), I figured I'd ask the audience, however many tens of you there are out there.

The long goodbye

I said goodbye to my house last week.

My mom, as I mentioned about a quarter billion times, is selling the house I grew up in. I went home to clean it out.

This was an enormously difficult task, as I have quite a huge amount of shit. I'm a horrid pack rat, and I collect Rolling Stone and Spin.

I managed to part with about 3/4, maybe even 4/5 of my stuffed animals. The rest are currently sitting in a garbage bag, since I have absolutely no place else to put them, but I couldn't bear the thought of giving them away.

Yes, I realize I'm insane.

Leaving the house was weird, partly because nothing in it really seemed right. Everything in my room was clean, which is ridiculously out of the ordinary.

The floor guys had come to replace the wooden floors in the dining room and den that poor old Tiger (may he rest in peace) and poor old Fat Cat (same, and yes, that really was his name) ruined after years of pissing on the rugs, so there was no rug or furniture or anything in either, so all the furniture was in the kitchen and the living room.

I couldn't even get to the fridge, which if you've met me or either of my parents, you know is a key fixture in the house.

I also left very, very early in the morning, so it was pretty dark and I couldn't really see the house too well.

Really, I think the real reason it didn't feel like as much of a goodbye is that I really said goodbye to that house when I left for college. I've been back for a grand total of about two months since.

My friend Mark has lived in that house for at least double that over the last 2 summers.

Chicago (or at least Evanston, though I hesitate, like all suburb-dwellers, to identify it as my actual place of residence) is my home now, and I treat it as such. I love it here, and I don't wanna move.

Unlike D.C., which I can never fucking wait to get out of, no matter how short a time I spend there.

It was a great old house though, and leaving behind 21 years (or at least the 18 before I left for college) worth of memories was quite difficult.

Finding the pictures of my dad with the Dumbest Facial Hair Ever, however, was quite amusing.

The photos were dated 1973, and my dad had huge sideburns that connected on either side to a mustache. No beard, just this thing that would be a chinstrap if only it went to his chin. It was more like a nosestrap.

My mom has mentioned several times that she's glad he shaved that dumb thing off before she met him, because otherwise he would have been summarily dismissed.

But finding the little tiny shoes I wore when I was a little baby, the little baby sleeper marked "0-10 pounds," the little donut with the tank top attached swimming thingy that I used when I was learning to swim when I was like 2, and a shoebox full of pictures of me when I was a real little kid was bittersweet.

I didn't remember any of it, but for some reason it still made me nostalgiac for the old place.

But it will be gone soon. The open house is this coming weekend. So if anyone you know is in the market for a 4br, 3.5 bath home in the Palisades area of Washington D.C., I can point you in the direction of a damn good one.

The problem with not writing things down

My memory has been shot for some time now.

I think that a lot of it has to do with the massive amount of facts that I have to memorize and then can forget at the end of the quarter.

Thus, I cannot remember anything at all for more than 2 months, and most stuff lasts about as long as usually passes between when I read something and when I am quizzed or tested on it (about 3 or 4 days, max).

This is currently a problem for me in that I've had a number of amusing things happen to me that I really did sincerely mean to write about here and amuse you, but alas, I have the memory of a 75 year old alzheimer's patient on any given day.

So as it trickles back, I'll try to post bits and pieces of the amusing stuff. For now, unfortunately, mawkish sentimentality shall have to do.

Yo quiero Casa de Waffle

So I walk into a Waffle House just outside of Columbus, Ohio on the drive from DC to Champaign, Illinois to visit Ray and Elisa, my friends who got married in Dallas.

Anyway, I walk into the Waffle House, and I go to sit down at the counter. There's an old man, probably 85 or 90 years old, sitting a few chairs down from me, with a fairly thick southern accent.

Old Man: Yew shore yew wanna set there?
Me: Um, yes...
Old Man: 'Cause I'm ornery.
Waitress: He ain't kidding.
Me: Oh, I think I can handle myself.
Old Man: Heh heh...
Waitress: Now, Earl, be nice.

The fact that his name was Earl made it all the more perfect.

Waffle House: Go for the greasy hash browns (well, and the waffles), stay for the hilarious local color.