Spamku 2: I'm not really here! Edition

New New It will be great

Re: woman-tended;
order status, night blindness;
:), nerve fiber.

[Note: ":)" is pronounced "smiley"]

ad hominem ad nauseum

I am off, very soon. I will be very glad to go, if only so I can stop thinking/talking/worrying about it. I promise to take lots of pictures and regale you with only the best of them.

26

I hope to never be disappointed with aging. I don't want to complain, I don't want to fear 30. That is always the storyline that age takes, and I think there's more to it than that.

I try to be fundamentally critical, or at least conscious of, what the culture teaches and values, and so when the culture values youth and you are moving through your youth, it is very hard to feel like you're not squandering it in some way. So today I kind of felt like, shit, there goes year 25 -- I probably should've done more with it. But getting down to the details, I think I've done okay. I bought my own domain, I made a bunch of quilts, I got a straight job. Things got better this year.

Though I never felt like a "typical" teenager and in fact seriously resented the stereotype of teenagers in our culture, I'm living the cliche 20s. I'm aimless. Dunno what I want to do. I kind of do, and am taking steps toward it, baby steps. Am, like so many middle- to upper-class women in their 20s, putting off children. Part of the Aimless 20s is, I think, that nobody takes you seriously. Just yesterday one of my co-workers was bandying about the phrase "some 20-some-year-old" and I was like, hi. I can hear you. Sure can't wait until I hit 30 and suddenly know stuff.

The years do seem to be going faster. I will try to look around and value 26 every once in awhile.

oh that is just the sound of my nerves fraying, no worries, although you may want to go sit over there

*-*-*-*News Flash*-*-*-*

I've been saying "news flash" a lot. Mostly to myself, quietly. Today at the grocery store, I thought to myself "News flash! Other people exist!" because that's what I wanted to say to this lady who wasn't aware. Okay, now "news flash!" has gotten so that the sound is absurd, divorced from its meaning. News flash.

*-*-*-*News Flash*-*-*-*: I have finally figured out why I hate those anti-drug commercials!

The view of reality underpinning the anti-drug commercials is completely whack. If anti-drug is the alternative, then drug is the baseline, the default. Immediate measures need to be taken, these ads say, so that you avoid taking drugs. They assume you want to take drugs.

This is exactly the same logical problem as the arguments about gay marriage, and more generally, homosexuality. If it's okay to be gay, they seem to think, then EVERYONE WILL BE GAY! AAAAHHHHH!*

Quick, do something! Otherwise, you might go score some pot and smoke it!

Perhaps it's my status as a huge square that makes these assumptions offensive to me -- I didn't drink until well after my 21st birthday, and don't like it very much. Drugs hold no appeal for me. In my limited experience, I've generally observed that people take drugs because they are a) curious, or b) sad. And I don't see curiosity leading to experimentation as a huge crisis in America. It happens.

Here's a suggestion, though: Not telling your kids they're worthless and stupid and will never amount to anything: America's Anti-Drug.

No, though, we have to place it all on the kids. They should all take up tatting, because it's either that or smack.

*Speaking of the debate around homosexuality, I've long subscribed to the idea that homosexuality isn't a choice, so it can't really be immoral. But it occurred to me yesterday that even if homosexuality *were* a choice, I would still have absolutely nothing against it.

Introducing: Spamku!

If I didn't hate cliches so, I'd tell you that I believe in making lemons out of lemonade. But since I do, I'll have to go into a bit of explaining, which is this: I can be impatient and bored and whiny-in-my-own-head, so I have to come up with ways to keep myself positive. Luckily, I'm pretty simple too, so this does not take much effort. Which is good, because I'm also lazy.

So, anyhow. The university's e-mail filter has gone downhill in the last year or so, and in the last month or so some of the spam has been a bit different. The subject lines are not in the Free$ Laptop Click Here!!, Make Your Girlfriend Krzy 2nite!, etc. type variety; they are poetic, random bits of words. Often within an hour you might get three related-sounding spams. So, I have been writing down the nicest of these and will process them now, for you, into spamku.

(Rules of Spamku: every word in here has been received by me as the subject of a spam e-mail, including poem titles. Semi-colons indicate a break between subject lines. Commas are part of the original subject lines.)

How is everything going?

your cash, number plate;
rolex mania is down;
coat hanger muted.

Malaria!

Other and I went out for breakfast this morning. Our choices are B'Evans, this place where the smoking section is not so very separate from the non-smoking section, and where our pregnant waitress would sit in the very close smoking section and smoke while we ate - oogy on so many levels - and the place we went today. Which has officially become the place where that creepy waitress tries to get us to leave. (Last week it was officially the place where the guy in line behind us decided he could cross our names off the waiting list himself and take our table.)

We'd noticed the creepy waitress before, but hadn't solidified our feelings in a conversation yet. Today, though, she continued with the creepy behavior of looking at us funny. Which kind of sounds like something you'd hear from the backseat of a car on a family vacation ("HE'S BREATHING ON ME!!!") but is actually quite socially uncomfortable. She holds eye contact for too long, with her head at a weird angle. You kind of get the feeling that she's trying to telepathically tell you that the management of the restaurant is holding her hostage and she would like you to rescue her.

In addition to looking at us funny, today she took away the syrup before Other was done eating his pancake, then came back and tried to take away the half-eaten and under-syruped pancake (eliciting a noise from Other that I've never heard before - kind of like a wounded animal - he feels strongly about his pancakes) as his fork was moving toward it.

Perhaps her tormentors will beat her if anyone stays for more than 20 minutes.

Then, in what was the final straw for me, she had an incredibly difficult time comprehending that I, the woman, would pay for the whole meal. She put the check down, and I picked it up. She said, "Oh! Do you want me to split it for you?" As I was trying to figure out what she was talking about, Other said, "Uh, no, that's okay. We're married."

So that should've been pretty clear, right? We're married, we basically share money, we take turns treating each other to meals.

But when she brought the check back, she put it in front of him to sign. I know our society's been backsliding a bit in terms of women's rights the last few years, but I'm pretty sure I would've heard about it on NPR if women had lost the right to have bank accounts, right?

I'm on malaria pills and trying to tan.

I come from a long line of pasty, sturdy peoples. I got a couple bad sunburns as a child, and one glorious summer, I spent the right amount of time outside every day and ended up with an actual tan. I think I was 14. For my middle school years, I'd just learned about how white women in earlier centuries actually valued paleness, would go to lengths like carrying parasols (for suns!) to avoid becoming tan, so I adopted that beauty standard and remained happily pale.

But it would be pretty stupid to turn up in Central America the color I am, which is currently Whiter than a Lawrence Welk Christmas Special. After close to an hour in the afternoon sun, I appear to be A Bit Pinkish. If I can get to Definitely Pink before I leave, I think I have a shot at avoiding Too Burned to Move or Put on Clothes.

Seriously, I actually am going to Belize.

Hey, so, has anybody noticed that the world is kind of going to shit?

I'm going to Belize.

I leave my computer speakers off most of the time, but turn them on occasionally to listen to my itunes music. When I'm doing this and playing Free Cell at the same time, and try to move, say, a six onto a nine, the little box pops up, but the "oh no you didn't" sound comes out of the speakers as well. It's like a single drumbeat sound. And it scares the bejesus out of me every single time it happens. And it's not making me make fewer mistakes, it's just making me a little skittish when I play Free Cell.

An Open Letter to "Limited Edition" "Jack's Gems" M&M's Chocolate Candies

Dear "Limited Edition" "Jack's Gems" M&M's Chocolate Candies,

When I first marched past your special promotional endcap display on my way to the checkout and your dark brown packaging caught my eye, I think we both knew this was going to be something special. Oh, I know that you initially feared you'd be a rebound candy, tossed aside when new candy came along. I never denied that I was still hurt from my loss; "Limited Edition" "Easter Colors" M&M's Chocolate Candies and I shared a beautiful experience together. But you know that I loved you for you; your muted, jewel-toned candy shells of red, green, purple, and blue; your limited edition "M" designs - the hook, the skull, the crossed swords, the ship.

I will never forget our nights of endless speculation about the "M" designs that didn't make the cut. I still say that the plank is too difficult to represent on the side of an M with less than five lines, but I deeply admire your passionate dedication to the idea.

I never got sick of your "matey" jokes, and you bravely endured my endless teasing about the poorly photoshopped M-spokesperson on your bag and riffs on the whole unfortunate "Jack's Family Jewels" dimension of this whole thing.

That's what makes all of this so hard. It feels like we have so much more to share. But the fates at the MM Mars company have decided that the product tie-on with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest has run its course. I heard the movie wasn't even very good. It wasn't even until today, though, when I saw the end cap of Baby Wipes and plastic bottles, that I realized that our time was coming to an end as well. Even though I've known since I first saw you that this day would come, it still came as a shock. You saw me, wandering nonchalantly into the "Misc" aisle, digging nonchalantly through the White Chocolate "Limited Edition" "Jack's Gems" box, refusing to believe that it was over. I was looking for you. Of course I wasn't tempted by them; you know I feel it's what's inside that counts. And white chocolate isn't chocolate. It's vanilla. We both know that.

I was happy to have found you wedged in the candy aisle with all the regular bags of M&Ms, but it was a happiness tinged with understanding of the inevitable. You'll take your place in the venerable archives of MM Mars history, and I'll go back to the regular bags, the bags that occasionally taste and smell like Altoids because of improper shipment or storage.

We can at least try to enjoy these last few weeks (okay... days) together. And who knows, perhaps we will meet again between the fluorescent lights and shiny floors of the grocery store someday. I hear Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is in the works.

Yours in an astonishing freak show of gluttony,
M

Holy shit, that's *normal*? WooHOO!

Not the greatest deal.

God shed His fur on thee

I thought I'd celebrate the birth of our country by sucking at Free Cell.

Way to breathe, no breath.

It's amazing how fast things can change from day to day. Not things, though - you. Your perspective can be completely different.

I took another quilting class over the weekend, and once again stayed late every night I could and spent hours at a stretch, doing the same thing over and over and really enjoying it. I've thought for a while that the nice things about the quilting classes were that you got a space to work in - a 6' table that was yours, gloriously yours. But I guess another big part of it is time. I spent two and a half days thinking about little other than quilting. I dreamed about quilting.

And now, come Monday, my world is completely different again.