Public Service Announcement

Science lesson time.

Polyethylene glycol is not the same ingredient that is in antifreeze.  That is ethylene glycol.

Write that down in your copybooks, people.

Really?

I was listening to BBC News this morning on my local NPR station and heard a crazy story.

People lie all the time to get laid - this is not new information to most people.  If I wear a padded bra and have sex with some dude, can he say it was rape because he wouldn't have boned me if he knew my true cup size?  Or what if I used to be a man?  Or a man who used to be a woman?  Or any lie at all that a person would tell in order to get some ass?  Where is the line drawn?  I don't believe that some lady who is embarrassed that she banged an Arab should be able to bring rape charges against him.  This wasn't a case of a boss using a position of power to tap that, right?  This was two people who met at the supermarket and decided that porking in a nearby building would be the best way to wrap up their respective trips.

OK, I know I wasn't there, but obviously force isn't the issue here.  Stupid lady needs to own up to her mistake and move on.  Stupid dude needs not to be boning chicks while he's married.

Common Sense Is Overrated

Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the smart thing...or do I mean that the other way around?

I was pretty pooped last night after finishing up Grave of the Fireflies (very, very sad).  I kind of wanted to go for a walk to clear my head, but the weather was conspiring against me.  Instead, I decided to make what I thought what a smart decision - I was going to go to bed before midnight.  Shocking, I know, but I figured it might be nice to have a Thursday morning where I didn't feel like I was peeling myself off the asphalt after being creamed by a cement mixer.  Unfortunately, I am not able (anymore) to function all that well on small amounts of sleep.  I went to bed around 10:30.

Getting to sleep wasn't a huge problem.  Staying asleep until my alarm went off at 6:30 was a problem.  I guess I'm so used to getting significantly less sleep on Wednesday night that I confused the hell out of my system.  I woke up around 4:30-5 o'clock and refused to get up.  Of course that meant that I nodded off again around 6:00 and was very salty when my alarm went off.  Then I stubbornly waited until the damn thing shut the fuck up and didn't get out of bed until 6:45.

OK, consider the lesson learned.  I will never again attempt to get a decent amount of sleep on a Wednesday night.

Dumbest Things I've Read - For Now

I was perusing the Google News feed this a.m. and I came across this article about a baby born without any ocular tissue at all. The part that got me wasn't that the mom was 15 (pfft, babies having babies - old news, but rather the following line from the article: "Brielle was born without any eye tissue at all, a condition called anophthalmia that leaves a person irrevocably blind."

Can I get a "no shit" from the peanut gallery? Of course a person with that condition is going to be blind; there's no FUCKING EYE TISSUE. This isn't like having cataracts, OK? This is a complete lack of the tissue that makes up the things with which one sees. Can't fix something that does not exist.

Gah!

Someone please explain this new Google Docs thing to me.

It used to be that when you wanted to open a new document, you clicked on "Create New" and there was a drop down menu with options for "documents", "spreadsheets", etc. Now you click and get "From template..." WTF Google? Now I have to choose from dozens, nay, hundreds of Google and user generated templates? When all I want to do is bang out a story before the idea withers and dies? I'm not OK with that.

OK, scratch that. All the blame lies squarely on my browser here at work because I just went back to my Google Docs page and it was business as usual. The regular options were there. Obviously I started screaming before the damn browser managed to finish opening the page. So let's make this post officially about how the IT equipment at work is tempermental, at best. And about how I make assumptions without having all the facts, as it were. Please continue with your regularly scheduled day and try to forget about my stupidity.

o. m. g.

You had to call the drug company to find out how many teaspoons are in two tablespoons? Have you heard of the internet?

Also, I weep for the future. I was in the bathroom last night at the movie theater and there were two teenage girls who could not figure out how to operate the towel dispenser. Dispensers that say to turn the wheel if no paper is hanging out. Can you read? Please don't breed.

People Really Ask This

All right, I know this post isn't going to do much good, but I have to say something and the people at work are bored with my ranting (go figure).

Acetaminophen, naproxen sodium, and ibuprofen do NOT contain aspirin. Aspirin contains aspirin.

Thank you.

Pointless Update on Stupid Things

Fantastic news! We have dome lids again. Which have a tendency to leak a bit if not put on just right. They aren't the same dome lids we had before, but it's still an improvement over the lip-shredding ones.

Who says Mondays suck?

Get a Mop

Everyone? Can I have your attention for a moment?

Thank you. Here's what I want everyone to do. Take a deep breath. That's right; in through the nose, out through the mouth. Good. Now another one. Good.

You can smell that, can't you? Taste it in the back of your throat? It tastes kind of like blue? Anybody have any idea what that is? No one? What that is, my friends, is the smell of crazy leaking all over the place.

Now maybe it's the unseasonable warmth. I always get a bit rammy when the weather turns. There's something about the softening of the air, an indefinable sense of anticipation, that makes me all squirmy. What ever it is; I can feel the crazy oozing through the cracks. It's making me think about stuff I'd prefer not thinking about. I want to do cartwheels and backflips and make unnecessary and unwarranted declarations of - something. I want something major to happen. Good major, of course. I want to climb out of my skin. I feel like the only way to release the pressure is to lay on the floor and scream at the ceiling. It feels a bit like being angry but without the desire to hit things.

I know I'm not crazy in the conventional sense but I need a word, or phrase, for what I'm feeling. anticipation doesn't cover it and pleasant tension just sounds stupid. That, and it's not all pleasant. When the pressure gets to be too much, I almost feel like I'm coming apart at the seams. That what's inside cannot be contained by the skin.

It'll pass; it always does. Please don't 302 me.

Nonononononononono

Oh shit, I take it back. I take it BACK! Sure it's a reasonable thing to do but I can only think about the potential weirdness. Fucking Facebook. Stupid crazy Carrie G.

Apparently, Stupid is Worse than Mean

I've earned a small degree of infamy on the 'net for an unintentionally stupid comment I made on a blog. This particular blog will periodically post photos of celebs and we are encouraged to make clever comments about the celeb's hair, outfit, facial expression, etc. The one thing that was always discouraged was body-snarking. I can understand this - most people have had some sort of self-esteem issues over the years. My last boyfriend was super skinny. I called him Stringbean. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't any less bad to tease him about being skinny as it would be to tease someone about being overweight.

Anyway, I did my level best to avoid any body comments. One day, a photo of Madonna was posted. Most of you are probably aware that Madonna is an exercise fiend. She has made no secret of her dedication to fitness. Another commenter said something about Madonna's lack of body fat. I said something about Madonna's visible veins. Veins that were visible because of her lack of body fat. Oy, I got flamed and I got voted worst comment of the day (which I covered in a previous post).

In my defense, I was not maligning Madonna's body. What do I care if you want to do lots of yoga or Pilates or eat a raw food diet? It's your life; live it how you want. I was merely voicing my amazement at her low body fat percentage. I mean, come on, the woman is RIPPED.

I went on the site today and there was a post about making comments about some of the super-skinny celebs. Many people feel that it is their bounden duty to offer this advice: Eat a cheeseburger. There were a couple of paragraphs about the unkindness of body-snarking and my stupid veiny Madonna comment was referred to. For fuck's sake people! I've read some seriously mean-spirited comments on that site and you drag out mine? At worst, it was poorly-worded. Did I say "Ewwwwwww! OMG Madonna is scary skinny? Get that chick a sammich STAT!!!1!!"? Nope, but somehow I got called out.

This stupid mess made me realize that internet relationships, regardless of how good they seem to be, are mostly nothing. I don't know if it is the anonominity or what, but people feel far more comfortable shitting on someone online. Who am I kidding? Of course it's the anonominity. There are no real consequences (the whole MySpace bullying issue notwithstanding). If I had made that comment about Madonna to any of my friends, they probably wouldn't have said anything at all. The certainly wouldn't have jumped all over me with comments like: "Oh yes, she has veins. How passe!" and the like. While I realize that tone is nearly impossible to convey online, give me a little credit people, hmmmm? Do you really think I am unfamiliar with the existence of the circulatory system? After all, it pumps the blood into my occasionally non-functioning brain.

So I will admit to stupidity but I WILL NOT admit to body-snarking. Sometimes people, stupid happens.