terribleturnip

Right. October. Mid-Atlantic. 90 degrees. I know, given the weather we've had, I shouldn't complain. It's been brilliant. But really, I so look forward to this time of year and since it hasn't rained in weeks and it's going to be near 90 degrees and humid this weekend, there's a high likelihood that I'll either spontaneously burst into flames...or accumulate enough sweat and dust to turn me into a golem. Please feel free to write something on my forehead backwards so I can erase it and put myself out of my misery.

Turnip at Toad dot net appears to be dead and while it comes to no surprise to me, if any of you are still using it, well, don’t. You can PM me if you don’t have anything else. That had become what I’d considered my “throwaway” e-mail, the one I used when shopping or if required to submit an e-mail or post an e-mail in a less than secure place, figuring that when/if it got compromised, or so spam-ridden that it was breaking my filters or patience, I could walk away from it. But of course, once again, the company it ran through went feet up with no notice and the parent company is so far uncommunicative.

But it was time to set up another “throwaway”, so I set up another gmail account that would forward to my main e-mail inbox. Now let’s ponder the irony that Gmail thinks the messages that Gmail is sending me, welcoming me to Gmail…are Spam. “We can’t verify the source of this message.” I feel like I’m in the technological equivalent of the horror movie Black Christmas “The calls are coming from inside the house!”

(Sorry, three hours of Wil Wheaton, Paul & Storm nerd-references and the whole 70’s-80’s horror/sci-fi/geekdom attic in my head got swung wide and bits of trivia are swirling around like the storm of cat hair that a Furminator, four cats and a ceiling fan make in my living room once a month. And realizing that they’re all about my age, so that finally, the geek/nerd jokes and references were ones I got and found funny, THAT was delightful as pretty much any gaming reference after 1985 is lost on me….unless it’s tabletop-related.)

Every problem I’ve tried to solve today has created half a dozen new, even harder ones to solve. If I keep this up, it’ll take me only another three weeks to ensure that I have a year’s worth of work, even if I don’t get a single new assignment. Awesome. There’s a part of my brain that is rat terrier busy right now calculating the odds that doing NOTHING will actually put me farther ahead than trying to accomplish something.

Maybe you’re in the same boat. So let me give you some distractions:

I loved the book The Shining. LOVED it. I thought the movie was highly overrated and didn’t think it came close to doing justice to the book, although to be fair, I suspect that part of the reason so many King books ARE so good, is that they’re tapping/relating so directly to your brain or imagination, that they just CAN’T be effective when someone else represents them for you. I was never really sure WHY I didn’t like The Shining movie though, beyond it leaving out some parts I’d been fond of, and a visceral dislike of Shelley Duval, which I’m sure is directly related to the characters she played and not her actual personhood. She’s probably a very nice person. (Kubrick, on the other hand, I have no problem believing that I wouldn’t like HIM.) But this writer sums up why I didn’t like the movie, and I think it’s a hole a lot of movies fall into, even if they’re Kubrick-ego-free.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/01/what_stanley_kubrick_got_wrong_about_the_shining/

And here, you need a break from being pissed off at Congress. Let’s all get pissed off at the people who are funding the very expletives who are currently holding our country hostage. This is just awful. Well, no, wait, actually, it’s BRILLIANT. Brilliantly awful. If only it weren’t using lies and scare tactics…and could theoretically cause woman to DIE, I’d admire it. Also, the irony that the people who are bringing us bucketloads of legislature across the nation that are aimed at regulating my uterus and vagina, required trans-vaginal sonograms, trying to prosecute pregnant women for endangering fetuses, and all sorts of other shenanigans that seem awfully focused on my ladybits are implying that…..

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/koch_backed_conservatives_go_pro_cervical_cancer/

Get your paws off of me, you damned dirty ultraconservative!

(Do you remember THAT movie, children?)