You're Doing It Wrong

Hey look, someone else has my theory.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

The only difference is, I don’t think we’re going to be on the planet that long.

Favorite headline from a small town paper we get at the office.

Written Clickingly
Yesterday I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went to bed early the night before so I had a pretty decent night’s sleep and didn’t notice feeling tired until last night.

The teacher for my Illustrator class told us it would be frustrating sometimes and we’d want to throw our computers out the window. Last night I finally hit the wall and I didn’t want to throw my computer out the window but I did want to throw something at someone.

The lesson was to design a graphic for a website and it was all this: “Double click the endpoints and anchor points, copy and paste behind. Then, clicking the bottom layer, click on the clicks you just made and click them. Once you’ve clicked, drag, release and re-click the point and the clicks. Click the clicks and click them until you can click no more.”

Seriously, no one needs a website that badly.

Since I was tired, I went to bed. (Also, my DVR is broken and I had to try to remember how to use a VCR again, but that’s another tale.) And I couldn’t fall asleep. And I woke up today at 4am again. At the moment I’m feeling a wee bit groggy.

Also, I write this only because WKB will be horrified. Yesterday I had my leftover smoked salmon enchilada from Monday, for lunch and I ate it cold. I don’t know how the office microwave works and anyway, it smells like ass and I don’t want to put food in there. I’ll admit, the cold enchilada was not the most appetizing thing I’ve ever eaten.

Update: I’m a moron. Turns out the clickety click thing was not part of the homework. I wondered what that random sticky note was doing in there. It meant, “skip this part.”

Something Stinks
And it’s me.

Last night I put on my yoga outfit before class and it smelled like something died in it. Yuck.

I’m super sensitive of smells (ask my husband, I believe he called me a Terrier although that might have had to do with my Jaime Sommers hearing). I could hardly enjoy class because all I could smell was myself and I was all self-conscious that other people were growing light-headed in the vapor of my stench.

If you’ve been to many yoga classes, you might be snickering about now because there’s almost always someone in class who has elastic ideas about bathing, use of deodorant and/or wearing freshly laundered yoga clothes.

I couldn’t wait to get home, fling the clothes into the wash and fire up the spin cycle with extra pretty smelling essential oils (just a few drops, I buy my stash here.)

I figure what happened is that I tossed them to the floor last time I wore them. And then seeing them on the floor picked them up and put them on the dresser. Then seeing them on the dresser thought, “Oh these must be magically clean, I’ll put them back in the drawer.”

I’ll have to develop a whole system to prevent this from happening again.

Meanwhile, Potter adverb watch: reminiscently.

Thanksgiving Security
I found this at boingboing.net. You can see the entire illustration here. The artist credited is Erik Johnson.

I think it’s a classic.

Adverb Reform School. STAT!
I’m reading Harry Potter #6. I’m not a diehard HP lover but I’ve enjoyed the books and movies.

So far, this book sucks ass. I read 225 pages and nothing happened. Nothing. It was the equivalent of reading about Harry flossing his teeth for 225 pages. I felt sorry for the kids who stayed up until midnight and paid $30 for a hardcover of this book. I’m now about halfway in (it’s about 800 pages) and a few things that might indicate some sort of plot have happened, so maybe the book will make up for it in the second half.

Along with the crime of writing pages and pages of plotless fiction, J.K. has never met an adverb she didn’t like. Bracingly. Quellingly. Warmingly. Are those even words? Are you allowed to put “ly” at the end of any word that you feel like? Another gem was when someone said something with a “significantly dark tone.” Marc said that he had to negotiate with his editor because he likes to invent verbs. (Just in case it’s not clear here, I know that bracingly isn’t a verb. I’m suggesting that Marc was inventing fun words and had to negotiate with his editor while J.K. makes up adverbs which any basic writing lesson will tell you to use sparingly.)(HA HA, I used an ingly word.) Yeah, yeah, I know if you sell a gabillion copies, you can do whatever you want. And at least people are reading.

And while I’m bitching about popular entertainment, I also watched Flightplan. I’ve been sitting on the DVD for two weeks. Kathy said she was disappointed with it, but I like Jodie Foster and thought it would be an entertaining thriller for a rainy afternoon. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s about a woman who goes on an overseas flight with her daughter and falls asleep. When she wakes up, her daughter is gone. There is no record of the daughter on the passenger list. Sound a bit intriguing? You’d think.

Turns out, it’s pretty stupid. Jodie’s character goes so completely batshit crazy, like climbing around in the ceiling of this plane which is the size of a cruise liner (I kept waiting to see the room with the pool) that it’s hard to sympathize with her. I’m not going to spoil it but the huge money shot at the very end is so completely contrived and ridiculous that I laughed, nay, I cackled while slapping my knee and stomping the floor. I can just see the writer at his writers group and creating this moment, the whole reason to have the movie, and the others chiming in, “Yeah, and she can emerge from the smoke. Yeah, and there can be emergency lights flashing in the background. Yeah, and … .”

Also the movie barely has 90 minutes worth of story so there’s some padding going on.

Final tidbit of the day, I made this epic casserole last night. I had to ask Bob to stop eating so we’d have some leftovers for this week. On Weds I bought a pound of roasted Poblanos at the farmers market. They have a guy there with a rig to roast them while you watch. For the casserole I took half that and diced them and stirred them with sour cream. I used a bunch of cooked rice and layered the rice with the sour cream mix, a diced Mexican style cheese that I can’t remember the name of, and diced cooked chicken. You do that for 2 layers and then top with rice and a sprinkle of cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes. Enjoy.

Be A Good Worker
This morning I procrastinated for a bit and then worked on the illustration for my project. I think I made it more complicated than it had to be but I felt like I was learning something so I stuck with it.

I finally decided I was fried and checked the clock and saw it was after 1pm and since the news is that it’s going to rain tomorrow, I thought I should try to put in a little more time in the yard. I cleaned up some general stuff and dug out the roots of this lavender thing I cut back to the nub since it looked bad. Then I cleaned up the rosebed and then, finally, after having it for eons, I took out the hedge master and went to town on the front hedge.

If I wasn’t so tired I’d tell a better story, but basically it’s this stupid box hedge that was randomly placed out front and a couple of years ago we had a bunch of snow on the roof and it all slid off at once and did some major damage to the hedge. We chopped it back and intended to pull it out but never did and it’s been growing and growing until it looked like a spiky space alien out there.

I finally took the hedge cutters to it and smoothed out the edges. I considered taking pictures but it doesn’t look that special now that it’s done and I could see you guys thinking: Why the hell did she put a photo of her hedge on her blog? It looks like it was trimmed by a blind person.

[Aside: don’t you hate when your software checks for updates all by itself and randomly interrupts you when you’re doing something to say, “Hey, I have an update, do you want it right now?” and I want to say, “No, do I interrupt you when you’re in the middle of doing something and say, “Hey, it’s my birthday, do you want to bake me a cake?”]

My confidence boosted by how easy it is to use that mother, I went to the side of the house to chop at that hedge. That’s another story I can’t get into right now, but basically I chopped until I felt like my arms were falling off and they still feel like they’re falling off and my forearms are throbbing and typing does not feel good.

Tomorrow I’m making something with those roasted Poblanos I bought and doing some serious couch surfing.

I Want My System Font Back
This morning I arrived at the office to find that the last person on my computer was an administrator and that my display settings were all screwed up. The system font is stupid and all my desktop icons are smaller and so on like that. The sad part is that this majorly aggravated me and I stomped into someone’s office to bitch about it.

I have become that woman in the office whose head spins around and who loudly whines about her system fonts. Get over it already.

Also in today’s ramblings, I just read my Wednesday NYT Dining Out and on the cover is a super interesting article about a guy who studies how outside influences affect how much a person eats. Try this link.

The article starts out saying people will swear they aren’t influenced by the size of the package or how much variety is on the buffet table, or fancy names on the label.

Nuh-uh. I’m TOTALLY influenced by portion sizes. I’m the queen of eating junk food just because it’s there on the table. I will run out a buy a goofy product because of advertising or pick the prettier label if deciding between two brands. This is exactly why I don’t like to buy a lot of chips or any food I know I will eat in absurd quantities. This is also why I don’t like for my husband to fix my plate because he loads it up with so much stuff and I’ll eat it because it’s there. My serving guideline for him is: “Think about how much you think I would eat. Then cut it in half.”

Finally, did you know rebates are a total scam? I’ve always thought they were an excuse to collect your personal data for direct mailing/telemarketing. Turns out it’s more insidious than that AND a company was recently granted a patent for their business practice that takes pride in denying you your rebate. Their mothers must be proud.

Crazy Man with Red Ponytail
This morning I walked down Main Street near a young guy smoking a cigarette and wearing green pants with a green bag slung over his shoulder and sporting a red ponytail. He looked like a character in Dazed and Confused but time does not permit me to find a photo. Sorry.

I stopped at the red light on 2nd. He continued across. There was no traffic. He made a production of looking to the left and then to the right and then looking back over his shoulder at me standing on the corner and giving me something between an irritated sigh and the stink-eye. (And it’s a one way street so the right glance was superfluous Mr. He-Who-Thinks-He’s-So-Great.)

So you chose to go, I chose to wait. Let’s agree not to judge each other.

Then my light turned green and I crossed and caught up with him at the next corner which was red and the intersection filled with cars. We stood waiting. Traffic thinned out. One car remained but paused in front of us so that the driver would not block the intersection.

Mr. Green Jeans opens his arms to the sides in a big impatient “what’s the matter with you lady” gesture and as she drives through the intersection he does a big high karate kick at the car.

I was terrified he was going to go into my building because there was no way I was getting on the elevator with that bundle of crazy. I suppose we should be grateful he wasn’t driving.

Three Unrelated Items
1 – On Saturday morning I went out to the kitchen to refill my tea. My husband sat at the kitchen table with his headphones on, eyes closed. The paper was spread-out before him and his head tilted forward as he gently snored.

He sat up a bit when I came in the room.

ME: Hey Hon, whatcha doing?

Him: Sleeping and reading the paper.

2 – This weekend I read three reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s new book The Road. (The URL takes you to the website of the Official Cormac McCarthy Society. Who knew that even existed? Also, they don’t have the new book on their site. For shame.) I like McCarthy’s writing a lot. However, one of the reviews I read characterized this as his bleakest book yet which doesn’t put me in a big hurry. If you recall, I read Suttree earlier this year (see book #9) and the words I used were grim and joyless.

3 – My text book for my Illustrator class starts each chapter with a section called, “Why Would I Do This?” Why, indeed.