Tag Archives: plogic

Listen To Yourself Churn

This morning I was was reading yet another story about end of the world people who are stockpiling canned food and batteries and air filters for their underground bunker so they can be ready when the world ends.

So here’s my question.

They’re going to be sitting in a bunker rationing their survival cave food buckets and playing card games in candlelight, and then what?

Is that really a life, smugly enjoying being so smart to still be alive, all by themselves and waiting for the day when … what?

When they can all roam on the gray surface trying to avoid being eaten by the other survivors?

If everything does go to hell, I want to be a ghost (I plan on expiring in the first 15 minutes of the catastrophe, whatever it is) watching those people sitting across from each other reconstituting their beef stroganoff survival meals. I think that would be funny.

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Bottles of Pills

I’ve never been a diehard vitamin taker but I’ve been a fairly regular vitamin taker. Several days a week I’d knock back a multivitamin and mineral and a vitamin C the size of school bus plus a few other nutrients in a pill. Some article would tell me how one vitamin would make me age backwards and another would reduce moodiness and combination of a bunch would help me remember things that happened before 1975.

Then I read an article that said that after tons of studies, scientists determined that vitamins don’t do anything.

So I stopped taking vitamins. Instantly. Just like that.

I also quit making a point to eat breakfast when I read an article that said breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.

When I had the idea for this post I’m not sure where I wanted to go with it. Mostly I think it’s funny that I will alter my behavior after simply reading an article.

But then I’ve read lots of health-related articles that I completely ignored. I guess I listened to these two because I never noticed a measurable benefit from vitamin taking or eating breakfast. In fact, a lot of classic breakfast foods make me sleepy.

I have no concluding sentence.

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What Comes Out’s A Mystery

Atlanta

I was just thinking that I’m tired of this post-a-day thing but I’ve come this far and I hate quitting so I’ll just keep slogging. Right now it feels like my whole life is a phoned-in slog. Maybe when I’ve finally stopped coughing every 15 seconds (yes, that San Diego souvenir cough refuses to release me from its horky grasp) I’ll have a better attitude.

Meanwhile, I found a URL in my comment spam from this company that I can hire to write my content. What a great idea. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before.

It’s only a penny a word and you can pick the topics. I’m sorta of dying to try it.

I have a piece of paper by my desk to jot my ideas for potential topics. So far I have: pumpkin juggling, me (I’d love to see a 500 article written about me by a stranger getting paid .01 a word), clowns with chainsaws, and how to get trapped in a locker room with a professional soccer team for a weekend.

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More Puzzles

Bob didn’t come to California with me due to another family obligation.

He mentioned on the phone that I’d gotten a box he thought was books. I’d ordered something else that was shaped nothing like a book but you never know how stuff is going to be shipped so I didn’t think too much about it.

When I got home there was a huge book-like box and opened it with great curiosity and this is what I found inside.

A ginormous stack of puzzle books.

I definitely didn’t buy these on purpose so I tried to come up with a logical explanation.

This is the same publisher that published my story so my first conclusion was that they were clearing out the warehouse and decided to send their authors puzzle books.

I know. There is nothing logical about that. I was tired yesterday when I got home.

This morning I realized that I just sent Asimov’s money to renew my subscription so now I’m thinking I have a stupid problem to unravel.

I got another puzzle book in the mail today!

Luckily, I come from a family of puzzle-fiends. (No, I’m not kidding.) Too bad these didn’t show up before I went to California.

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Listen to the Plogic


Last night I was sitting in my room doing my computer thing and I hear my husband laughing hysterically in the kitchen. The laughter goes on long enough and with enough force that I know this is about me. Something I did is funny.

I wander in there with my “now what did I do?” face on and he’s holding this bag of chips and wiping tears from his eyes and telling me how funny I am.

The chips are almost gone and I clipped the top half of the bag off so I wouldn’t have to get half my arm greasy reaching into the bottom of the bag to get my chips. I can’t see the hilarity in this. Seems perfectly plogical to me.

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The Plogical Song

We have something in our house that my husband calls plogic. It means Pam’s logic. Or put another way, doing things my way. When my husband is feeling less than thrilled with the plogic he grumbles, “It’s Pam’s world, we just live in it.”

It’s not just that I’m bossy or control freaky. I am pathologically logical (are you allowed to put those two words together?) and am often frustrated/mystified/agog that the world does not share my vision of the best way of doing things.

I’m not this way about everything. For example, I have no input on things having to do with sports. But generally I think the best way to do things is the most efficient — I don’t like to waste my or anyone else’s time, money, or energy — so really exercising plogic is for the good of mankind.

The other day I was at the burrito cart (Fuego at 2nd and Yamhill for you locals, cheap burrito-y goodness) and an Asian woman came up and started to fill out the little sheet you use for your order. The guy always asks you wheat or flour so he can warm your tortilla while he finishes the order in front of you. When he asked her, she shook her head and said in broken English, that she didn’t understand.

Before I could even think about it I jumped right in telling the guy how to make her burrito because I had a good idea how she would probably like it, not too spicy or with too much sour cream. And then I stopped myself because, omigod, I was being That Pushy Woman Who Bosses Around Random Strangers.

In my defense, have you ever been in a situation where you weren’t clear on the customs and ways and you kind-of wished someone else would just take charge for a minute? When I was a teenager my family went to France and it was time to eat. The waiter came over and said a bunch of stuff in French, a language we unfortunately do not speak. My Dad nodded and held up 4 fingers. The waiter knew exactly what to do. He brought us 4 drinks and 4 sandwiches which we ate with great joy. “Hey, look at us, ordering food in France.”

Back in Portland, I pointed at my burrito and she ordered flour. English was not her native language, but she had a pretty good handle on it. The problem was she couldn’t hear because of the traffic.

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Reading

Yesterday I did something I haven’t done in a long time which is go to the library. I’ve been avoiding getting library books because I already have so many books around here that I haven’t read. Gifts and books I’ve asked for and books I bought and they all have bookmarks on page 3 or 5 because at one point I started it and then probably put it in a pile by the bed and then when the pile beside the bed got too high I would “clean it out” and put the books away to read later. But for the past 2 years I’ve read fewer books than ever and I’ve vowed to keep working on the pile of books that already live here which isn’t getting any smaller.

For some reason, I don’t like to have a whole bunch of books going at once — which sounds like a lie since I have about 5 going right now. But only 2 are fiction. I’ve even cut back on the magazine reading but writing shitty screenplays and farting around online eats up a lot of what used to be my reading time. Oh, and probably my Angel addiction which is now my Buffy addiction. (Probably more on that in the future as this was my first Buffy disc this week — season 1 – yay) I got The Real McCoy by Darin Strauss because someone at the writers conference said it was super fantastic and I got Jennifer Government by Max Barry because I heard about it somewhere and it looks like the kind of book I used to enjoy but never seem to read anymore. Only 2 things. I showed great restraint. Meanwhile, I’m still reading The Kelly Gang book by Peter Carry and the short stories by George Saunders. I won’t list the stuff in the pile except to say that I’m thinking of bringing Richard Russo to Orleans.

Back to not starting a bunch of books at once. I’m a complete project oriented person. I like things to have a beginning, middle and end and I don’t like to start unless I know I’m going to do all the parts and I don’t like things to be unfinished. This applies to everything. I don’t like video taping a show if I missed the first couple minutes. Why wash only a few dishes in the sink if you’re not going to wash all of them, then wipe down the counters and put the butter away? Why do only half the laundry if you can fit the whole basket in the machine as one load? Ideally if I had the time, money and energy, I’d like to raze the entire backyard and start all over — installing sprinklers for the first step. I’m not suggesting this is a good or bad way to be, only that this is way I am and my husband is not.

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