Happy cat... has run out of happy.

I don't really get the video game references, and I don't usually use internet-ish acronyms other than my favorite one (JMFC) but this one made me LOL. Click on Meme Cats to see more.

This kind of thing now has a Wikipedia entry. With links to these kinds of photos. And these kinds. And these kinds. And finally, these kinds. If you click on no other link, click the last one.

I was supposed to be in bed an hour ago but I got caught up in this and I'm kinda glad. I have literally not laughed so hard in a long time, as I have with some of these photos/captions.

Calling all comedians.

I am in need of jokes. Simple "what do you call a..." or "what did the X say to the Y..." type jokes that are simple to remember and tell, AND that are also funny. It doesn't matter why I need them. Just post 'em if you've got 'em.

Thanks in advance.

Awwww, you shouldn't have.

Most of the weddings I've been invited to have extended the invitation for me only. Even my oldest and dearest friend only alloted me one seat at her upcoming nuptuals. I couldn't care less - people who invite me to weddings know that they are not likely to attend mine anytime soon, and weddings are too expensive for me to bring a friend along for the fun of it, and I'm just happy to be nominated... er, invited...

Today I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation which indicated that two seats had been reserved for me.

TWO seats!

You silly, crazy, optimistic friends. I appreciate the thought but unless you want my whiny cat there, it's just gonna be me, my vegetarian self and I. And we all fit in one seat.

(Formal RSVP is in the mail. Whee!!)

You always wanna know why I've got memorable quotes from Office Space in my "favorites"? Well, take it in.

Today I got an email rejection notice for a job I applied for last year. The rejection notice only had the posting number and job title (no department).

I can't find that particular posting number amongst my countless cover letters so I have no idea which job I was actually rejected for, which in the grand scheme of things is kind of funny. The last three jobs with that title, I applied for in July, August and October of 2006. The first job I applied for at that level was in January 2005, and there were two others between then and July 2006.

Luckily for me, the email states that the recruiters are keeping my information on file for six months. Which basically means that if another position opens up that I'm remotely qualified for, they will have thrown out my information by the time they get around to reviewing my resume.

"Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me."

Like whating a WHAT?

Today's financial management for dummies class featured the following analogy:

Nonprofits are infamous for handing out titles over pay raises. Kind of like banks. You can't swing a dead cat in a bank without hitting 12 VPs of something or another.

[Digression #1: Now, I love cats but I also love the book "All I Need to Know I Learned from My Dead Cat." Despite the fact that I woke up and found my cat dead and stiff one morning, I still find the humor in that book. Even so, it was a random thing to say.

Digression #2: We have a hearing-impaired person in our class who has two interpreters working with her. I find myself watching them now and then just out of curiosity, because while I can sign the alphabet and a few words here and there, I couldn't hold a conversation without trying a deaf person's patience - so I watch to see how certain words are signed. It's like a bonus class on top of the class I am taking. End of digressions.]

Upon hearing this particular statement from the professor, all eyes immediately went to the interpreters to see how the hell they would sign "can't swing a dead cat."

________________
For the record, this is my favorite extension professor in the history of extension professors.

Define "pay," Bob.

Tonight was part one of my "financial management for dummies" class, which I'm taking to fulfill a requirement for Cal State's Non-Profit Management Certificate program (and also to help me in my day to day job). Not to imply that non-profit managers are dummies. But me, personally? I'm a dummy when it comes to non-profit management.

So far the class has been way more interesting than it probably sounds to you, dear reader, and it's definitely practical as well as way more interesting than I anticipated.

But by far, the best part tonight was when the instructor was defining "membership-based" organizations versus "non-membership-based" organizations. Someone asked whether a church would be considered "membership-based."

The instructor tried to explain... "Well, would a church charge a fee for any services it provides someone who attends church regularly? What types of services are you thinking of?" The questionner gave the example of Catholic church marriage classes, and threw out a couple other Catholic class/service examples I wasn't familiar with.

The instructor's reply started with, "If you don't have to pay to be a member of the Catholic church..."

He had to wait a few minutes for the giggles to subside before continuing.

Not by the hair on my shinny, shin shin.

Subject partially cribbed from Connie, who dragged me kicking and screaming to the Shins show at the Warfield last night.

OK, far from kicking and screaming. But I hadn't planned on going, only because I saw them for a brief set at the Download Festival and I also saw them for a very brief (and free!) set at Easy Street Records earlier this year and I'm also trying to be more cautious about money these days. But since I'd never seen a full show I figured, what the hey.

(Digression. Anyone with an extra Decemberists ticket for next week should disregard all previous comments and invite me immediately. End of digression.)

After a couple of drinks and a great Indian meal we wandered down to the Warfield. Timing couldn't have been more perfect - about 10 minutes after we sat down, the Shins came on stage. And then THEY ARRIVED.

I don't know what it is about me and the Warfield. The past three times I have had a seat in the balcony, I have had a chatty Cathy who praised my aloneness, an old man who kept falling on me due to his self-explained reliance on prescription drugs, and a couple who snorted coke and then made out (lather rinse repeat) during the entire show. (I think those last two were pre-blog. The old man incident occured at a Pretenders show - which is probably to be expected - but the cokehead makeout couple was at a Counting Crows show. Counting Crows? COKE? REALLY? I must have missed something in my appreciation for that band.)

The Shins were no exception. About 2 songs into the set, a couple sat down in the seats (providing at least 6 more inches leg room) directly in front of Connie and myself. (Did I mention that the legroom in our purchased seats was worse than Southwest's used to be? Yeah, it was that bad.) These folks proceeded to bob and sway and TALK TALK TALK and bob and sway and generally make it difficult to see or hear the band for about 15 minutes.

Now. Mind you, I've been trying to actively work on what I call my "people patience" - patience for people who, in my mind, are stupid idiots who care nothing about the entire universe that exists outside their own head - so I thought it was just me. Oh, no. Around song three of their arrival, Connie tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "those people are annoying the HELL out of me."

THANK GOD. It wasn't just me.

Shortly thereafter, they snuck down to the general admission area to annoy those unfortunate people, and upon realizing this (thanks, house lights!) Con and I moved down a row to sit in their luxuriously leg-roomy seats. At that point, I totally relaxed and was able to enjoy the wonderfulness that is the Shins. And then? When their first song in the encore was a cover of Breathe in the Air? I could not have been happier about my $40 ticket purchase.

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

A journey of 2600 miles begins with...

... a couple days in bed, apparently.

My brave and crazy friend who is about to begin her 2600-mile journey from Mexico to Canada, is laid up in bed with a fever, chills, sore throat, aches and pains everywhere.

As she put it, Canada ain't going anywhere, so she is resting up and taking it all in stride.

Please join me in wishing her good health so that we can all live vicariously through her for the next six months!! I told my mom what she was doing and the first thing Mom said in response was, "don't ever tell me that you're doing that..." Followed immediately by, "tell her good luck!"

"Among Monday's dead was..."

Jesus Christ. This news story is incredibly troubling. Heartbreaking. Disturbing. And somewhat personal.

The school really is nestled in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains. I have my own pictures to prove it. There's greenery and beautiful graystone and brick buildings everywhere you look. Fall brings an explosion of orange, red and brown in the trees, and the drill field is a great place for mud flinging and/or mud wrestling (depending on your personal preference) after a big rain. Several bars downtown, as well as several fraternities, welcomed college bands and offered all-ages nights. (I first heard Dave Matthews Band at a frat party at Virginia Tech, if you can believe that.) In short, not a bad place to be when you're coming into your own after high school. It also had a LOT of dormitory housing (Monteith and West Eggleston Halls representin'!), which lent itself nicely to the "full college experience." My fondest college memories are of Virginia Tech, not of the university that actually issued my degree four years later.

When I attended for the first three semesters of my college career, the university had a phone system that could get voice mail messages to students through a bulk distribution listing. I can't imagine the same isn't still true, and I can't understand why they chose to use email for this particular message. But the attack did start small, and there's always the fine line between appropriate notification and fear-induced panic.

I don't fault the higher-ups for acting as they did, and my thoughts are with them and all the students, parents and faculty who were a part of this horrific experience.

Idea #50: Clean house.

Idea #50 in this book is to write about emptying your closets and letting things go, things that you've held on to a year (or more) too long. That idea, combined with watching five episodes of Clean Sweep this weekend, inspired the following activities and subsequent post.

First, I attacked the closet. I've been struggling with the balance between losing more weight than I'd planned to, and the concept that my new job is stressful enough and I've laid off the gym enough that I just might gain all that weight back in the next six months. (I don't hope to, for many many reasons, the main one being that I'm in a wedding this July and would like to have a nice figure to show off whatever strappy dress and bikini I end up wearing in hot, humid Puerto Rico. But another part of me really just doesn't care.)

Anyway, I haven't wanted to get rid of any clothes until today. Today, anything I haven't worn in the last year, I'm not likely to wear this year (skinny or not), so it went into the Salvation Army bag. I freed up about 20 hangers just on that purge. (I also kept three pairs of jeans and four shirts that no longer fit - but put them in a storage box to save closet space - in case I do gain weight again and need some emergency clothing. A girl's gotta plan.)

I keep my shoes in a verticle sweater hanger, which started out as an actual place to house sweaters before I grew up a little bit and bought a real dresser to house the aforementioned sweaters. Yesterday several of the slots housed several pairs of shoes, and there were five shoe boxes underneath also housing shoes. Now there are just a few slots housing several pairs of shoes and no shoe boxes underneath. (I love shoes. I consider this progress. Work with me here.)

And finally, the bookcase. Yesterday, the books I hadn't yet read were interspersed with the books I had read, and just looking at the bookcase before bedtime always made me way too tired to bother with picking one out. Now, all the books I haven't read are neatly organized on the top shelf:



All the books I have read (and will likely read again someday) are organized in horizontal ~ and~ verticle stacks on the bookshelves, creating a nice design element to the room:



And all the books I have no intention of reading or finishing are in the Salvation Army pile; all the phone books and old AAA guides that I will never refer to are in the recycling pile; the state and state park maps are in my car; and the pocket references are on my desk.

I understand how other peoples' homes get disorganized. It's easy to just pile junk in a room or a closet and not deal with them, ever. When I was in elementary school my desk was always a mess and spring cleaning with Mom was the dreaded event of the year.

Now, the idea of disorganization, or things piling up without dealing with them, feels so oppressing to me. I'm not sure if it's due to how many times I've moved in the last five years (the less stuff you have, the quicker the move), or if it's due to my immediate disgust when I pick up a book and see the clean space on the dresser where the dust has collected around it, or if it's because of my anti-capitalist attitude that makes me shun "stuff as happiness"...

Actually, I don't really care what it's about. It's me. And it feels good.

Belated Friday five.

Top five things that will result in me hitting the "back" button immediately after reading any of the following in your Craig's List "men seeking women" post*, in no particular order:

• typos
• run-on sentences
  
• insecurity about being divorced and/or a parent**
  
• "I watch Dr. Phil every night"
• "My only criteria was that she'd have to be breathing, but then I thought, should I make that mandatory or by choice?"

________________
* I only click links and view more details on posts with subject lines that don't include any innuendos relating to sex. This REALLY narrows the pool of posts I actually peruse, and the list above is representative of that pool only... I replied to a few tonight, just for fun. I'm sure they are all ogres but if not, remind me to delete this post after you meet them.

** I couldn't care less. The last guy I dated off and on for a few years (and fell in love with, which is a whole other ugly story) was divorced with a 5-year old boy at the time. The older I get, the more likely it will be that I start dating a man who was once married and/or has children. It's a fact. So just acknowledge that fact and tell me about your lovely child or children and how you have kept the relationship with your ex-wife amicable and I will be totally respectful of that fact.

Step 9: Do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around.

I might be able to find time to surf 3hive. But I certainly don't have time for all this nonsense.

I think my next online dating attempt will include a requirement: must take care of all my technology needs at the drop of a hat without complaining. That should weed quite a few of the weirdos out.

I want to work for THIS guy.

"In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves."

More here.

Get bent, TAX MAN!

It's a good thing my old company sent me a bonus check today, which I wasn't supposed to get since I didn't work through March of this year, because now I can afford to pay for the extra money the IRS claims I owe.

Except that I don't. Whoever entered my withholdings for 2006 reversed two of the numbers, making it look like a difference of $261 is still owed. Naturally there is no clear way to appeal the revised "amount due by 4/26" letter I received today with this information.

The process that is about to ensue, to get this all cleared up, is almost enough of a freaking headache that I want to just pay the damn $261 and be done with it. It took me 5 years to get a fraudulent credit card charge cleared up and I'm sure this will be a very similar drawn out debacle, which will take several years of credit report monitoring to ensure that things get cleared up as they should be.

But I'm having too much fun writing the condescending reply letter (oh and also it's 261 freaking dollars) to give in that easily:

Dear Franchise Tax Board,
It is my great pleasure to inform you that I DID NOT, in fact, INCORRECTLY COMPUTE the tax amount on my return as you so blatantly accused in your 4/11/07 letter. Please review the enclosed copies of my W2 (see item #17 "State income tax"), tax return (line 32 total payments and credits) and personal check in the amount of X (the amount of which, by the way, barely covers the payroll for the time it took your unfortunately dyslexic clerk to mistype some information, and send me this bloody letter).

Etc., etc... You get the gist.

I do fully intend to be condescending and I'm sure that will have some negative impact on some record of my existence somewhere in the country. But in the words of the great Billy Bragg, "if you've got a blacklist, I wanna be on it."

Especially if it's a Franchise Tax Board blacklist. I fucking hate taxes.

________________
No offense to the dyslexics, of course. I have been known to be one, myself, when it comes to numbers. I just think that if you do have dyslexia, perhaps accounting is not the profession for you.

I'm also debating whether to even let my old company know I got a bonus check. It's not my fault they forgot to terminate me on the correct date. I was good and returned THAT 2-week paycheck immediately. Maybe this recent windfall is my come-uppance for putting up with so much crap for nine years?

That whole "putting a face to a name" concept.

At last, now I know that the (actually) nappy-headed white southern conservative annoying "who the hell is he?" dude I always saw when bypassing all the crap cable news shows to get to Roseanne on channel 53 every night, is Don Imus.

So if nothing else comes out of this whole debacle, I can now rest easy with that knowledge.

And for the record, I am quite disgusted with Imus for distracting all the attention from who really is Anna-Nicole Smith's baby's father.

(War? What war?)

Honk if you hate nosybodies.

I was turning into a major intersection today and came damn close to hitting a woman who was crossing the street in accordance with the "walk" sign.

(Digression. Note to self: STOP THE DISTRACTING RUNNING COMMENTARY [TO YOURSELF] ABOUT YOUR DAY ON YOUR WAY HOME. End of digresion.)

I walk a lot, so I have nearly been the victim of vehicular manslaughter many a time. Being one myself, usually I am quite conscious of pedestrians and as long as they are following the rules, I yield to them. (Because seriously? The MOST ANNOYING THING is a jaywalker, and although I jaywalk myself now and then I have ZERO sympathy for jaywalkers.)

This woman I almost hit was abiding by the rules.

The woman in the car following me felt obligated to pull up alongside me at the next stop light, roll down her window and say "DID YOU SEE HER??? BE CAREFUL!!" To which I had three responses, in the following order:

A) Like I didn't feel bad enough about the near-hit.
B) Like I needed a random stranger criticizing my driving.
C) Like an entire five minutes later, a reprimand would even be remotely effective. Hello, lady? Have you seen our justice system lately?

My new theme song.

Driving home after a particularly crummy day at work today (yes, it's a good job, but it's still WORK which means it still SUCKS), I heard this song, which won the vote for "best of set" during KFOG's 10 @ 10 this morning.

I can see why it won - it struck a chord with me personally. (The first part, anyway. ) I just had a three day weekend and all I could think last night was, damn, I have got to find a sugar daddy. And, maybe I could just move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and live off my savings for years. And actually, yes, I wish I could just get paid to watch cable TV every night. Because I do learn from hours upon hours of watching cooking/home decorating shows, and Jon Stewart really does make me "LOL" and sometimes "ROTFL," and I honestly do care about the Little People and am dying to see what the hell happens to regular-sized little person Jacob in tonight's episode.

I don't really want all the stuff at the end of that song though. Other than, perhaps, the McCulloch chainsaw, because if I learned nothing else from Grindhouse, I learned that you've got to be prepared in case nuclear splooge really turns people into flesh-eating zombies.

So, what do YOU want from life?

Hey look, Brady Bunch Lawnmower Massacre is opening for Cindy Brady's Lisp tomorrow night.

My favorite thing to do in used record stores, other than spending lots of time and money, is to spend lots of money on CDs marked "FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY - NOT FOR RESALE."

In some small way, I truly believe that I am sticking it to the man when I do that... Even when the purchase in question is from an indie record label.

My second favorite thing to do in used record stores is peruse the band names. If only I'd known about this site, I could've saved myself a lot of time and money today.

Public service announcement.

BevMo's 5 cent wine sale is on. I highly recommend the Taft Street Cab.

Redemption in filmmaking.

I am quite certain that the people who saw me grinning as I walked down the street about an hour ago probably would not have guessed that I was grinning because I'd just sat through three hours of mind-numbing, senseless, graphic, campy, gritty, sarcastic, bloody, star-/cameo-/violence-/action-packed mayhem.

It's true. Hell, even I found my grinning a little hard to believe, but I really just couldn't help myself. Sin City had the same effect on me. I'm not sure what that says about me... and I don't want to know.

As with Sin City, I can't believe the man who brought you Spy Kids also brought you Planet Terror. And with Death Proof, Quentin has officially redeemed himself for that American Idol/CSI nonsense. Fans will note his trademarks: snappy curse-laden dialogue, obscure references to 70's pop culture, beautifully choreographed fight scenes and that brilliant 7-minute continuous shot of a conversation around a round table.

I also realized today why I probably didn't like Hostel - I tried to watch it on my little 19-inch TV. Anything Tarantino is associated with is meant to be viewed on a ginormous screen with excellent sound. Note to self.

In fact, if you are at all interested in seeing this film, unless you have a 52 inch screen and room for 20 friends, do not queue it up in your Netflix. GO TO THE THEATER. It was all about the entire experience this afternoon - the Grand Lake, filled with a bunch of late 20's/early 30's hipster types who GOT IT and clapped and laughed and groaned and squealed at all the appropriate places.

The Parkway would be ideal... I almost held out for that but my curiosity got the better of me.

________________
As an aside, I think Quentin is starting to rival Joss in the "women power and I'll be over here" sense. Starting to. He most certainly is not there yet.

News from the home front.

"Guess what! We had snow today - about one inch. The Christmas Cacti bloomed also."

That's right, sports fans. It snowed in Maryland (the lowlands, right outside of D.C., not the mountains). One inch. In APRIL.

According to weather.com, it's 39 degrees at my parents' house this very minute. In APRIL.

I was looking through old photos for something the other day and ran across several years' worth of Easter Sunday photos. (No, I will not be posting any of them. So don't ask.) I wasn't even wearing a jacket over my frilly pastel Easter dress in any of those photos, let alone a winter coat.

Maybe the polar bears should be migrating south.

Okay, but who's LOOKING OUT for a new plot line?

After that dream the other night, that I could not will myself back into despite the best of efforts, I just had to check out The Lookout today. I did have to will myself to pay $7.50 for a movie I knew would be mediocre at best, but I had the day off and it was playing at the local theater and I had some time to kill, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

I was right - it was mediocre at best.

Really, Hollywood? Has the creativity been sucked so dry that you can't come up with one lousy brand-new story? You just have to retell the same story over and over again, but change out the variables now and then? "Hmm, let's do a bank heist film, but this time - YEAH! - this time let's feature a main character who has suffered a head injury and can't remember shit, and introduce him to some brand new people who - overnight! - change the core of his being and all that he has ever believed in, to make him the perfect accomplice to their bank heist! And the menacing guy, we'll call him Bone and he will have long hair and be scary and hardly ever speak but when he does it will be profound! And then at the end we'll throw in a twist - maybe the main character CAN remember shit after all!"

I doubt anyone will go out of their way to watch this movie but if you do, I haven't ruined anything. It was all right there in the trailer.

That said, Jeff Daniels was very good. Very good. (I was never a big fan, but I'm finding that I like him more with every new film.)

And, well, you know - staring at JGL for 1.5 hours never did anyone any harm. He was actually very good as well. In fact, all the actors did a great job. Several hours later I have all but forgotten the plot, but some of the dialogue and character interactions linger in my head.

But really, if you want to see what all my JGL hype is about, check out Brick. It's a much better use of your 1.5 hours.

You're a dream to me.

Last night I had a dream that I was on my way to Australia. In my dream, SFO was a sprawling airport... okay, maybe that part isn't so unusual. But the strange part was that you had to wait outside, on the runway, to check in - with all the planes coming and going pretty much right around your head.

(I have had that exact part of the dream before - checking in, outside, with planes flying around my head. I wonder what it means.)

I started out in the line with a current co-worker who I was either traveling with or just carpooling with - I was never quite sure. I had a couple freak-out moments where I thought I'd left my large bag, you know, the one with ALL MY TRAVELING NEEDS, at home and did some quick time calculations to see if I could make it back home to pick up my bag and still make the plane... Only to look down and see my large bag, the one with ALL MY TRAVELING NEEDS, right there at my feet.

(Not an unusual freak-out in a travel-related dream.)

Once I got into the airport, the terminals/waiting areas were a maze of amusement park games and activities. Mostly on the crappy boardwalk amusement park end - lots of pinball and other arcade games, some skeeball, but also a few water slides, a ferris wheel and a couple other county-fair-type rides. Soon after entering the airport I lost my co-worker (although I am still not sure we were actually traveling together) and started to wander around the maze of neon spinning shouting machines.

(That part of the dream could mean any number of things. I'm not too worried about it. For example, I'm really dreading a whirlwind trip back east for my best friend's bridal shower, and also planning a whirlwind trip to Puerto Rico for the same friend's wedding, so this travel anxiety is all totally reasonable. I mean, when you really think about it, pinball machines/skeeball + boring airports before an excruciatingly long flight = GOOD THING!)

And then I ran into HIM. And it was like we were old friends, meeting after not seeing each other for years. We smiled, we joked, we wandered amongst the pinball machines. He eyed a few of them with a childlike glee, so of course I encouraged him to play. But he just smiled, and took my hand, and we continued to wander around like an old married couple - holding hands, smiling at the kids and shooting the breeze.

For those brief moments, dream or not, I never felt so comfortable or content in all my life.

(I have a sense of what this part of the dream means. It could be any of the following, or a combination of all of the following:

• today was the last day for the JGL-ish type on my staff and I've been dreading it for many reasons, mostly because I really respect his opinions and input and it sucks that he's leaving and I couldn't do anything to get him to stay.
• the last conversation I had last night had to do with physical intimacy (or lack thereof, or desire therefore), and I realized on the way home that all I really want on the boyfriend front right now is a cute boy that I can hold hands with. That's ALL I want. And that seems weird to me.
  
• JGL is freakin' HOT, and my subconscious won't let me forget that.)

Anyway, back to the dream. Customs kept hunting me down because I'd left my bag sitting with his bag in the arcade but we hadn't stayed with our bags as requested, we'd just been wandering... And there was a question as to whether I'd actually make the plane to Australia since customs was trying to detain and question me. When I did finally make it on the plane he was nowhere to be found.

And then I woke up. At 8am. Which meant I was going to be late for work.

Which, in the grand scheme of things, is truly perfect, real-life expectation-setting after coming out of such a lovely dream.

Which is not to say that I didn't exert myself trying to get back to sleep, back to that dream, no matter how late for work I already was.

Thursday is the new Friday.

In the most ironic of ironic turns of events, Jen(n) the atheist, pirate-worshiping potty-mouth now works in a church for a Christian-based organization and gets Friday off because it's the day someone's lord Jesus Christ was crucified and died to save his people.

After sleeping in, watching 18 hours of Buffy reruns and commiting all seven deadly sins including gluttony at the birthplace of California cuisine, I will be sure to eat some hot cross buns to commemorate the occasion.

It's a free ride, when you've already paid...