Look! Visitors from ezPRoC!

Hey! I see I'm getting a lot of hits (okay, like, 15. But that's a lot for me, sadly) from my old stomping grounds, ezPRoC (The People's Republic of Clay ezboard. Shut up.) Say hi, y'all! Just anywhere is fine. I won't scream at you if your comment is off topic. Say, did you bring pie? Don't kill me for my political views. I miss you, mwah!

So when I went over to ezPRoC to see why everyone was suddenly visiting me (thanks, Katrina!) I found this link, which is making me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Snarkywood

I wanna be as funny as them.

They are a shining example of how to analyze pictures, in contrast to the horrifying Analysis of ClayBeauty, which is so scary that it makes me want to cry.

A Heartwarming Tale of a Guy and His Porn, Part II

Apparently this was the wrong thing to do. I certainly never meant to hurt anyone, I just let my frustration get to me and I mistakenly told the truth. I'm not sorry for telling the truth, but I am sorry that it was hurtful to people whose opinion of me matters to me. Knowing someone is disappointed in me is the feeling that hurts me the worst, I think.

An example of a liberal who still likes her eeeeeevil conservative friend. New and improved, now with poultry!

My best imaginary friend Mia sent me a silly Hallmark e-card for my birthday that is making me giggle uncontrollably. I was so tickled at it that I made a couple of screencaps of the top-billed characters, Chick and Duck:

And here they are rocking out:

  

Like I've said before, I'm easily amused. And since I was posting those poultriful screencaps, I decided to go ahead and re-post something that I wrote last month that I ended up deleting later. So here you go, again.

I didn't read last week's Time yet (my nerdy self had to have Popular Science and Scientific American this month, because I was a sucker for the Best of 2004 and Are Viruses Alive? covers.) So my magazine queue overfloweth. Anyway, there are letters in this week's Time that refer to "The Uniter vs. the Divider" piece by Joe Klein in the November 15th issue. Reading them made me appreciate the arrangement that I have with my friend Mia. Mia and I are extremely similar, down to our weird idiosyncrasies and the particular type of crazy that emerges when something wigs us out, but we're polar opposites on sunscreen usage (I stupidly avoid it) roller coasters (I love them) and politics.

Despite the political differences, though, we can have discussions about politics that don't dissolve into a contest of who can screech her side's mantra the loudest:

"La la la la la Bush is a manipulative and evil devil monkey la la la la la la!"

"La la la la la Bush can do no wrong and Dick Cheney is so not responsible for the Crystal Lake murders* la la la la!"

I just think that's really great. Maybe we should get our own "Hannity & Colmes"-type show. I can talk through my nose and say that everything is unbelievable, and she can have an out-of-control eyebrow that practically jumps off of her forehead. I think it would be fabulous.

*Dick Cheney really isn't responsible for the Crystal Lake murders la la la. It's a reference to an Onion article back in September, but I can't link it because I'm not a premium member and I'm too cheap to join. So there.

Decorating roadkill

I was talking to Scott's family on Christmas Eve, and his brother said that he had recently seen a dead deer beside the road. That is a regular occurrence in this area, but someone had put a flashing red nose on this one. Bwahahaha. See, not all West Virginians scrape roadkill up and put it on the George Foreman -- some people decorate it instead.

Also, what am I doing up so early? I went to sleep around 2:00 and then was wide awake at 4:00. Bleargh, I hate that! David Oreck the Friendly Grandfatherish-Looking Man will sell me his air purifier yet.

26 random things about me.

Today is my 26th birthday. And since it's December 26th and I'm 26 today, here's a list of 26 random things about me. Try to control your excitement.

1. I'm an only child. I think that kind of accounts for some of my craziness.
2. When I start to get cold, the 2nd toe on my right foot goes numb. None of my other toes do that.
3. I usually require Junior Mints when I go see a movie.
4. When I was about four, I stuffed two Reese's Pieces up my nose. An orange one up one nostril and a yellow one up the other. I was just interested to see what would happen. To save you the trouble of doing that yourself, here's what happens -- Mom wigs out and calls my aunt who is a nurse, all the while throwing tissues at me and yelling, "Blow! Blow!" I didn't know what the big deal was, since I could still breathe through my mouth just fine. I'm pretty sure I didn't suffer any brain damage from that event.
5. My car is purple, and it's my fourth Grand Prix. It's also my 2nd purple car. It's "supercharged" and I have no idea what that means, except that it makes a cool "vrrrooooom!" sound that I like a lot.
6. Family Guy makes me laugh like a hyena. I think it's the funniest show ever.
7. I'm a big fan of alphabetizing stuff.
8. I realize that makes me kind of weird.
9. I try to make everyone I know read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, because it's such a great book. For me, the beautifully written story inspired a great interest in India's culture, and the atrocities described made me very very very thankful to live in America. (Again.)
10. My first semester of college, in my first chemistry class of my life, I got a D letter at midterm. This was traumatizing since I graduated 1st in my class (granted, it was from a dinky high school at which a hamster could probably excel.) I ended up with an A, though, because I learned how to study.
11. I love the sound of junk going up in the vacuum cleaner, especially those plastic things that attach tags to clothes. Sometimes I drop them in the floor on purpose and then leave them there just so I can vacuum them up later, because my life is very sad.
12. I have a love/hate relationship with the non-word "irregardless". If someone says it to be funny, then it makes me laugh. If someone says it out of ignorance, then I hate that.
13. The first Bible verses I memorized were Luke 2:8-14, and I memorized them from watching A Charlie Brown Christmas a million times.
14. During my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, I kept the book and did the stats for the boys' baseball team. That was my favorite extracurricular high school activity.
15. I love photography, especially child photography.
16. I'm a Weight Watchers lifetime member.
17. I've been clogging since 1996, which makes me (wait for it) a clogger blogger. Hee.
18. When I graduated from college, I cut out letters and attached "Psalm 121:1-2" to the top of my mortarboard, because #1, I only graduated from college because of my help from God, and #2, He made heaven and earth, which I am even more certain of after getting a degree in biology.
19. The first week or so after I started college, I had my heart broken so badly that I didn't think I'd ever recover. But very soon after, I met Scott, who is my dream come true, and I healed just fine. And now, just the thought of losing Scott is more devastating than anything that the other guy could have ever done.
20. I can't pick just one favorite movie, but I love What's Love Got to Do With It, The Joy Luck Club, Clue, and Office Space.
21. When I hear It's Tricky by Run D.M.C., I must dance. Same for Faded by soulDecision and Let it Whip by The Dazz Band. I can't help it. I also must chime in on the 2nd "y'all" right before the end of It's Tricky.
22. I'm flat-footed.
23. The only alcohol I've ever had is one drink of champagne at my cousin's wedding. And I thought it was awful.
24. I taught anatomy lab for four semesters in graduate school, and it never failed to amuse me one of the male reproductive models was made by Bobbitt Laboratories. Heh.
25. My senior year of high school, one of my friends and I choreographed a routine to Thriller for the majorettes and cheerleaders to perform at our homecoming pep rally, which was the week of Halloween. We got some dry ice to generate some cool fog, and set small amounts in little containers all around the gym. But we didn't know that we had to put water on it. Duh. (See #10.)
26. I'm allergic to tree nuts -- not anaphylactic shock caliber, though -- they just make my mouth itch.

Naughty kids lose gifts to eBay

Heh. These kids learned the hard way that actions have consequences, I guess. AOL says the auction is over $1000 now.

From the Houston Chronicle today:
Naughty kids lose gifts to eBay

A father of three children in the Houston area has gone from playing Santa Claus to playing the Grinch.The man decided that his children were being naughty instead of nice -- and he's taught them a lesson by auctioning their presents on eBay.

Games, stinkbombs and fake languages.

Being Christmas and all, it's a given that I get to spend some time with some of my favorite people to be around. No, not the cast of Family Guy -- they're animated, silly -- I'm talking about my friends from afar (afar being 3-4 hours away.) Actually, two of them are Scott's friends from high school, and the other two are said friends' girlfriend and wife. So we're kind of like friends-in-law. But whatever, they are wonderfully geeky and smart scientists on one hand (an endodontics resident, a dental student, Almost-Dr. Scott the chemist, two engineers, and a microbiologist in a pear tree.) On the other hand, they're also wonderfully normal and down-to-earth -- the guys all compare their deer kills, and we laugh at The Blue Collar Comedy Tour until we cry. On the other hand (oops, I already used both hands, didn't I?) On one foot, they're all Christians and non-drinkers and non-profane, which isn't a requirement before I'll spend time with someone, not at all, but it does make for a more pleasant experience. And on the other foot, they like board games, as do I, and so we have a lot of fun. For example.

Tonight we were playing Balderdash, the bluffing game in which you have a clue in one of five categories: a stupid law that you get the first part of and then you have to finish it, an acronym that you have to identify what the letters stand for, a word that you have to define, a person whose accolades you have to list, or a movie title that is plot-less and so you give it one. The person reading the clue writes down the real answer on the super-special "Balderdash" paper, and everyone else writes something that sounds plausible. Then the person who knows the answer reads all of the slips of paper, and everybody guesses the real answer. If you guess the real answer, you advance two spaces, and if someone guesses the one you wrote, you advance one space.

All righty. So it turns out that I suck at this game, because I use words like "effigy" and "masquerading" and "budding yeast" and then everybody knows it is the answer I wrote and not the real answer. I don't think I have a vocabulary that's any better than the next person, but whatever. Being known among my friends as the one with the good vocabulary and the good speller makes me feel like Dorothy of The Golden Girls, and that makes me sad because I don't wanna be a man in a cowl-necked sweater.

One of the engineers couldn't think of a plausible-sounding expanded form of R.A.B.T., but he came up with a solution. And before he handed me his slip of paper, he said, "I may have misspelled something." I told him never fear, I can sound it out. Here was his guess: Ravoo Aboo Boohoo Toohoo. Okay, bwah. I laughed for about five minutes which totally gave it away. Oh well. The good news is that he spelled them all correctly, because no one except him speaks Ooglish, so he gets to define the way everything is spelled. Except boohoo, which was in fact correct.

After Balderdash, our newly-formed musical group (Ravoo Aboo and the Boohoo Toohoos) decided to move along to Pictionary. It's always fun when both teams are supposed to draw (an all-play) and each arteeste looks at a different side of the card. Whoops. When that happens, you have a triumphant shout of "Crown ... fingers ... three ... triple crown!" followed by "Yay!" and then someone on the other team goes, "Huh. I was drawing a stinkbomb." It's kind of sad, especially when they're staring dejectedly at the beginnings of a very promising rendition of a nose.

We also play Taboo (no relation to Ravoo Aboo) which is always fun. Especially for scientists, because when your word is something like "muscle", then you can give a clue like, "Actin and myosin!" which is both allowed and an instant giveaway. Mwahahaha. We were playing once over the summer, and the guys had "poker", I think. So the clue-giver quoted those old T-shirts, "Liquor in the front ..." and the other guy, so sadly sure of himself, proclaims, "Stick 'er in the hind end!!" Ack. Not exactly how innuendo works. So the clue-giver keeps repeating, "Listen! LIQuor in the FRONT ..." only to hear "I AM listening! STICK 'er in the HIND END!" Bwah. Because my beloved camera is soldered to my hand, I had to have a picture of this. Poor Mr. Stick 'Er is the one in the white shirt, making the hilarious "What??" gesture.

The only part that I don't like about spending time with these friends is the fact that I think that if, God forbid, Scott would replace me, the rest of the group wouldn't either notice or care. The girls may wonder why they're starting to have problems with Cranium's Word Worm category, but that's about it. And it's nothing that they've said or done, it's just my own self-esteem problem.

And now I'm finally sleepy. Just in the nick of time, too -- that friendly, grandfatherish-looking David Oreck almost sold me his air purifier again.

Scott, don't even think about it.

We've already established that my Scott is a big outdoorsman. Actually, just an average-sized outdoorsman. Anyway, I saw this posted by EWG the other day and thought I should veto it immediately.

Hopefully, Scott, one day we'll share a house and a last name and all of that. But we will NOT -- WILL NOT -- have this decorative doorbell. Just so you know.

No, just no.

Although it is funny.

A heartwarming tale of a guy and his porn. Part I.

Apparently this was the wrong thing to do. I certainly never meant to hurt anyone, I just let my frustration get to me and I mistakenly told the truth. I'm not sorry for telling the truth, but I am sorry that it was hurtful to people whose opinion of me matters to me. Knowing someone is disappointed in me is the feeling that hurts me the worst, I think.

Meet the Parents and the Fockers.

I'm watching Meet the Parents (for the 4,850,377th time) on USA starring Ben Stiller with his unfortunate Speedos, Owen Wilson with his unfortunate nose, the totally amusing Robert DeNiro, the thumb-less cat that uses the toilet, and That Hugging Guy from the DMB Everyday video.

I have high hopes for Meet the Fockers, although I wish Dustin Hoffman had been a single parent (in which case it would have been Meet the Focker, I guess) or another actress was playing Roz Focker. I just can't stand Barbra Streisand as an entertainer -- every time I try, she does something else that annoys me and I have to go back to square one. I think she is waaaaay overrated. And I hope that her mandatory soft-focus filter doesn't cause the whole movie to be fuzzed up.

I have several random thoughts this evening with no logical way to link them together. Just so you know up front.

I don't like those soap dispensers that look like snowman. Due to the fact that I'm slightly weird, I think that I would feel like I was washing my hands with liquified snowman brains. And that's something that I don't do (as a general rule.)

[insert clever segue here]

I wish that trailer for White Noise would go away. Forever.

[insert clever segue here]

Those Glad ForceFlex bags are a good invention, aren't they? I saw a commercial for them, and it is spot on -- every time I throw away an elephant, the bag breaks and then I end up with cat food and corn kernels everywhere. Finally they've invented a bag that will allow me to dispose of my elephants with no mess. Genius!

[insert clever segue here]

I'm working on the post that I mentioned Thursday -- a heartwarming tale about A Guy and His Porn. Maybe it will amuse someone.

The End.

The Book of Stupid Things That I've Done, volume 1 issue 1

Because I can't think of anything to talk about, I shall spin a yarn from The Book of Stupid Things That I've Done.

I got locked between two doors one night as I was leaving the lab (which, by the way, is located in the scariest building in the universe. It's like the Hollywood Tower Hotel at Disney's MGM Studios, except without the cool bellhop/narrator guy.) One morning, my mom drove to work with me (I live 40 miles from work) because she had to go to the vet to pick up some medicine. (For a cat. My mom is a human.) Anyway, I was going to be working late at the lab, so she just left me at work and my cousin Susan was going to pick me up that night after a meeting. Since I didn't drive, I didn't have my keys, which meant I didn't have the lab key. (I know, I know, I should have brought them. But I forgot, okay??) So I had to lock the knob of the back door and close it behind me as I left.

Well, Susan called when she got into the scariest alley in the world which is located beside the scariest building in the world, so I went out the scariest back door in the world, locked the knob, pulled the door shut, and then pushed the scariest outer door of the scariest building in the world. Ack. It's locked. Ack. So is the lab. Ack. My cell phone is beeping the Low Battery of Despair, Isn't This Just Fantastic signal. Aaaaack.

I called Susan and said, "Uh, I seem to have hit a little snag." She said, "Did some experiment go horribly awry and you've transformed yourself into Spiderwoman?" I said, "No. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to live in the space between the lab and the outside world for the rest of my life. See you later, make sure someone tells Scott and my mom that I said hi, and that I love them and all of that. And please forward my mail."

She didn't like that idea, so she called my boss (oh, the humiliation) who didn't answer (change the sentence in parentheses to 'oh, the potential humiliation'.) Well, dang. I really AM going to live here for the rest of my life. At this point, I started to wonder if I'd starve to death or run out of oxygen first. In retrospect, I totally forgot to worry about what I'd do when I had to pee.

So Susan braved the scariest alley in the world, and came to the door so we could peer at each other through the tiny, crud-covered window. She even stood bravely (all 105 pounds of her) when a strange looking, cowboy-hat wearing guy came ambling through the alley. And it's a thick door so we had to scream at each other. She said that Cowboy looked at her like she was nuts, screaming at herself in this scary alley. It was kind of like an episode of Seinfeld.

My mom, in the meantime, decided that my boss may not answer since he didn't recognize Susan's name & number. So she called, and he answered. And came to the lab to let me back in, so I could go out the front door. And laughed at me the entire time. Oh well, I guess it was pretty funny. The really funny part is that I could have gotten out. The next day, he showed me a roundabout way that I could have gone down this set of stairs in the area that almost became my new home, taken all these turns, gone up another set of stairs, and ended up in the lobby. It was so cool, like the secret passageway from the conservatory to the lounge! Except without Tim Curry, who was in the hall (and he knew because he was there.)

Creepy Lap Pillow

Mia mentioned this yesterday on Popgadget, and then I saw it again in the Odd category at MyWay this morning. This "Lap Pillow" has to be in the top 5 creepiest things I've ever seen.

Care was taken with details such as the softness of the thighs, panty lines on the pillow's "backside" and wrinkles in the lap of the skirt so as to make the pillow look and feel as real as possible.

"We thought our main customers would be men in their 20s, but even men in their 60s are buying it," Igarashi said.

At stores, lap pillows gather crowds where people poke and pry at the foam legs.

Scott, you are NOT getting one.

Ack.

Oh, speaking of Scott, he finally made a comment on my blog! Yay! I'm going to try not to explode.

The Great (and not so great) Pumpkin Stuff.

I'm addicted to Sephora. The most recent thing that I bought there was some Philosophy pumpkin pie shower gel/shampoo/conditioner. When I got it, Mom took a look at it, with its recipe for pumpkin pie on the front ...

... and said something both funny and somewhat horrifying. She said, "So, you just pour the whole thing into a pie shell? And you know ... heh heh heh ... the smell of pumpkin pie is supposed to be a ... what's the word? Afridoosiack."

Eeeek.

My reply was two-fold. "First of all, how about we don't bake my personal hygiene products. And also, I really would have liked that sentence better if you'd cut it about 17 words short."

With my Pumpkin Pie Afridoosiack, I got a sample of Sephora The Great Pumpkin Mask, which was supposed to make me glow. Maybe it was the cinnamon, I don't know, but owwwwww! I think it gave me 2nd degree burns. I must have misread the package -- I thought it said, "Your face will eat it up!" not "It will eat your face up!" I left it on for about 2 minutes and then I had to rinse it off, but you know -- I think I did look a little rosy afterwards. Even though my eyes were tearing.

I love my mom, see. And that's good. But she has a screwed-up pancreas. That's bad. But someone did a study on my family a few years ago and located the gene responsible for the screw-up, and that's good. But it got passed along to me. That's bad. Because it means I have pancreatitis, and that's baaaad. Stupid prematurely activated trypsinogen is very bad. Except that it's not stupid because it has no brain. But it does get activated too early because my protein that keeps it from doing that is a mutated underachiever. Bad. But as a result, my mutated family has enough painkillers to start our own drug ring, which is good because they help the pain. But we don't have a drug ring, because that would be illegal and bad.

And that's all.

Ow.

Wait.

Also, owwwwwwwWWWWW!

So the jury recommended execution for Scott Peterson. I'm not really surprised, because I don't think he was a very sympathetic character, and the crime that he committed was horrible. Unfortunately, though, I don't think we've seen the end of this case, since they'll tie it up in appeals forever. I kind of agree with Rush -- just create a Scott Peterson network and stop showing coverage 24/7 on MSNBC and the Clinton News Network. Sheesh! But then again, what will Greta Van Suestren talk about out of the side of her mouth when this trial is over?

I've heard all over the place that conservatives who disagree with abortion yet support the death penalty and the Iraq war are hypocrites. It's not so, and here's my simple reasoning: someone who receives the death penalty has been given a fair trial by a jury of their peers. And the death penalty is only recommended by the jury if it suits the crime. I don't support all wars, but I do support the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, because the means justify the end -- freedom for the people of a country to choose their own government, mass graves that will no longer expand, rape and torture rooms that are out of operation. It's terrible that people have to die to accomplish that, but it is for a greater good.

In the case of abortion, on the other hand, there is no fair trial for an "fetus" by a jury of its peers. And if there was, it would have to be found innocent or incompetent to stand trial, because an unborn child can't willfully commit a crime (the only possible crime would be endangering the mother's health, and the "fetus" can't endanger its mother's health on purpose.) The only "greater good" that is accomplished by aborting a child is, by and large, convenience or an unblemished reputation.

So I don't think the issues of the Iraq war, the death penalty, and dismembering a "fetus" are even comparable at all.

Some independent movies are hits with me. Others are #(%*$%-ing misses.

A new movie theater opened in downtown Huntington a couple of weeks ago. That was very exciting to me because, since Huntington already has three beautiful old theaters, the new one is showing some limited release movies to avoid repeating movies that are being shown on a screen two miles away. So I'm excited about that. Three screens of Spongebob Squarepants? Not so much.

Of course, I'll probably end up seeing the limited releases by myself, because Scott can't stand the decreased production quality. I'm getting discouraged, though, by all the critical acclaim that Sideways is receiving, because typically my enjoyment of a movie is inversely proportional to the ravings of critics. Well, not exactly. But if a movie receives much gushing by movie critics, then I usually end up going, "Huh?" after I watch it. For example, Lost in Translation. I mean, I was somewhat entertained, but I was expecting much better after all the brouhaha. Maybe I just have no taste, I don't know. But in most cases, if something gets four stars across the board, then it's meh for me. I'm more of a three-star kind of girl, I guess.

By the way, if I'm missing something about Lost in Translation, somebody clue me in, please. (Mia? Any thoughts?)

Another thing about indies is they tend to have a lot of gratuitous bad language, which just isn't necessary. I watched Shallow Grave from Netflix (Netflix!) on Friday night, and I'd recommend it. An interesting story, good acting (Ewan McGregor!) and cinematography (unless you're Scott) and they managed to play out most scenes without the f-word. There's also some good dark humor (quotes stolen from Mutant Reviewers from H-e-double hockey sticks):

Juliet: Alex is a vegetarian. Do you know why? Because he feels it provides an interesting counterpoint to his otherwise callous personality. It doesn't.

David: I’ve never seen a dead body before. I saw my grandmother, of course, but I don’t think that counts. I mean, she was alive at the time.

Alex: God, you two are sensitive. All I'm doing is implying some sort of sordid, ugly, sexual liaison. Why, I'd be proud of that sort of thing.

David: Well, Brian McKinley, if you want to talk to my girlfriend you talk to me first. If you want to dance with her, then you apply in writing three weeks in advance or you’re going to end up inside a bin-bag. You didn’t apply so you don’t dance.
Juliet: Do you think you could try to be a little more forceful next time?

Hugo: No, but like all novelists, I'm in search of the self.
Alex: Has he tried down the back of the fridge? I mean, that's where I normally find things.

I can't think of an interesting way to end this. So -- the end.

Cat poo and other fun stuff.

On Friday, I promised a story filled with trauma and with stuff that was previously in my cat's intestinal tract. I wouldn't promise something like that and not deliver, so ...

Like I've said before, I live an hour away from most worthwhile things. Well, except my church, Scott when he's home, and part of my family, of course. But if I want to go to a movie, to school, to work, to evil Wal-mart, or to the vet, I have an hour-long drive.

So Mom and I took my white cat, Lucky, to the vet on Friday for shots and such. Lucky is my least mentally-afflicted cat (I've diagnosed poor Cinders with social anxiety disorder) and is pretty laid back most of the time, but for some reason, when he's in the Pet Taxi and in car, he comes totally unglued. And also, un-pooed. Meaning, he loses all poo about fifteen minutes down the road. You can imagine that this is a barrel of fun for everybody else in the vehicle.

We came prepared, though. We rolled the windows down and sprayed Lysol (which was nice considering I was on my way to the lab. I expected to hear, "Oh, Kim, what's that you're wearing?" "Just a touch of Country Scent Lysol behind the ears, thanks!") Finally I got desperate and stuck my head out the window for about 30 seconds until it started HAILING. (By the way, getting hit in the head with hail at 60 m.p.h. hurts.) So we were forced to roll the windows up. I think we went a little bit mental on account of the stench -- we couldn't stop giggling at everything.

Oh, and Lucky insists on crying the entire way, too. "Meeeeeow! Meeeooowwwww! Mrrrrooowr! MRRRRRRROOOOOWWWRR!" Poor thing. And poor us, too. It's too bad that you can't reason with a cat.

Look what happens when you get linked by SarahK!

I'm a scientist. I like graphs and data and all of that stuff (unless it's a graph of my weight and has a positive slope.) I really like this kind of graph -- it's my traffic by day for the last few days. Guess which day sarahk mentioned me on Mountaineer Musings?

I'm just tickled to death.

I took one of my cats to the vet today and the trip could not have been more traumatic. Or filled with more poo. I'll post about it later, but for now I really need a nap. I just wanted to giddily thank sarahk for the link(s). Mwaaaaaaahhhh! Just for that, I'm sending her stuff. I hope she likes stuff.

Clay Aiken sings. He sings well. I know because I was there.

Last night I was flipping channels and discovered A Clay Aiken Christmas on NBC. That reminded me of something I posted a loooooong time ago (okay, in September) about my summer concerts. I mean the ones I attended, not the ones featuring me. Because there weren't any featuring me. That would be horrid. Anyway, I did get around to talking about Dave but I forgot about Evanescence and I forgot about Clay Aiken. So I'll mention a few random things about the seeing of Clay that occurred in July.

A smattering of background information may be useful as a prologue. Okay. I noticed Clay Aiken on American Idol 2 during the Wild Card round ...

Aieeeeeeeeee! There's one hour of Family Guy on Fox tomorrow night! You all must watch it, watch it I say! It is the best show that's not on TV. For each minute that you do not watch (not including commercials, because everybody has to pee sometimes) I shall KILL you! Okay, I won't kill you, that's kind of harsh. Revised threat: For each minute that you do not watch, I'll kick a puppy or something.

... and decided that I luuuuuuuurved his voice. And sometime around the top 11 show (or whenever Corey "Craggle" Clark stopped spinning around long enough to get caught for beating his sister up) I found a wonderful group of Clay fans on the Television Without Pity American Idol message boards. They were actually witty and interesting, not all, "Squeeeeeee! OMG I luv Cl810 and I am going 2 have ten million red-haired bebes cuz we R ment 2 B!" I quickly discovered that I was a much bigger fan of the fans than of Clay himself. (Well, with the exception of "ease your miiiiiiiiiiiiind", because that was just awesome.)

So after AI2 ended, the People's Republic of Clay (shut up) on TWoP split, and the fans ended up divided into crazily intense fans, some who quit their jobs to follow Clay around the country (I'm not kidding) and Unintense Fans Who Refused to Venerate Clay Aiken. I posted on the unintense board for quite a long time (mostly in the random stream-of-consciousness main thread where we barely talked about Clay at all) but I haven't had time to post there regularly for months. And in the process of drifting away from the board, I have also stopped paying attention to Clay's career completely. But I do still love his voice, and he's a terribly entertaining live performer. So I thought I'd run through the stuff I remember from the concert real quick, because it may entertain someone, somewhere out there. Hardy har har.

Sometime in February, Clay embarked on a 897-city tour. Not really. But he did tour with Kelly Clarkson, and then did a solo tour after that, and now he's doing some Christmas shows. I think he's trying to get his looniest fans who go to every show to keel over from sheer exhaustion, and make the hard drives of the ones who download every bit of bootleg explode, or maybe he's trying to deplete their bank accounts so they'll have to stop following him before they get any crazier. I saw he and Kelly in Columbus back in March, and then I saw him solo in Charleston, WV in July. The solo show was very similar to his set with Kelly, but he did some old 80s covers and like I said, I love his voice. So it didn't bother me that I had essentially seen it once.

He opened with Where the Streets Have No Name by U2. On one hand, how dare he? But on the other hand, I had completely forgotten about that song and I love it. So I'm glad he reminded me. Another 80s cover was Kyrie by Mr. Mister, which is a really excellent song for his voice. I was glad that he did that one, because he enunciates so well that I could finally understand the lyrics. I always thought it was "Carry Mia's raisins down the road that I must travel," and I was totally puzzled about that. Was it a really long trip and they actually started out as Mia's grapes? And furthermore, why can't Mia carry her own raisins? Then I decided that the lyrics were, "Carry a laser down the road that I must travel." But that didn't clear anything up at all. While it would be practical to have a laser on hand, in case one needed impromptu correction of near-sightedness or hair removal, it makes me wonder if Mr. Mister worked for Dr. Evil.

The other 80s cover that I remember was Rosanna by Toto, which was another great song for Clay's voice and it was also a good song to showcase his band and backup singers, which is what he did at the end of it. One of the backup singers, Jacob, played a good soprano saxophone. It reminded me of this one time? At band camp? When we played Turn the Beat Around by Gloria Estefan? And we had a soprano sax soloist who thought she was Kenny G? And every time I hear that song now, I hear it like this: "Turn the beat around ... brrrrrreeeeeeEEEEEE!!!!" because she did all these big long runs? And it was SO ANNOYING.

The mostly instrumental end of Rosanna also gave Clay time to go change into his completely white outfit of controversy, as he prepared to sing his (oh, the horror!) controversial religious song. He sang You Were There by Avalon, which wigged out some of his fans because he was "forcing his religion on them" or some such thing. Personally, the song made me cry and I thought it was beautiful. After he finished, almost the entire arena leaped to their feet. Other than the obviously Christian lyrics, some fans couldn't believe that Clay had the audacity to show images of -- prepare to be appalled -- CHURCHES, with CROSSES, on screens around the stage. It was all so totally offensive, see. Now, the grinding with one of the backup dancers during a cover of When Doves Cry, that was free expression and HOTT and all of that. And the fans who were a little offended by that were just prudish and ignorant and had no appreciation of art whatsoever. See the difference? Yeah, I don't either.

When You Were There began, with a piano intro, and those "intrusive" images of churches with crosses, sunsets, and flowers, and other serene stuff started to run on the screens, I turned to Susan (my concert buddy) and she appropriately went, "Ahhhhhhhhh."

People behind us asked us to sit down. I REALLY hate that.

Oh, and Clay wears terrible outfits. They're just awful. Like I mentioned back in September when I first started talking about concerts, he wore these horrible pants that I'm sure he bought in 1986 at Chess King. I'm not sure if he got the vest and the skinny tie that went with them. He had a quasi-mullet too. Kind of a training mullet, if you will.

Clay and his backup singers also did a great James Taylor medley, and oh! I forgot about the encore, which was Solitaire. The last minute or so of that song gave me chills.

So to sum up, Clay is a great live performer. He has this giant voice, and he just nails songs to the wall. He also has a wonderful rapport with the audience -- he chatters in between songs just like he was talking to a handful of people on his front porch. I was amused reading the accounts of people who had been to concerts and were seated near someone who hadn't seen Clay live, or didn't know him from American Idol. They told how they excitedly filled the poor soul in on how this was their 35th concert and they knew all about Mama Faye and Peanut and 13 1/2 and THUD and *swoon* and PANTS! and Waldo and John and the house in California and the allergies and the glasses and red panties and Clay wuz robbed and the Anomaly and OMG the People magazine bathroom picture and eye debacles. Ack. It was like the Big Loon/Little Loon mentoring program. Kind of sweet, really.

And lucky for him, he managed to get out of West Virginia before we changed his name to Robert C. Byrd. We really like naming stuff "Robert C. Byrd This" and "Robert C. Byrd That". And Robert C. Clayton Byrd Holmes Grissom Aiken the First doesn't have a very nice ring to it.

No cults, please.

Listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on talk radio from 12-6 every day, I hear certain commercials eighteen million times. CortiSlim, that sleep number mattress, Theragesic, Ruth's Chris steakhouse, LiveLob.com, and eHarmony.

Now, I'm sure that Dr. Neil Clark Warren from eHarmony is a perfectly nice guy. But there's something about him that creeps me the heck out. When he starts with his, "There's a reason these two soulmates found each other!" it just makes me cringe. I can't help it. Maybe it's because I feel like he's asking me to join a cult, especially when he encourages everybody to go to eHarmony and create that personality profile that compares 29 different dimensions of compatibility. I always expect "and then we'll find you a soulmate" to be followed by, "and then, you'll all shave your left eyebrow and we'll dance around in chartreuse muumuus."

No thank you.

[Sally] Isn't he the cutest thing? [/Sally]

No, I don't mean Linus. No, I don't mean the dead deer. And no, the dead deer's name is not Linus.

Beware, gushing to follow. (And dead stuff.)

This is my wonderful Scott, who is probably the only guy on earth who would be reading (and understanding) an article on the corregation of liquified metals as it relates to his research on self-assembled monolayers, while waiting for some deer jerky to finish marinating so he can put it in the dehydrator. Oh, and that's one of his deer from the first week of rifle season:



He's such a doll, and I just adore him. He's brilliant (and an excellent chemistry and physics tutor for stupid ol' me!) and down to earth, and a Christian (he's only missed Sunday School once in like, 20 years. I think that is just unbelieveable.) He doesn't smoke, or drink, or use bad language, and he talks with this adorable twang that is just too cute. When he left home to work on his Ph.D. three years ago, I threatened him with violence (albeit girly violence) if he allowed them to iron out that accent of his! Oh, and he says "Good grief!" and "For crying out loud!" a lot. I think that's really cute.

Anyway, I just wanted to post that picture and gush for awhile about how blessed I am! (SarahK, I'm glad that you are wild about FrankJ, because I have a feeling Scott would probably be your type and vice versa. And I'd hate to have to threaten you with my girly violence.) :-)

That picture is actually the second one I took, because after I took the first one I realized that I included the bloody gash from the entrail removal. And ew. So I took another one, suitable for framing. But I'll link to the first one, because you can see Scott's brother's "Another Democrat for Bush" sticker. Hee.

So I'm having a little mini-meltdown. Like it says over yonder in my profile, I'll start medical school in August (God willing.) Now, this is what I want to do. It's what I think I was intended to do. I have been blessed with the ability to understand and remember most things science (except organic chemistry, which is the bane of my existence, but I'm sure it's only required for entrance to medical school to weed people out.) And I also have a big interest in stuff like anatomy, physiology, micro, pharmacology, etc. Also, I like the idea of using both of those gifts to make people feel better.

I'm an only child, and I've lived at home up to this point because I get along well with my parents, it's cheaper than rent, and I'm just not wild about the idea of living by myself. (I'm not wild about the idea of living with someone else, either. I think I'm kind of like a cat in that respect -- I like to have someone nearby, but I don't necessarily want or need them to be right in my face.) But I live 80 miles round-trip from school, and though I commuted for undergrad and graduate classes (and work) I won't be able to do it for medical school because I could use those extra 10 hours per week to study. And I'll have 8:00 classes every day. (Bleargh.)

For some reason, when I went to bed Saturday night, I had a fleeting thought about school and the impending move (as I often do) but this thought brought with it the familiar physical symptoms of a panic attack. I was thinking, "Nooooooo. Not. Again." I had a horrible struggle with panic and anxiety and all of that when I was nearing the end of high school, because I was terrified of college. The first two weeks of my first semester, I barely slept or ate, and spent a lot of nights pacing around the house and throwing up. It was great fun.

But I decided that I was NOT going to let my anxiety keep me in my house, away from everything unknown or scary. I couldn't believe that could be the plan that God has for me. Maybe part of the plan, but not THE plan. I prayed, and prayed, and read and re-read certain Bible passages. And near the end of the second horrible week of my freshman year, I met Scott, who is just too good to be true. He's been a huge support through the panic and the depression and the fear.

So in January of 2002, I was able to detox from my anxiety medication (Ativan) and I've only had scattered problems since then, until Saturday night.

I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep if I'm in an apartment by myself, and that my schedule won't allow for any kind of nervous breakdown (which I always seem to have at the start of a big new endeavor) without completely screwing up in school. I'm afraid I'll panic in the middle of class or something and [junior high] everyone will think I'm weird [/junior high]. So, true to the progression of panic disorder, I'm afraid of the next attack and where I'll be when it happens, and what effect it will have on my schedule for the next day.

But still, in the back of my mind, as I was collapsed on the bathroom floor from expelling emptiness from my nervous stomach, I thought of that verse in Jeremiah, when God is speaking to those in exile from Jerusalem into Babylon: "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD , 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV). And I can't believe that God blessed me with the gifts that He did, for which I'm so thankful, and then expects me to keep them inside my house, withdrawn in fear. I guess this is what is meant by stepping out on faith -- I will do the thing that scares me the most, and trust Him to be there to catch me.

Overdose warning!

I just got this forward from a friend, and it's rather cheerful to me on this otherwise blah and panic-filled day:

Think about this with the holidays coming up.

I'm sending this graphic picture of an overdose victim. Not for shock value, but rather in the hope that you will have a frank discussion with friends and family about respecting moderation, understanding limits, and knowing when to just walk away.

Remember, this did not have to happen.


Hee.

Catblog

Since I learned from EWG that there is a standard day for talking cat (oops. Is it supposed to be Saturday? Or did I screw up again?) and I got some film developed yesterday that has a picture of both of my cats, then I'll share it.

This is at my bedroom window, and the black blob in the back is my obese black cat who is terrorized by Ferro Roche. The white one is Lucky, who has no concept of personal space. I set my aperture to super-small to make both of them be in focus, but he insisted on getting right in my face, so he's blurry. I was just glad that he didn't smear his nose all over my expensive lens.

Also, I thought putting Cinders (the black one) in the background like that would minimize his weight issues and make him look petite and wee. I think it worked.

Down with unintentional clicking!

AOL kind of sucks, and people make fun of me for still having it. But I've had the same email address since 1996 and I'm afraid that as soon as I change it, someone from high school will try to contact me and will receive the dreaded, "KAL97 is not a known AOL member." And all further communication will be impossible. Never mind that I still live in the same house (for a few more months, anyway, until I start medical school.)

But one thing about AOL that REALLY sucks is the strip of buttons at the top of the screen that link to "safety", "settings", "music", etc. They suck because I always accidentally click the most boring one, the "Finance" one, when I'm about to type an address in my URL bar. Then I have to wait for the whole page to load (and I'm still on dialup, because I live on the outskirts of a suburb of the middle of nowhere) before I can close the window and go back to what I was doing.
And I could accomplish so much more in that 15 seconds that I'm waiting for boring financial information to load! I could read about the many things that George W. Bush is guilty of (since he's to blame for everything), the Desperate Housewives recap, or the Drudge Report.

Or, I could actually read the boring financial information and enhance my repertoire of knowledge. Hm.

Nah.

It's almost as bad as I thought.

Well, I finally decided to add myself to the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem. I've been avoiding it because I knew I would end up as something infinitestimal, like a bacterial ribosome or something. It turns out that I'm not an organelle, but still, being a microbe pretty much sucks. I hope I'm at least an aerobic microbe. Anaerobes utilize sulfur instead of oxygen, which means they produce H2S (hydrogen sulfide, or eau de la rotten egg) instead of H2O. Since I'm "insignificant", though, that must mean I'm some innocuous skin flora or something. Like Staph epidermidis. I guess I can handle that.

Seriously, though, how do I promote this darn thing? I like studying microbes but I don't wanna be one.

Just say no to personifying our secretions and infestations.

I read a post over at the White Guy's Emporium of Evilness (a.k.a. EWG) that reminded me of something I meant to complain about the other day. I can't believe I forgot to complain about something! That never happens. (Scott/BF, contradicting me here would be the WRONG thing to do!) :-)

Lately I've noticed a barrage of commercials that personify our mucus ...

... our toenail fungus ...

and our exzema treatment ...

And now, horrifyingly enough, our (er, their) syphilic chancres. Nice.

I'm just not sure what the marketing strategery (I love Will Ferrell) is. I mean, Digger the Dermatophyte is scary and evil and wanting to kill him and his buddies is understandable. But Mr. Blob O' Mucus just seems annoying and slovenly, and I kind of feel sorry for him when he gets sucked into that tornado. He seems so down on his luck in those last few frames, in his wife-beater, his suspenders and his too-small hat:

And I'm not convinced of that Elidel guy's superpowers. He was obviously absent from superhero school on the day that they taught alter egos to remove their glasses before they morphed into their super form. It makes me wonder what else he missed.

I'm sure there's a reason for all of these personifications, I just don't understand what it is. And every time Digger the Dermatophyte lifts up the toenail with his crowbar, it causes me physical pain. Ow.

To end on a happy note, here's my favorite syphilis limerick. Actually, it's probably the only syphilis limerick. It describes the symptom progression so accurately that they gave it to us when I took medical microbiology a few semesters ago. Bust these funky lyrics:

There was a young man of Back Bay,
Who thought syphilis just went away,
And felt that a chancre,
Was merely a canker,
Acquired in lascivious play.

Now first he got acne vulgaris,
The kind that is rampant in Paris (ha),
It covered his skin,
From forehead to shin,
And now people ask where his hair is.

With spirochetes increasing in number,
His aorta's in need of a plumber,
His heart is cavorting,
His wife is aborting,
And now he's acquired a gumma.

Consider his terrible plight,
His eyes won't react to the light,
His hands are apraxic,
His gait is ataxic,
He's developing gun-barrel sight.

His passions are strong, as before,
But his penis is flaccid, and sore,
His wife now has tabes
And sabre-shinned babies,
She's really worse off than a whore.

There are pains in his belly and knees,
His sphincters have gone by degrees,
Paroxysmal incontinence,
With all its concomitants,
Brings on quite unpredictable pees.

Though treated in every known way,
His spirochetes grow day by day,
He's developed paresis,
Converses with Jesus,
And thinks he's the Queen of the May.

Hee.

The first time I heard Somebody Told Me by The Killers, I thought it was the largest amount of stupid that someone could have squeezed into 3 1/2 minutes and given a melody. A month later, what am I doing? Downloading it from iTunes. I blame this on the fact that while I'm at the lab, I'm at the mercy of the local ClearChannel pop/rock station (because I'm such a nice person and I don't want to force my talk radio or iPod playlists on everybody) and with repetition, the darn thing grew on me.

"Somebody told me that you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year ..."

Darn it!!

The same thing happened last year with Toxic by Britney Spears. For shame.

Kofi Annan's son is NOT a fashionista. Just in case there was any confusion.

Sometimes I fall asleep to the 2:00 A.M. repeat of Hannity & Colmes, which means I wake up to Fox News. A couple of mornings ago, in my grogginess, I heard something about Kofi Annan's son, Kojo. Before I was quite coherent, the first person by that name that sprung to mind was Steven Cojocaru, and I was thinking, "Whoa, he must look like his mother or something."

As it turns out, it's a different Kojo.

Speaking of Steven Cojocaru, I never actually hear anything that he says on Today (back when I used to watch it) because my mom has this Steven Cojocaru radar, and she'd always rush in with a barrage of questions. "Is that that guy? I don't understand him. Is that his real hair? Are those his real teeth? Does he have extra teeth? Why is he dressed like that? Is he wearing false eyelashes?" Unfortunately (I think) I don't know the answer to any of those questions.

Also, eeeeeee! I'm finally listed on someone's blogroll (thanks EWG!) Sadly enough, that makes me ridiculously happy.