What? Blogging once more?

I need to blog.

I just…do.

It’s never been something I’ve kept up well, but I need a place to keep my words.

So I’ve removed the frivolous theme, which I liked quite a bit and may put up agan sometimes, and replaced it with a sort of rainy le-chat-noir sort of thing.

That’s what I have for reintroduction, because now that I’ve a laptop on my stomach in bed, the sleepiness that had eluded me is drifting in. Maybe every blog post will have this soporific effect on me, but then it probably would upon you as well. And we don’t want that, no.

So, signing off. I have to get up in three hours to give medicine to the cat; perhaps I’ll speak with you more at that time.

No Mental Conditions Allowed

Nobody is allowed to have a chronic mental condition.

Most importantly, nobody is allowed to accept that they have a chronic mental condition.

It doesn’t exist.  It exists, but is only temporary. It can be cured.  It could be cured, if you really wanted it to be. If you accept it, that means you don’t want to be cured.  You’re malingering.  You want sympathy. Don’t ever believe that there is something with no cure.  Everything has a cure.

You’re using the diagnosis to mask your real problem.  Your real problem is something you are doing.  There is nothing that can be amiss with you that is not really your fault.  It is something that you can stop at any time.  You won’t stop it because you don’t want to take charge of your own life.

Doctors always lie to you.  Doctors don’t want you to get better. They know the cure, but they’re keeping it from you. If you got better, there would never be anyone else to bother them.  You are the reason they are so very busy and overworked, and you are also the reason they are so very rich.  In fact, doctors are so rich from treating mental patients that they really don’t have to work at all.  They get personal satisfaction from coming to work every day and sitting in rooms with unhappy people and giving them drugs that they know will harm them.  Doctors are sadists.

You should never take drugs for a mental condition.  Taking drugs is copping out.  Doctors only give you drugs because they get kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies.  You would rather be drugged than have real feelings.  You think drugs are the answer to everything. You should learn to cope without drugs.  You’re addicted to those drugs.  Of course you don’t think you’re addicted, addicts never think they’re addicted. If they don’t get you high, it’s because you take so many you don’t notice the high any more.  The drug isn’t really helping you.  It’s just masking your symptoms. If it were really helping you, you’d never have any symptoms.

You won’t try to cure your mental condition because of all the wonderful financial benefits you get from having it.  You’re taking up the benefits that people who are really sick should have instead.  You’re a drain on the system.  You’re committing insurance fraud.  You don’t want to work for a living.  If you do work for a living, you want to take sick time because of your condition instead of coming to work sick like all sick people should do.  You don’t want to do your fair share.  You want everyone to resent you.  You enjoy being resented.  But you also want everyone to be sorry for you.

You have to see a naturopath, a chiropractor, a massage therapist, a hypnotist, a psychic, a personal trainer, a pastor, and a life skills coach before you ever see another doctor.  These people can cure you.  They can teach you to cure yourself.  It’s all in how you think about it.  You have to think positively.  You’re too negative.  You’re giving yourself these symptoms by being negative. You can think yourself well.

You have to escape the oppression of Big Pharma. The pharmaceutical industry is cooperating with the government to control your mind. They™ want you to be submissive.  They™ want you to be compliant.  They’re™ going to march us all away to labor camps where we’re going to work for Them™ until we die, and the only payment will be the drugs to which They™ have gotten you addicted for this purpose.  When you are unable to work anymore, They™ will switch the drugs for something that will kill you.

It’s a food allergy.  It’s something toxic in the water, the air, the soil.   It’s HAARP.  It’s coronal mass ejections from the sun.  It’s your cell phone.  It’s your cat’s litter box.  It’s the fluoride in your toothpaste.  There’s an earthquake coming.  A tick bit you. You ate cow brains.  You have an alien implant.  You are not right with God.  Someone has cursed you.

YOU”RE NOT EVEN TRYING.

You cannot have a mental condition. You MAY NOT have a mental condition.  If you have one, then we have to accept that they exist and that anyone could have one. That we could have one someday. That we might have one now.  That someone in our life has one, and they might need help instead of recriminations. If you accept your condition as the reality of your life at this moment and learn skills that allow you to live with it, if you take medication and work with your doctor to find the right one in the right amount and change it when necessary, if you ever admit to its affecting your life just as any other medical condition might and learn to be easy on yourself – EASY ON YOURSELF? YOU LAZY BITCH! YOU LAZY BASTARD! – then we will have to admit that you are human, and then we’ll have to admit that we are human too. And we cannot accept that.

So we won’t accept that you have a mental condition. Because, really, it’s all about us, not you.

Lion cut at 2 months

The fur keeps getting longer (of course!). And she’s so soft.

I’m going to try to get a better pic, but this shows the length.

Lion Cut: 2 Weeks and 3 Weeks

I wish Maya would hold still for better pictures….

Here’s how she looked two weeks after the lion cut (June 11):

…and here at three weeks (June 17:)

It’s easier to tell the difference by feel than by look. She still doesn’t quite feel like a shorthair would, because she doesn’t have a full undercoat; it’s growing at the same rate as the visible fur. But she’s so much softer!

Her colors and markings are also showing much more. A lot of that color will be covered by black top fur when she’s finished growing out, so enjoy it now!

Lion Cut: Ten Days Later

Maya’s colors are beginning to come back:

(Sorry for the blur. She wasn’t in a modeling mood.)

This pic shows how short her fur still is. She’ll have more black later; we’re seeing the grey of her undercoat. A lot of her markings are due to variations on each hair, rather than the stripes on her skin.

Lion Cut: Week One

Here she is! It turned out a lot better than I was expecting.

She feels fuzzy, like a stuffed toy.

The Lion Cut: Before

Maya is going to receive a lion cut in the morning. She will be shaved everywhere but her head, lower legs and tail.

I don’t want to have to do it because, as you can see in these pics, she is so pretty!

But she has become less and less tolerant of brushing and combing, and her fur mats more quickly than ever, all year round.

I can tell this summer will not be easy for either of us unless she has short manageable fur.

But she is so BEAUTIFUL! *sob*

She’s had one other lion cut, the first summer I had her, when I didn’t know what to do for mats. It should take about five months for her fur to grow back in. I’ll be posting pics here and on Twitter as it regrows. But I wanted everyone to know what she really looks like.

Open letter to Amazon

Amazon:

This rant is fairly self-indulgent, so I have decided not to send it to customer service. I know you will not change your practices based upon the dissatisfaction of one user. Also, the rest of your service has been more than adequate. But…

When I order merchandise from you, I opt for the slowest level of shipping. I have chosen to trade instant gratification for savings. If my order qualifies for your “Super Saver” free shipping, I use it. I don’t mind if you ship it in different boxes. I didn’t even mind the time you inexplicably sent three different books, all from your own warehouse, in three different boxes, using two different services. If you want to mix things up, go right ahead. It’s your choice to expend extra effort and money beyond what is required.

What baffles me is why you so rarely use the United States Postal Service.

When you use UPS, FedEx, Ontrac, or any other private incorporated courier, the package will be brought to my door during the day. Are you really under the impression that I am home all day, every day, awake at the beginning of your delivery window, waiting with bated breath for these packages?

The USPS puts it safely in the mailbox, where it belongs, waiting for me to retrieve it at my own convenience. Alternatively, they will hold a package at the post office and leave a notice – again, safely in the mailbox — for me to retrieve it there at my own convenience.

The other courier services:

leave packages in front of the door for thieves to see them;

leave packages in the back yard with a notice on the door so the thieves will know where to look for them;

go away if I don’t answer at the first (and only) knock, leaving a notice that delivery will be attempted tomorrow, so we can go through the same dance;

have actually been known to lecture me for not answering at the first (and only) knock: “I was just about to leave! Why did you take so long to answer?” “Because when I am at home, I am a day sleeper and it takes a moment to get out of bed.” “…”;

leave a notice stuck to the front door that comes loose and blows away so I don’t know the package is in the back yard. (I almost had four expensive vials of insulin become unusable that way in the heat of summer, left in the back when I WAS at home, awake, and expecting the package (and that was sent by the Department of Veterans Affairs, who of ALL people should be using the United States Postal Service. a fellow government agency. They do overnight, you know. But I digress. That’s nothing to do with you, Amazon.).

Now, if I were to choose one of the faster methods of shipping, I would understand your use of these courier services. It would be only logical for me to accept the responsibility of arranging receipt of packages whose delivery has been specified for one, or two, days from the placing of the order. But “5-7 business days” and “estimated day of arrival” allow for the use of regular postal mal

Despite the abundance in America of people who possess incredible senses of self-entitlement and expect immediate gratification, I have opted to make the process easier for the courier services and for YOU.

I have attached a clip to my door so that notices can be placed in it and not blow away, and a small, polite sign explaining what the clip is for.

When at home, I have posted notes explaining that I really am at home, that I am asleep (until I awaken, at which time I remove the notice), and that I would prefer a loud knock so that I will wake up. I even tap loudly on the front window after I haul myself out of bed, so that they know there is a person in the house who is aware the deliverer is there and would appreciate a moment to pull on some pants.

I have called your services and requested that the couriers not leave the packages out for thieves, and that the manager of my apartment complex is willing to accept package deliveries for the tenants. I’ve arranged with neighbors whom I know will be home to accept deliveries for me, and post notices directing the courier to them.

The above methods have met with success, for the most part. But many people don’t have managers or neighbors who can accept their packages. And many people don’t have the imagination to make the kinds of arrangements I do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a little convenience.

I don’t tend to complain about personal inconveniences, especially those with solutions, other than with a little bitch-whinge on Twitter. (After all, if you cant complain on Twitter, where can you complain?) Risks to my packages, though, arouse a bit more concern.

The United States Postal Service has been in this business for far longer than the other services. While they have their moments of fail, it should awe us how many things do get where they’re going on time, safely. They even have their own federal police to make sure nobody screws with your stuff and can be prosecuted if they do.

Please consider using this service more often.

Thank you.

Caveat 1: Some people have had the opposite sort of experience, in which the USPS screws everything up and the other services provide excellent service. YMMV.

Caveat 2: I am aware that the USPS is “privatized”, in a sense (it’s complicated), but they are still subject to more stringent requirements and consequences than the other services are. It is still a federal offence to interfere with, or commit a crime using, the delivery of postal mail.

Sucker Punch and my gaming playlist

Saw Sucker Punch this weekend.  Most of it, anyway; I was late.  But what it is:

Video game!

This needs very badly to be a video game.  I mean, it IS.  LOOK at it.  If they make it a game, I will pre-order it.

I’ll say more about it if I decide to go see it from the beginning.  I don’t think it’ll win any awards, and it wasn’t anything like I was hoping for (which was The Matrix for chicks), but I think I could develop a soft spot for it. In the meantime, the soundtrack is killer, and I have incorporated most of it into the playlist I started for gaming.  

The playlist so far:

Bjork — Army of Me
Rage Against the Machine — Wake Up
Emiliana Torrini — White Rabbit
Pixies — Where Is My Mind?
Carla Azar — Tomorrow Never Knows
Rammstein — Du Hast
Skunk Anansie — Search and Destroy
Queen — I Want It All/We Will Rock You Mash-up

Driving a video game

Yesterday, in Tigard, I got my bumper bopped.  (Un?)fortuately, it’s not a euphemism; the car in front stopped abruptly, I braked and didn’t hit him, the lady behind me braked and did hit me.

Although the car didn’t look damaged to me, a trip up onto the mechanic’s rack revealed misalignments that would eventually stress my taillight assembly into cracking, among other things.  So he got his body shop colleague over, and today, instead of a perfectly logical ’03 Accord, I’m driving a ’10 Nissan Altima.

This is not a car.  This is a video game.

No substance, no resistance.  I feel like I’m playing a standup driving  game like Pole Position (yes, I’m old. Get off my lawn), in which I move the steering wheel and the car turns in that direction, but there seems to be no physical relationship between my gesture and its response.

The ignition is a push button.  The “key” (a capsule-shaped object) has to be present, and there is a slot you can slide it into that is vaguely keyhole-like and keeps you from losing it elsewhere in the car — but to turn the engine on and off, you push the button.  It lacks only a coin slot.

It has a manual shift mode.  Yes, a MODE, not a manual shift.  And the problem was that I didn’t know.

How was I supposed to know such a thing existed, when I’ve been driving my tough, prosaic little Honda for eight years? There’s an automatic shift track, and at the bottom the lever slides into this other part like a sideways “T”, which is labeled with a “+” and a “-“.

I didn’t know that the lever did not have to go into the T.  It wanted to go there, so I let it.

As I drove, the tachometer climbed.  It was a bit high for my taste, but I figured it simply had a tiny crappy engine.  Then I got above 35 mph and the tach climbed to four and did not return southward.  I was baffled.  I tried that trick where you lift your foot suddenly off of the gas, which usually makes a recalcitrant transmission shift, but it didn’t work.

“Why didn’t you try moving the lever?” Well, I did.  But it didn’t stay where you put it within the T.  I couldn’t work with it and still keep my eyes on the road, so I opted for going a bit slowly.

I got to my house, parked, and decided not to go anywhere until I heard from the mechanic tomorrow, and to call the rental place and ask them to either explain the secret or give me another car with a working transmission.

So a couple of hours ago, my friend called me and asked me to take him to his girlfriend’s car, which had crapped itself in front of the daycare that afternoon.  I forgot about the transmission until I was headed for the freeway ramp, and then…well, faced with 60 mph, even a bitchy transmission would give in?

Noooo! As it climbed toward 6x, I thought it was going to explode itself right through the hood.  I frantically whacked the handle a couple of times as I started to pull over…

…and the tachometer lowered.

What had I done? What had I done?

I had SHIFTED.  Yes, it was acting just like a stick shift, only without any actual power.  Only years of driving stick prior to the Honda had even let me recognize what had happened, and I know some of you are snickering and thinking that I should have figured it out long before.  But who expects that kind of thing in an automatic?  Everybody but me?  Probably.

For the rest of the drive, I knocked the lever plus and minus and moved my foot on and off the gas as I would have in a stick shift car, and got used to it, or as used as I was going to get to a shift I couldn’t FEEL.  What is the point of that if there’s no grrrr? I certainly wouldn’t use this mechanism to shift-slow in an emergency, or do that little low-dump that you use to pour on the speed, or those other things.  The only purpose this feature seemed to serve was to distract my right hand from doing anything useful like steering.

I picked my friend up and dropped him off where he needed to be after showing him the little pushbutton and the nutty shifting thing, of whose like he had never seen either, and on the way home, I discovered that the lever did not HAVE to go into the T; it just liked to.  Left in the main track, it behaved like a regular automatic shift.  It did about as much good as switching between first and third person in a shooter; a different way to play, but you still get your ass shot off.  Or some such metaphor.  Feel free to add your own.

Who knew?  Well, the rental company must have fucking known, but did they say word one to me?  At least I’m safe and did not burn the engine out, though I’ll be putting considerably more gas in it before turn-in than I’d have expected to.

How long have they even had this sort of thing?  What is the point of it?  If you want a stick shift, you buy one.  Or can you buy one, any more, that has any balls at all?

And how do I level?