Opopanox, Home of the Arrogant Worm

Found a spam from ‘Quokdueskeype’. Oddly enough, not advertizing a product, but passing along an odd-little pun joke I thought I’d share. Here goes;

“Hmmm… Sometimes I can’t help but make a move with my tart thoughtfulness A joke for you peoples! Did you hear about the farmer who was found guilty of selling rotten fruit? He was judged by his pears!”

Dear Yahoo Games,

I went to play chess yesterday and your word verification sucks in a bad way. You also seem to lack auditory help, unless the button was so badly done I missed it in my search. Add a damn button, or change your layout.

Sincerely, Me

Lisa at Questioning Transphobia has a post involving the human rights of trans people in Washington D.C., the district of Columbia Department of Corrections. Or lack of rights thereof, the correctional department and Office of Human Rights that’s putting up a fight are trying to yank them away. What’s that? The Office of Human Rights? Yes indeedy, don’t look so surprised. The D.O.C. has managed to talk the Office of Human Rights into proposing ‘new’ regulations. ‘New’ in this case being erasing the actual rights fought for and won with the old treatment of mishousing prisoners based on genital status, changing the designations on the single stalled, public gender neutral bathrooms, yanking away some medical access (hormones, for instance), refusal to refer to trans people with the pronouns they prefer (this behavior includes public treatment, not just the treatment in the prisons. Police would no longer be required to give you basic human respect)  …in short, the Office of Human Rights seems to be aiming to abolish – actual – human rights.  This informtion is getting out late I’m afraid, first time I’ve heard of it and I’d appreciate it if you’d help pass it along. The link to Lisa’s post is here;

Link located Here

And the link to the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance is located below, they’ve several links for backround in the list located at the bottom.

Link located Here

-Hat tip to Lisa for the heads up.

How the bloody hell does one explain to someone that you don’t usually have a tone? I mean, there’s ‘regular speaking voice’, and then there’s ‘aiming for a particular affect’. Was grocery shopping with my mother and she was musing over the price of a ham. She asked me if I liked it, I said something to the affect of ’sure, what’s the price?” Had to repeat myself, but did get the price. Need the pricing, y’see, because I get stuck being the mental calculator so we don’t go above the set amount. So she tells me, I make an affirmative, blah blah blah, she sticks the ham in the cart, I assume all is well. This was apparently erroneous, because ten minutes later while I’m studying the price of ground turkey she removes the ham and says we’re not getting it. Why? Because apparently I didn’t really want it, I had a ‘tone’. Then she tells me to pick up some meat, because I’m the one that ends up doing the household cooking, so I …go pick up the ham. We’re at the register, I’m stuck up front because she refuses to do the manual labor herself, and …she sees the ham in the cart, picks it – back – up, says she ‘doesn’t want it’ and puts it back. So now, we have little meat, minus the hot dogs and bacon. Well, except for her ten pounds of chicken that no one else is supposed to touch. So when we get home, she gives me $20 with the instructions to walk to the dollar store and pick up twenty’s worth of meat tomorrow (ha fucking ha, they have sandwich meat, cheap hotdogs and tv dinners, not much in the way of pound by pound) and walk home with it. It’s what, a mile and half, two miles there, and then back. The last time I walked home with ten dollars worth of family tv dinners the bags broke and my arms and hands were killing me, twenty is not possible. At this point I’m tempted to go back to Aldi’s and buy the ham just to spite her. But back to this whole ‘tone’ theory. What the hell is it? I didn’t put a tone in my voice and I wasn’t feeling mean/rude/irritable at the time so leaking of feeling wasn’t a possibility, so this ‘lack of appropriate smiling enthusiasm’ as a substitute for ‘rude tone’ needs to be squashed. They’re not listening though, when I try to explain that I’m lacking a particular tone when responding with ’sure’.  Also tried explaining that I was adding in the price of the ham, but …doesn’t listen. It’s stressful, constantly being assigned imagined behaviors on whether I do or do not like or enjoy something.

‘Ellos, found an interesting dime yesterday. I collect money, both bills and coins, though generally just coins; can’t seem to stop spending the U.S. bills, (good thing stores won’t take the ones from Honduras and Mexico, eh?) although there’s still a 2 dollar bill floating around here somewhere. I think. Unless I used it for lunch 7 or 8 years ago, can’t quite remember, although I remember -thinking- about using it for lunch…can’t exactly check, I keep the bills in books, and yeah…too many packed books) Anyway, most of the dollars n’coins I end up collecting are foreign,(because they’re new and interesting looking) Although I’ve also got an 1889 or thereabouts cent of some sort, a wheat penny, buffalo nickel, generally the kinds you find in loose change. Anyway, ’bout the dime; I’ve started collecting year sets, as far back as I can go. Like, say, one example of the penny for each year I can find them in, in the best condition I can find ‘em in. As you can imagine, I started with the change at hand. So when I was cavorting merrily through the change, I noticed an error. A large-ish one, you know how the change says ‘In God We Trust’?  Weeeeeell, m’dime doesn’t have ‘in’ or ‘we’, looks like the die was filled with grease/debree or scuffed off. So now not only am I attempting to find yearly examples of all american money (minus the high tender, such as fives, tens, twenties, et cetera; if I could afford to collect that I’d have enough for needed health expenses by now).  Although I might give an example of a five, ten and twenty depending on the designs, if I can afford it. Eventually. Would be really neat looking, though….). But anyway, due to the error on the dime I’m also trying to find coin errors in general for illustrative purposes. Damn me and my collecting tendencies. And the kicker? I can’t find the damn magnifying glass!

I seem to have been adopted by ma’s kitty. She’s not overly fond of ma, as it turns out, and while her brother occassionally visits my room she’s …moved in. The level of guilt I have at moving her over on m’futon so I can get some sleep at night is horrendous when she’s snoozing. Doesn’t help that she parks her ass at the bottom of my pillow, no way to discretely nudge her over. She even has a routine, which is kind of mind boggling, because I’ve never met a cat with one before. She sleeps in the chair in the mornings, wanders around a bit downstairs, comes back up, makes her way from the futon to the side table to my makeshift desk in the afternoon and purrs like hell, because if I don’t pick her up she walks on my keyboard to get to my chest so she can drape herself and doze for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then she hops off and goes to sleep on the futon or chair, and around one or two heads downstairs to park herself with the other two cats to get some quality time in. At about three or four she squeaks back upstairs, then repeats the futon-stand-makeshift desk- lounging on me scenario when night comes, then heads for the couch and crashes. What’s odder is she doesn’t go purring on anyone elses’ lap, as a half grown cat you’d think she would. I mean, her brother does. She might deign to let someone else pet her, but if they pick her up she leaves. S’weird, not used to animals seeking out my company, let alone in such a routine. Nice that she’s predictable though. She rather enjoys her catnip mouse, except she drooled liberally on my blanket =/ Need to figure out how to take a picture.

I believe I have found a new rhetorical Q!  With regards to Sarah Palin and Tina Fey’s portrayal, is it possible to satirize something without changing a single thing? Generally in satire points are made larger or smaller than what the person actually said or meant to ‘highlight’ possible comedic aspects. But for the life of me, I’m having trouble finding things in Fey’s portrayal that Palin wouldn’t have said if someone gave her, say, ten more minutes to cram her foot further down her throat. I can even see her accidentally wording it “…marriage is between two unwilling teenagers…’ if given half a moment and a bit of puppy eyes from the audience as encouragement. I mean, the woman hasn’t been able (possibly deliberately, I can’t tell if it’s a smokescreen or if she’s a tiny baraccuda getting eaten in a larger pond) to string buzzwords together with the issues she’s asked about, so far as – I – know, so who knows what she’d actually say if she wasn’t parroting the Republican Party’s ideologies and trying to pass ‘em off as coherent? I’ve this suspicion that she’d say something remarkably similiar if not identical to “…marriage is between two unwilling teenagers…’  if she didn’t have scattered mental cue cards to cling to, doubly so if she was frustrated that people requested clarification for her ‘answers’.  Hey, I’m not an ogre. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, she might not include ‘unwilling’. – Might -, mind. There’s got to be a reason she was elected in Alaska besides the down-home folksy schtick, right?

Alright, I don’t fucking understand the college papers. I need to find something that I can go for that people will actually hire me for when I’m finished, and most of the shit listed in the majors and minors field make no damn sense. I can’t think of many jobs that require a minor in German or chemistry, for instance. I need to find something someone is likely to hire me in cuz they’ll need people and they won’t have much choice (none of you bother with the ‘positive words’, I’m not particularly slow  noticing how often others are hired and for what jobs versus myself. I don’t want to go to college and have the same rate of getting passed over and once-in-a-blue-moon getting hired for shitty jobs).  The ‘explanational booklet’ is a waste of paper, s’just full of feel goodwords (like ’succeed’) and no explanations. I’m beginning to think college was meant for rich people again and they just wander on over there for fun and a pretty piece of paper to hang on the wall. Smidge of sarcasm, M’aware they aren’t all the people who manage to squeak into college but for some reason, most of the people I know who have/had been in there? Certainly weren’t hurting before they went in, family paid their way and/or already had good jobs with wonderful healthcare coverage. And most of ‘em still complained of being ‘poor’. Okay, so I’m resentful. Anyway, don’t drive so can’t exactly go down and talk to their office about the confusing mess. God, v’got another headache, today seems to be rather horrid.

- And by ‘rich people’ I mean people who’ve been encouraged and preped to go by society (and not just in school), can afford it with relative ease and minor juggling and/or already have decent jobs. I’ve a rather loose definition of ‘rich’, and you’d probably laugh at what I consider ‘financially secure’, so I don’t want to hear it, in a bad mood. Some of it is that I’m pissed at my old H.S. They held all the college info and prep stuff during vo-tech, so we never got to hear it and no one volunteered that the information was available. Bastards certainly never mentioned it at the end-of-the-day announcements and now I find that the ‘information’ booklets for college contain – no information -.

My my my, I had an interesting night. I walked to W (the next town over) to get alcohol since I think I’m s’posed to have a period here soon-ish, though I still can’t figure out if 1 1/2 – 2 days actually counts. Repro system seems to have shortened itself for some ungodly reason, used to be two and a half days (?) or thereabouts. Ugh. Anyway, loath the pain so! Went to get some brandy to stick in with the cola since Dad is out of painkillers. Well, mostly. He’s got that shitty plastic looking stuff that gives the taker some really, really nasty heartburn and the feeling (or at least, for me) that they’ll be throwing up momentarily for hours and hours. Also, doesn’t work pain-wise. Anyway, he can’t loan me something that doesn’t as of yet exist, so went for a walk. Then, since my direction sense is decent (though recognizing it is shit) I ‘went too far’ going home.

No no, hear me out! See, I can remember all the twists and turns I take to get somewhere, I just get them place-wise all slightly – off – so I generally end up a few blocks from where I’m actually supposed to be. So, head down next to Salvo t’the Dollar General to pick up cola and junk food since I realize I’m already out of my way (and to see if they had any literature. Then I realized they had liquid and peanut squares available). All they had was a shelf full off kids activity books and God. Last time they had science fiction and fantasy in a turning shelf up front, but it has been a few months.

So, got out of there and started off for home. T’was dark, and I was soooooo close to McDonalds and its dollar menu, but then M. hailed me and asked if I’d walk him home. Since I passed his house on the way and it was only, what, three or four blocks back I said sure! so he goes along the lines of great! just lemme shower and then I’ll walk you home.’ So, went to his house, and alas, who should be there but people I’ve been trying to avoid. I figured it was Saturday, they’re barflies, what are they doing home?

Turned out they just hadn’t had time to leave yet. Long story short, m’ex and her husband shooed me off to have a drink at the bar (granted, they hadn’t seen me in over a year. When I want to avoid someone, I’m generally damn good at it). So walked down (up? never was good at guessing) to the bar in the next town over, M.. Anyway had a jack and coke, drank it apsurdly fast so that we could go back and M. could take me home. But no, she shoved her drink at me cuz she changed her mind on what she wanted, so there goes another five minutes of trying to hurry ‘em along. After the wine, she decides to order another one, with check of the cell phone clock and a ‘We’ll go back after this, we’ve only been gone a twenty minutes’. Which is a bald faced lie, the walk was a good fifteen at it was a half-hour in the bar when she said it! Anyway, stopat another bar on the way home cuz her husband ordered food to go (previous bar didn’t have any, which was why he went out in the first place. Eh, life’s crap). Alright, anyway, so we end up having a drink there, too, as her father has glued his ass to the barstool and is just lookin’ round amusing himself.

So we eventually manage to leave and go back, and M. shows me his comp game that I can’t remember the name of. I think it might start with an ‘R’. but all I know is it isn’t Diablo. Anyway, someone asks if they can try it since they asked what’s in the bag. Me in my stupidity said T. had shown me that Cherry rum and coke went well together. Well, turned out I screwed up and got wild cherry brandy instead. Anyway, what was giving a glass going to hurt? So, P and M make a glass. Large ones. With my cola. Why couldn’t they have spared my precious, precious caffeine? I requested ‘em when it got to the halfway mark not to drink any more, since I didn’t want to take another bloody walk, but seems P conveniently forgot. And M stole m’peanut squares until I had a drink with him. Nice guy, but I didn’t want a drink, I wanted my friggen peanut squares. Granted, I did make the mistake of eating 2/3rds of the can by the time I met up with him, about 5 blocks after they were bought (missed lunch and dinner, y’see, though I managed to snag a chicken tender at M’s place) so I s’pose shoving the can in his desk could have been considered only a mild offense. Can’t be healthy eating that much peanuts n’caramel. Ended up having an inch left in both the bottle of liquor and the 2 liter of cola, though. Depressing, there went m’painkiller.

Anyway, some fool (actually, it was me, I was trying to get P to change topic because she was irritating the hell out of me about something-or-other) brought up politics and Ye Olde First Ex likes Palin, along with being for McCain. ~ Shudders ~. She was loud and ranty when I explained that Palin hasn’t as yet (that I’ve seen) talked in a coherent sentence, and when I pointed out that seeing Russia from her backyard doesn’t make her qualified for foreign policy and compared it with me claiming to be a podiatrist since I can see my feet, she got ….pissy. Then again, she also declared in no uncertain terms that being able to see Russia did make her qualified. S’just…I lmost cried. And omigawd, I don’t know what the hell she’s been – watching – (I’d say reading, but she isn’t much interested in newspapers, from memory), but she claims the popularity for the two parties are neck and neck, made it sound like people are screaming for her from their windows, throwing panties or some such. The only thing I heard in that vein (minus the underwear) is ma’s Focus on the Family radio station a bit ago, they loved it. Go figure. Everyone else and their cat that I know of has been wading through Palin’s not inconsiderate use of buzzwords to create ‘answers’.  I tried to have M get a video of one of Palin’s appearances to point out the rather glaring discrepancies but I keep forgetting he has no internet. Meanwhile M, her poor brother, was trying to get the convo steered to other topics.

Eh, eventually headed home when I realized the time, though M. insisted on a shortcut that was neither short nor saved time. Took a bath at about five am since my legs were sore as hell and threatening to cramp. Ended up getting horribly ill and then having to shower, got a drink, then got back in bed and found out my stomach was still in a revolt, so parked my miserable ass in the bathroom. Accidentally stepped on the cat who adopted me. She poked her head ’round the door to the bathroom and then decided to wait outside. Smart cat. Made it back to bed, just got dozing, and guess what happens?

By now it’s about, oh, six thirty or seven and she decides I want to play, so she’s bouncing around on me and biting me through the covers. After pretending to be asleep and ‘accidentally’ booting her off the bed(didn’t work, natch; she seemed to find it as encouragement) I finally tossed her off. So what happens? She goes to get her brother and the little start knocking things over. There’s thuds coming from my closet and all I can do is turn over. Got four hours of sleep, helped Dad put up sheetrock at one of his odd jobs, he was awfully nice and did m’laundry while I cleaned. Felt ill all day. Damn weekend, next time I’m making sure that I take the right bridge, wouldn’t have had to drink and be sociable. Wanted to be sociable, just with M, he’s so much easier to get along with.

Another useless post here, trying to keep my brain occupied with the run-o’-the-mill stuff (the neutral, not the horrible), anyway someone linked me to Stumble Upon. Didn’t think that many people would listen to some guy bitching, at most I figured Persons Unknown would read a linked page, shake their heads a bit and mutter darkly, then warn others onto something more useful. (Between you, me and the wall this little corner of the internet has been damn near brain dead, having, ah, a bit of trouble that way).

I do, however, like the one review I received, has to do with vocabulary. Let me just cart it over here for your perusal.

Link to review located here

It’s not a particularly interesting post they linked to by the way, though it could stand to do with an update and some more rumination considering nothing was in depth. I just thought it was a mite odd that it received 300+ hits. Why couldn’t something important have received 300 hits? Like the Bedford post?