I am the Lorax. I speak for... well, Universal Studios, I guess.

I'm going to be a wet blanket on this one. I don't think a movie should have been made of Dr. Seuss's book, The Lorax. Remember the Lorax? Who "speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please"?  The folks responsible for Despicable Me made a movie of it.

That is, they churned out an uninspired, bland, predictable story to justify charging people to see a movie-length CGI production featuring some elements of the original. They call it "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax, but it isn't really. It's hard to imagine that Dr. Seuss would've been down with the idea of Lorax-based merchandising. 

the original

I was planning to refuse to see it out of principle; then the Peanut was invited to a Lorax birthday party, so as long as she was going to see it, the Bean wanted to, and I was kind of stuck. 

So here's what it is. Thneedville is a walled community without trees, where fresh air is supplied by a corporation run by an evil little man and his thugs. Nobody minds. Our hero is a kid who loves a girl who paints pictures of trees on her house and dreams of seeing a real one. To win her affection, he goes off to find her a tree, and locates the Once-ler, who in intermittent flashbacks tells the story of what happened to them.

It's boring. They made The Lorax boring. There's very little of the original text in the script, and a lot of nothing added to fill time. Betty White (voicing the hero kid's Grandma) and Danny DeVito (voicing the title role), Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, cool as they are, didn't wow me. 

Adding to the wretchedness:  it has songs. The young Once-ler carries around an electric guitar, and now this is a musical.

They took The Lorax, stripped it of its simplicity, wisdom, and wit, added flat, stock characters and music not worthy of a good advertisement, threw in some obligatory cute animal bits, and spat it back out at a public ready to open their wallets. Universal Studios hasn't missed a trick - the movie contains several sequences that will make great rides in their theme parks.

Remember the villain played by Ken Jeong in Furry Vengeance? Basically the same villain here. Remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Add fins, and you got yourself some Humming-Fish. Thneedville with its bottled air is not unlike the spaceship carrying everyone around in Wall-E. I don't think there's an original angle in this whole film.

If you see it, you won't have a horrible time. It's not actively unpleasant (except for the singing, gah!). You might even like it. My problem comes from setting the bar too high -- from believing that anyone who really read and understood this story, with its message about conservation and corporate greed, would never turn it into something as vapid and forgettable as this, let alone stamp Loraxes on stuff and go "biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering." In an arrangement that busts the irony meter into tiny outraged splinters, this Lorax is now being used to sell cars. I am the Lorax! I speak for the Mazdas!

It's the height of cynicism to have done this, and I hope it's a colossal failure.

Why can't people leave people alone, part the nth

I guess this is as good a place as any for my rant about how Black Friday is emblematic of everything wrong with American culture these days. It isn't enough now that stores have to open at 5:00 AM... now they start at midnight, or even the night of Thanksgiving. So people who work retail have to cut their family holiday short to accommodate our collective lust for competition to buy cheap crap. Yeah yeah, we're grateful, we gorged ourselves to prove it, now get the fuck out of our way or suffer the consequences. Pepper spray is the new elbow to the ribs.

I know that everyone who shops the day after Thanksgiving doesn't behave this way, and I guess I should be thankful that unlike last year, nobody was trampled to death. Still, the whole concept disgusts me. Pffft.

I have some shopping to do today myself, hopefully while Black Friday lovers are still sleeping it off. Not Christmas shopping, which I plan to do only very locally or online this year -- just for groceries. Yet, even with Thanksgiving still visible in the rearview mirror, I can expect to encounter the bells, the bells, the relentless bells.

So I printed out my little notes for the red kettles, politely explaining that my donations go elsewhere while the Salvation Army maintains its position that homosexual people should not only not be allowed to marry, but should be celibate. 

Hopefully I won't forget which pocket holds which paper.  Both my purposes will be amusingly defeated if the red kettle gets my shopping list, leaving me with a scrap of cheerfully expressed social activism to guide me through the grocery store.

Forgive me for saying so, and I know it's a small thing, but there's got to be a better way.

For the record, I'm well aware that in the great scheme of things, this is not a big deal; that there are more important things worth complaining about; and that I'm truly, profoundly grateful for my and my family's good health.  That said:

Is it just me, or does it seem like every time you go to a doctor's office these days, you have to fill out a new form with your name, address, social security number, birthdate, emergency contact, insurance information, etc. etc.?  I'm not talking about visiting a new doctor for the first time. I'm talking about practices where I've been a patient for years -- in one case, over a decade -- and every year when I go for my exam, they hand me a clipboard with a few pages of forms on it, and tell me to just have a seat and fill this out.

Yes, I know that medical information privacy policies change and that the office needs a current signature attesting that, look, they gave it to me, see? and if I don't know what it says, I have no one to blame but myself, right?  Right, fine. Give me the new signature sheet, and I'll sign it.

And yes, of course people's addresses, insurance providers, and names do change. I've moved and changed jobs a fair bit myself, and my name has changed three times. Still, these things do sometimes remain the same from one year to the next, no? The date of my birth, in particular, is immutable. I know this, because I'm having no luck muting it.

Oh, office managers, I know the potential for efficiency is there.  Consider the nifty little ink stamp you use to save us writing a mere two words when making out the check for our co-payment. So why can't we patients just review the forms your files already contain, and make changes if any are necessary?

Fellow patients, don't bother asking this question, no matter how friendly you are.  They can't have that.  Just take the clipboard, shut up, and start writing, bitch, because... well, because maybe they're "going to a new system"!  or maybe they don't know why it has to be that way but an innovative thought might kill them on the spot!  or maybe they're conducting a long-term handwriting analysis, which, by the way, YOU WOULD KNOW ABOUT if you'd read the privacy policy!  or maybe they just bloody well feel like having new forms, and in any case, anything they make you fill out is NOTHING compared to what THEY have to do, so JUST. TAKE. A. SEAT.

This post is toned down a notch from what I wanted to say after it happened.

A kid on a playground grabbed my daughter so hard that he left gouges in her arm. Asked how this came about, the woman watching him said, "oh, Todd needs redirecting sometimes, he's a special needs child, so we redirected him, and it's fine now."

Well, no, actually. It is not fine now.

I don't give a rat's skinny ass how "special" this kid's "needs" are. My girls have the evidently not-so-special need not to be injured by other children on playgrounds, and I'm sorry, but that trumps whatever he's got. Insensitive? Hell yes. My sensitivity ends where my daughters' safety begins. Call it whatever you like, but keep your kid's hands off my girls, or you'll experience a "redirection" you will never forget.

Have a nice day now.

Who the hell is Mitchell? I was writing to Pamela.

Lately, because I'm in charge of different stuff for different organizations, I've had to email a lot of people I don't know particularly well. I'm amazed at the number of women who use an email address with their husband's name on it, and not their own. For example say I'm writing to Daisy Popplebottom; her email addy won't be daisyp@___, or the gender-neutral dpopplebottom@____, or a family thing like CapeCodPopplebottoms@____, or even Daisy&Thirsty@____, or something completely unrelated to her name, say, naughtyzoot@___ (not that I have ever used "naughtyzoot" as a username for anything. Never you mind.) No, Daisy's email address is ThurstonQPopplebottom@_____. When she replies to my email, I have no idea who the hell this is or why he'd be writing to me, but I have to open it in case it's one of these women with their husband's email addresses.

Gah! Why would you do this? There's just no good reason not to have your own email address. Even if it's a "family" one, why attach only one person's name to it?

My own inclination to independence and not being thought of as adjunct to anyone else, particularly in business I'm conducting my own self, leads me to think of these women as somehow pathetic. But I'm obnoxious like that. Does it bother you the same way, or at all?

In which I am a spoiled brat about going on vacation.

It's hella hot and humid here, so guess what? We're leaving on "vacation" to somewhere hotter and more humid.

We'll be in the car for hours, along with everyone else on the eastern seaboard who isn't smart enough to stay the hell home and/or lucky enough to live somewhere not worth fleeing.

But wait, we DO live somewhere not worth fleeing. Everywhere is worse than Cape Cod, in the summertime. Everywhere. Why can't we go away in February? Huh? HUH?

Grrrr.

Things I would've done at home:

• picked more awesome cherry tomatoes from the garden, which is going gangbusters;
• maybe taken a drive to the outer Cape to check out the Hurricane Bill surf, which looks like it could be really cool.
  

Oh well. The New Jersey Turnpike seems like much more fun than either of those things.

On the up side, I do love license plate games. And the people we're going to see are as totally cool as the weather won't be.

Money down the drain: swimming lesson edition

Yeah. So I've been sitting in the goddamn pool area bleachers, where the air is conveniently heated to approximately six thousand goddamn degrees for your viewing comfort, for an hour twice a week all effing summer long. This is for the distinctly faked pleasure of oohing and aaahing in pride every time one of my girls keeps her face in the water for more than a tenth of a second, and enduring excruciating small talk from the parents who aren't faking it. The novelty wore off before the experience even started.

Today was their last swimming lesson of the session (thank God). Progress made, in all these weeks: NONE. Zero. They've spent lesson after lesson after lesson being toted around the pool by lovely young women posing as swimming instructors, who coo "GOOOOD JOB!" at them every time they make any kind of motion; their reports indicate, to nobody's surprise, that neither of the girls has accomplished a single thing, and the next level they should register for is the level they've just supposedly finished.

Screw that. Frankly, I'm in the mood to throw them in the deep end and let them figure it out themselves.

Flag Day at The Bean's School

The Bean's school (which I should note, before I get ranting, that I really love) had a Flag Day ceremony this morning for grades K-4. Everyone was decked out in red, white and blue. There was an impressive performance by a local equestrian team (with horses in red, white and blue socks!), short addresses by our State Representative and one of our town Selectmen, children reading their essays and poems ("What The Flag Means To Me,") and singing songs.

So, a relatively big deal, as in-school events go. At least one newspaper photographer was there.

Oh, but parents? Weren't invited. The Bean had mentioned that there would be some Flag Day-related activity this week, but I only became aware of the date, time and scale (horses! elected officials! press!) of this specific event because I happened to be there yesterday helping with something else. I almost didn't go to see it this morning, but was driving by the school entrance at just the right moment, so figured what the hey. It makes the Bean really happy when I go to school stuff.

And: I love my country -- truly, I do. But if this proud American never hears Toby Keith singing that Lee Greenwood "Proud to be an American" tune again, it'll be too soon. Playing on the loudspeaker as the kids came out and got seated? Toby Keith singing "Proud to be an American!" Music to which the equestrian team performed their routine? Toby Keith singing "Proud to be an American!" Tune the music teacher chose to blare while the children supposedly sang along? "Proud to be an American!"

(Reading a close second on my vapid-country-music-annoy-o-meter (calibrated for patriotism) is "American Child" by Phil Vassar. Does nobody appreciate the irony of a heterosexual white male baby boomer crooning about how in America, "anyone's equal"? Really? No, really?)

Can't we do better than that? Think of the age-appropriate, relevant, reverent, beautiful, classic patriotic songs they didn't sing: America The Beautiful. My Country, 'Tis of Thee. This Land is Your Land. Maybe there aren't prefab CDs of other kids singing these songs already. Based on my (admittedly limited, possibly unfair) observation of our early music program, that seems to be a prerequisite. Canned music gets played, the kids sing along, or don't. Meh.

The highlight of the Selectman's speech was when he asked the kids how they thought the flag might have been different when he was in school. A child raised her hand: "Were the stars still all in a circle back then?" Heh.

Something in our State Representative's little address made me uneasy. He was talking about what the flag makes him think of, which is all well and good, if to my ear a bit heavy on the sacrifice-of-military-families theme for an elementary school audience. Evidently however, one of the things it makes him think of is how the children of today are going to (among other things) wear the military uniforms of tomorrow. Frankly, this gave me the creeps. My daughter is SIX. Leave her the hell alone.

But who am I to say. After all, I wasn't even invited to the thing in the first place.

Hmpf.

Yep, this thing's still on.

On the off chance I still have readers, I thought I'd check in:

Hi there.

Things are OK. Looking up a bit, even. I always get in a foul mood before Christmas, and it always lifts eventually. Knowing it goes away doesn't stop it from coming, though. I still think that someday I'd like for my very own Christmas tradition to consist of getting the hell out of town about 15 December, and returning after the New Year. It would be nice to have this few weeks surgically removed from Real Life.

In the meantime, here I am. The Card is sent. We don't subject our loved ones to a dressed-up list of everything we've bought and accomplished over the year (honestly, I'm glad you love your new car or whatever, but doesn't a Christmas letter strike you as a peculiar place for that sort of news?), but we do subject them to a picture of the girls. As luck would have it, most of the people we love in this world live hundreds of miles away, and still more are headed that way. We don't see some of them even annually. Hence, The Christmas Picture of The Offspring. I've taken some great ones over the years, so the bar's set pretty high. And of course the photo card places keep discontinuing the template I like best, resulting in an hours-long online research project involving multiple, overlapping and largely forgotten usernames and passwords (about which rant forthcoming, if I have the energy, which is to say insert your own rant here because I'm probably not going to bother, except to say that I have HAD IT with having to have usernames and passwords for every damn thing I do). It can add up to an ordeal, albeit self-imposed and potentially bizarre to outside observers (thank you Catherine, it did help). This year Mr. S. figured out a very simple (now that it's set up) way to get it done precisely how we like it to be. He's good at that sort of thing. I think I'll keep him. Why he'd keep me, who the hell knows.

I digress.

In the other room, the Peanut is singing, to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb:

I'm grateful for my family, family, famILY
I'm grateful for my family
And for my friends at school.

Must be a preschool Thanksgiving song. Works for me.

poop for brains

They're much more polite about this in Vancouver than I can manage to be here.

TO: The person who let their dog crap on the sidewalk where the Bean's school bus stops.

Fuck you very much.

I so appreciate having dog shit on my shoes and in my home.

My family and I wish you the same pleasure, many times over.

Have a nice day.

***

What do you do when your kid's misbehaving with a toy? You take it away, right? Of course you do. My girls write somewhere they're not supposed to -- in a book, say, or on furniture or a wall? The markers/crayons/pencils are gone for up to a week, depending what it was they defaced and how recently the last time they were reminded not to. Leave a toy out after I've told them and told them to put it away? Same story - the toy disappears for a while, and they've no one but themselves to blame.

In an ideal world, I would get to do this with all the selfish, lazy dog walkers in the neighborhood. I see your dog shit where people walk, and you don't pick it up? I'm taking your dog for a week. Not to mistreat it, good heavens no. The problem isn't the dog's fault -- there is only a problem because you, dog owner, are an inconsiderate jackass, and probably don't deserve your loyal friend's company anyhow.

The world would be different if I were Queen, I tell ya.

And another thing.

I have decided that I hate Alanis Morissette's voice. That little squeak thing she does at the end of a word? It was fine -- it fit -- on Jagged Little Pill. But she seems to have made it permanent. Enough, Alanis. It's affected and grating. Cut it out.

TO: Every company on Earth, but today, Eastern Bank.

FROM: Sandy
RE: Calling you.

Why not drop the pretense, hm?

I know full well that the reason you can't take my call right now is not because you are "experiencing unusually high call volume," unless by "high volume" you mean that people are yelling loudly at you, which I have to say would come as no surprise. I doubt very much that you are besieged by sudden demand for your product. Tell the truth: You just don't have enough employees answering the telephone.

"All of our operators are assisting other customers" is another blatant lie. We callers are supposed to hear this and picture rows upon rows of busy, helpful operators busily and helpfully assisting other customers -- satisfied customers who said "thank you" and hung up smiling. But I know damn well you should be saying that "both of our operators are either in the can or getting a coffee. Hang on, and eventually one of them will get so annoyed at the phone beeping that they'll busily and helpfully disconnect you."

You're not fooling anyone, you know. I'm on to you rat bastards.

Not that it does me a damn bit of good.

Playground Joy

After realizing -- d'oh! -- there was no school today, we turned back home and decided to make first trip of the season to: a playground. That sounds fun! Isn't it nice that it's warm enough to go! We've missed playgrounds, haven't we!

We choose a destination. I get my book and a cup of tea, imagining that while the girls play, I will turn my vitamin D-starved face to the sun, sip, and read a chapter or two.

How quickly I forget... and oh, the sinking feeling on remembering.

First, the playground equipment. Even the newer play structures have to be given a once-over. Winter conditions can weaken or break things, and chances are good they haven't been inspected yet. So if the equipment is metal, is it a) rusted, or b) a burn hazard in the sun? If wood, is it a) a splinter hazard, or b) pressure-treated, potentially leaching arsenic into the two most precious bloodstreams in my universe? If plastic, is it a) mysteriously sticky or b) cracked in such a way as to be sharp, or a pinch hazard?

Then, the layout. Do I have a clear line of sight to the girls? Is there any place here an adult could conceal themselves? When did I last check the sex offender registry?

And always, the problem of Where The Bathrooms Aren't. Most playgrounds don't have 'em. When one of the girls inevitably hollers from the highest point, "MOMMY! I HAVE TO PEE!" I do not want to be scrambling around with her, saying please hold it, please hold it, while I'm looking frantically for a building, or a port-a-potty, or a tree, or any kind of cover, a clump of tall grass, for cryin' out loud. I like to have a deli cup, perfect for this type of emergency, ready in the back of the car, along with extra clothing, first aid kit, wipes, paper towels, hand sanitizer, sunscreen, bug repellent, and water. In short, I like to come prepared. But today I'm not, so I hope the girls don't have to pee.

All this, before we even get to the other parents. And on their account, a wee rant: What is it with mothers (in my experience it's almost always mothers; grandparents and fathers tend to say hi) who return a friendly greeting with a blank stare, or worse, the once-over-and-away look? What is your problem, exactly? Life is so freakin' miserable you can't squeak out "hello"? The pole up your ass is too long? Maybe it's barbed, and/or rotating? No? Just your disposition? Well fuck you. And if your dog -- that is a dog, yes? not a rat? -- takes a crap in the playground sand, you are going to hear about it from me, bitch. Here's a little deli cup you can use to scoop. You're welcome.

Excise tax makes me cranky.

We Massachusetts residents pay a tax every year on each of our cars. Somehow the value of our car is decided, and our town annually sends a bill for the appropriate (ha!) amount of tax thereon. Tax goes down as value goes down. I just wrote a $35 check for the tax on a mid 90s Corolla with almost 300,000 miles on it (which by the way has been a great car. There's arguably nothing at all wrong with it if you don't mind road noise, don't care for air conditioning, don't rely on your gas gauge overmuch, aren't unsettled by an increasingly loud and undiagnosed rumbling noise coming from the rear axle-ish, and-- this just in-- if you carry some extra oil in the trunk just in case. Toyota, hello? I'm ready for my close-up!)

So... we paid tax on the income used to buy the car. We paid sales tax on the price of the car when we bought it. This extra tax is for what, then -- for owning the car? How is that even legal? I own other stuff... but my town doesn't send me, say, mattress excise tax, or kayak excise tax, or air compressor excise tax.

I could see a municipal tax on street parking. This isn't that. I could even see a road use tax -- though collected by whom, I don't know -- based on the weight of your vehicle and the miles you drive. But this excise tax on cars is so completely without defensible rationale, such a baldfaced "because we can -- just try to stop us!" that it offends me more than the many other taxes I pay without whining about 'em.

It's bullshit, is what it is.

Winter Fatigue

Yes, it's getting warmer, but it's still cold out. And cold in. I won't bitch and moan about the cold out, because much of the country has had it a lot worse than we have. But the cold in? Perhaps I shall whine a little about that. Indulge me this once.

Mr. S. and I didn't design or build our house. If we had, energy conservation would've been one of our most important parameters. We'd probably have opted to heat with a geothermal heat pump and supplemental wood-fired furnace. Mr. S. loves the idea of supplemental heating with wood; none of its myriad disadvantages will sway his opinion. He is always saying, "now can we get a wood stove?" I just leave a pause in the conversation where "goddammit, NO!" would usually go, and carry on as if I hadn't heard it. Me, I love the idea of drilling a deep hole in the ground and getting energy out of it (and bonus rocks!). The installers would have to shoo me away. (Can I help? Please can I help? Can I just see? Now can I see?)

However, instead of our dream heating systems, we have a spiffy new double-walled oil tank, filled about three times a year at increasingly alarming cost. We have clear plastic stretched over our biggest heat-losing windows, and Mr. S. just designed, built and installed a *perfect* insert for our skylight to prevent heat loss through it (wood stove obsession notwithstanding, he's very useful). Our attic and basement are insulated. Last year the heat was never set over 65 F.

This year, with the heating oil bill significantly up, I have had the daytime heat down to 60 F. However, I'm a little panicked about it. I mean, there's nowhere to go from there. We're truly doing everything we can. 60 F does not make for an overwarm house by any standards. I'm pretty sure the internal temperature of a well-constructed igloo can approach 60 degrees. People who aren't used to it rub their hands together and decline to take off their coats when they come over. Being used to it helps. So does wearing a lot of fleece. But still -- 60 is chilly.

(A parenthetical rant: Were I Queen of the Universe, no public building would ever be heated to more than 65 F or cooled to less than 70 F without specific need (computer rooms, laboratories, etc.). Am I right that the last administration to include aggressive conservation measures as a part of a sane energy policy was Jimmy Carter's? Why are Americans so stupid on this issue?)

So I'm just tired of winter. Tired of having a cold nose and cold hands. I've felt an odd eagerness to run errands in recent weeks; sadly, this is not because there is anyone riveting anywhere I have to go, but because I can crank the heat in the car, and my hands will be truly warm for a short while. I'm tired of getting into a cold bed. Not tired enough to buy or plug in anything to prewarm it, but still. I'm so ready not to have those shivery moments every night.

I've been trying to keep my winter whining to myself, but evidently it isn't just me feeling it. At the bus stop one day last week, the Peanut started kicking piles of stubborn leftover snow into the street and yelling "Go AWAY, snow! We're ready for SUNSHINE! And SPRINGTIME! And FLOWERS! So GO AWAY!"

You tell it, kiddo.

The Obligatory Resolution Post

In years when I've belonged to a gym, January was the worst time EVER to be there. Like clockwork, all the New Year's Resolution crowd joins up in the first week, and proceeds to hog all the treadmills and elliptical trainers and stare vacantly at the Nautilus equipment. Gym etiquette, that useful code of conduct that makes sharing workout space less odious, is not for them. They'll leave a towel and water bottle on a machine to claim it, then stroll away in search of reading material, which will stay unread as they end up shouting into their phone instead. They'll take up entire locker room benches rather than stow their bag beneath. They won't put the weights back when they're done. They'll take long showers, and chew gum in the sauna. They'll jam hallways, especially those who've joined in pairs and can't be silent, let alone apart, for a single minute. All this for their pathetic -- what, three weeks? -- of effort to become less gross. By mid-February, things are usually back to normal.

I learned to thoroughly disdain the selfish, silly, rude, chit-chatting, new outfit-sporting, you-go-girl New Year's Resolution exercise crowd. So you can imagine the self-loathing with which I announce that in 2008, I plan to:

1. Move more.
2. Eat less.

Obviously that's just the "lose weight" resolution broken down to its necessary components (and there are no other necessary components. Put down the stupid magazines already, and go for a walk). I have no idea if I'm going to lose weight. But I do need to move more and eat less.

It will be very easy to keep those two resolutions; ease which speaks not of my strength of will or character, oh no! -- but of how little I am moving, and how much I am eating, lately. Simply put, I disgust me. I resolve to disgust me less.

You will be pleased to know that my other resolutions are relatively vitriol-free. For example, I hope to:

3. Get more sleep. It is just stupid, this business of staying up late when I don't really have to and then feeling like crap in the morning. I won't resolve to get eight hours every single night, just as I won't resolve to grow wings and fly to the moon. But I do plan to get more rest.

I will also:

4. Floss. I do this already. It's a bonus resolution I throw in so that I can say I'm keeping one, instead of despairing entirely of my worth as a human by early February.

Also, I should:

5. Wear more makeup, more often. I'm lucky to have a pleasant enough face (those who know me IRL, please indulge this harmless delusion) and good enough skin so that I haven't felt the need to use a lot of makeup for most of my adult life. I had a good run, but let's (har!) face it, it's time to call in reinforcements. I don't look like Jodie Foster anymore; I look like a train wreck. Or maybe like Jodie Foster's pudgy, long-forgotten, can't-afford-highlights cousin after a train wreck. In any case, my Clarice Starling days (that first scene, where she's jogging on the FBI training course? looks just like I once did) are done. Sniffle.

I'll never be one who won't be seen by anybody until she's "put on her face" -- that's just silly, not to mention it's a bad example for my daughters. But still, a tad more effort than none is warranted. 'Nuff said.

So here's to the New Year.

You go, girl.

Microsoft Office. GRRR.

I am beginning to see why everyone who knows anything about computers hates Windows so much.

Things have been crashing around here ("here" = "my desk") lately. Last week Explorer kept crashing. I reinstalled it.

The other night I couldn't open Excel directly, yet it would open if I clicked on an existing worksheet. I shrugged and kept going.

Last night I couldn't open Microsoft Word, either the program itself or through any existing document.

That is NOT OK.

Mr. Sandy really wishes I would calm down and stop swearing when stuff like this happens. But I get so angry I can barely think, and obscenities are all that will come out of my mouth.

I was running Windows XP with Office 2000; evidently it was time to upgrade to Office XP. I did that today.

Now, Outlook crashes every 10 minutes and Explorer crashes every time I try to sign into a site (say, Amazon.com, which is oh, kind of USEFUL THIS TIME OF YEAR).

So I follow the link for "more information" on the error message. It tells me I need "updates." I download the updates. It requested my Office XP disc. I put it in. It downloaded and installed updates. I have no idea what they are or if they'll solve any of my exponentially multiplying problems.

(Yes, I have a firewall, have done a virus scan, etc.)

AND NOW IT WON'T EJECT THE M-F-ING DISC.

I'm sorry to yell at you. It isn't your fault.

But all you people who know anything about computers and won't touch Windows unless you absolutely must: I am beginning to see why.

And while I'm on the topic of fucking stupid things that computers do, or stop doing, without your knowledge or consent or having done anything to cause said change in function: Why the fuck does Blogger stick two carriage returns between paragraphs, when all I put there is one, and ALL I WANT THERE IS ONE? Because if I'd wanted two there, I'd have fucking well put two there myself.

Bah. I should probably be where people are not.

That's it, I'm finally dumping her.

I have had it up to HERE (OK, I'm short. But I've HAD it, I tell you!) with my doctor's office.

A regular prescription of mine has almost run out, and I need a few more doses to cover me until my appointment next week. A simple matter. The whole thing should take a total of maybe one person-hour, including my phoning it in, the receptionist taking the message, the nurse confirming and authorizing the scrip, the pharmacist filling it, and my going to get it.

I call at 9:30 AM. Get the answering service. The office isn't open yet (!). I leave a message.

Nobody calls back.

I call again at 1:50 PM. Get the answering service. The office is still closed for lunch (!!). I leave a message.

Nobody calls back.

I call again at 4:05 PM. Get the answering service. The office closed for the day at 4:00.

What the?!

Every time I call that office -- maybe three times a year? but it's enough -- something like this happens. Today's business is not a big deal. When I really hurt my back last winter (hoisting my large, elderly, drunk neighbor up off my front lawn -- next time I'll just call the EMTs and watch the show from my study window, thank you very much) that was a big deal. I vowed then to change doctors, and just never got around to it. But these things are best done before there's a crisis, and their unresponsiveness today is a reminder to get on it.

Much as I like my doctor on the rare (hypochondria post notwithstanding, I'm reasonably healthy) occasions I see her in person, this aggravation isn't worth it. Going to see her always means waiting at least an hour, even with a morning appointment booked weeks in advance. Which might be fine for docile and/or otherwise unoccupied retirees, but for us, it basically means Mr. Sandy has to take a whole day off work to allow for an appointment that shouldn't consume more than an hour of the day, including driving there and back. I definitely can't count on being out of there in time to meet the bus home from school, no matter how early the appointment is.

Frustrating.

So I'm dumping her. I'll tell her why; I'll be calm, I'll be polite. I won't be apologetic, and I won't change my mind.

Oh, and irony: The prescription is for high blood pressure medicine. You can bet Nurse Stupid will advise me to "reduce stress in my life." Will do, lady. Will do.

Lost in Translation

Not the movie, though I liked it better than the paid critics did.

I recently had reason to read Psalm 23. I can't remember the reason, I've since been distracted. That happens a lot. I'll be thinking about something, then reminded of something else I've always wondered and go to look it up and find something else interesting, then get an email about something else entirely, and so on. That's not counting interruptions. Mr. Sandy sometimes calls me Dory.

"Look, something shiny!" Where?

OK, it was nothing.

Anyway. I have two Bibles: the Good News Bible I was given at my confirmation, which calls itself "today's English version," and a very cheaply bound King James version which I bought when I needed a Bible to look up some other long-forgotten thing, and hadn't yet retrieved my confirmation one from my parents' house.

Anyway, anyway. Psalm 23 in the KJ Bible reads thusly:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Lovely, right? Lyrical. Powerful.

Compare to the Good News version:

The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need.
He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water.
He gives me new strength.
He guides me in the right paths, as he has promised.
Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, Lord, for you are with me.
Your shepherd's rod and staff protect me.
You prepare a banquet for me, where all my enemies can see me;
you welcome me as an honored guest and fill my cup to the brim.
I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life;
and your house will be my home as long as I live.

Good grief! "I have everything I need"? That sounds like something you'd say to the waiter, or the nurse.

Who could have thought it was a good idea to water down the incomparable "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death"? Who thought we needed "rod and staff" clarified and so added the gratuitous "shepherd's" to it? Who did away with the lovely "my cup runneth over"?!

Bah.

Instead of "today's English," they should just have subtitled it "for today's morons."

Note to churches: why talk down to kids with the Good News Bible? High school students read more poetry than most grownups, and there's no reason they shouldn't get the good stuff.

The Department of Redundancy Department

A representative sample, by no means a complete list, of things I say a thousand times a day that make me feel like some sort of crazy mean angry bitch:

No.
I don't understand what you're saying when you use that voice.
Try again.
Use words please.
Use your nice words please.
No.
Please stop that.
Please STOP THAT.
STOP THAT!
Did you wipe?
Where do your underpants go?
What did you forget?
No.
Don't suck, brush.
That means MOVE the brush on your teeth.
Don't talk, eat.
Your sleeve is in your plate.
Your hair is in your plate.
No.
Please drink your milk.
Please take another bite.
Is the light on in your room?
Do I listen to whining?
I can't reach it when I'm driving.
Come out from behind there.
TELL ME WHEN YOU POOP.
No.
Is it OK to hit/yell at/grab things from your sister?
What do you say?
That's enough.
I said, THAT'S ENOUGH.

And, when I finally snap, which I'm not proud of, but it happens: Why do I have to say the same things again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again EVERY SINGLE DAY? WHY?!?
Mommy needs a time out.