Friday, January 28

Hey, What Does THIS Button Do?

FYI, gentle reader, in case you log in and find that this page is more illegible than usual, it's because I'm messing with the layout and probably gnawing on my own hand in frustration, so check back in a bit. I do all my screwing-around-with-the-website stuff right here on the Pitas web editor, because I'm lazy, so the profound limitations of my l33t web-design skillz are immediately posted for all to see.

My goal for the week is to have an understanding of HTML and CSS which at least rivals the average fourth-grader's, and from what I've seen so far, that bar is depressingly high. Who are these children? Do they teach Evil Hacker Genius 101 in elementary school now?

And what the fuck is an RSS feed? Do I need one in order to have more people read my stuff besides me? So far I get one or two hits a day, but I think that may be solely because I have different computers at each of my graduate-assistant non-jobs.

Sometimes I think my dad's principled refusal to learn how to operate anything more complicated than a TV remote isn't such a bad idea. I guess the cleanup is sort of inconvenient sometimes ("I thought we explained how you can't put the whole Campbell's soup can right in the microwave" "oh") but what he lacks in tech-savvy he makes up for in witty one-liners and entertainingly indignant muttering.

One time my sister changed my AOL password out of spite and then forgot it, and as the credit-card holder my dad was the only person authorized to wade through their Automated Touch-Tone Answering System From Hell to get a reset. He called me about half an hour after I first gave him their 800 number:

Me: "Hello?"
Him: "It's a fucking circle jerk."
Me: "...Dad?"
Him: "I don't have time for this shit, I have my own circle jerks to go to. Up at church. With the pastor."
Me: "What, the AOL thing? Did you call them or not?"
Him: "I tried, but it was beep this here and press two here and I just hung up. I'll buy the fucking company before I ever talk to those assholes again, I'm not kidding."
Me: "Dad, you're the only one who can call them, if you don't call them I can't get my email."
Him: "Jaime."
Me: "Yes, Dad?"
Him: "You're a complete pain in the ass."

*click*

The best part was the look on my roommate's face when she retrieved the following answering machine message an hour later:

"Jaime: Dad. I called the circle jerk company. You can do whatever you want now, with the thing, the pass, thing, or whatever. I am never doing anything for you again, ever. I love you. Your mother says hello. Talk to you later."

What the hell, I can't even drive, I've got no room to talk about other people needing more tech skills.

On a semi-related note, I've suddenly gotten even worse at replying to email than I was before I started blogging. Email has been a trying affair for me ever since someone told me that I write really good emails: now I'm always afraid that I won't be able to rise to the occasion or whatever. I usually end up putting off replies until I'm feeling extremely witty and charismatic, which seems to run approximately once every three months (like a cat going into heat, but usually with less yowling). Now I have the additional neurotic fear that I'll use up what little wit and charisma I have in an email to just one person, and then I won't have anything funny left to write on here.

Is that sociopathic or just lazy? I can't decide.

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Thursday, January 27

Nine Things I Have At Some Point Deliberately Ingested In an Effort to Lose Weight

1) Crystal Light, in both drink and umixed-powder forms. Not sneezing while you're eating the powder is somewhat tricky, but essential.

2) Low-carb soy-protein spaghetti and "Alfredo" sauce made with fat-free Swiss-cheese-style Kraft Singles, skim milk, and pepper. Weep for me, Julia Child.

3) Raw "lite" tofu straight from the package. The fact that such a food even exists should make you want to move to some remote Central American village and hide under a vase or something.

4) Rum and DIET COKE. This may be the most offensive substance on this list. I skipped the "low-carb beer" step and went straight for the money shot.

5) Reduced-calorie protein shakes in a variety of exciting flavors like "banana cream pie" and "chocolate peanut butter cup." This was especially sad because I usually didn't remember to bring a glass, so I ended up stirring the water with my fingers right into the little foil package and drinking it while standing in front of the women's-room sinks, praying to heaven that nobody would walk in and witness what was surely the gastronomic equivalent of public masturbation.

6) Ephedra plus caffeine plus aspirin plus menthol-orange cigarettes: I may never sleep or eat again, but GODDAMN was that a good workout! I think I've started communicating with the dead, too! Wow!

7) King-sized Butterfingers, pints of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked ice cream, medium extra-cheese pizzas, and six-packs of PBR: part of the "reverse psychology" weight-loss program.

8) Sugar-free Carefree gum. Packs and packs and packs and packs of it. If I remember correctly, each piece contains five calories and two grams of sugar alcohol, and I was unsure whether to count them as part of my carbohydrate allocation for the afternoon. (Incidentally, I don't actually mean to swallow my gum but it happens CONSTANTLY. If that thing about it taking seven years to digest were actually true, I would probably stick to the sidewalk with every step.)

9) Ice cubes in quantity. The logic behind this one is possibly best left unexplained.

Remember, concerned citizen: it's funny because it isn't true anymore. Except for the bit about communicating with the dead, that still happens once in awhile.

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Tuesday, January 25

Must... stay... angry!

Request your free chastity belt from the Pennsylvania Legislature!

Demand the FDA take the mercury out of our food and water!

Act now to save the wild salmon!

Demand full disclosure and investigation of the Bush Administration's torture policies!

Support marriage for all!

Ah, petitions. The last great hope for those of us who used to be good radical activists and want to maintain our Hip Educated Revolutionary-Leftist Street Cred without actually doing all that actual activist shit like selling newspapers with GIANT ANGRY HEADLINES! in the snow and arguing the finer points of consensus over burnt vegan mac-n-cheese. Maybe if I post the links I'll rack up even more good karma for enlightening others. Cha-ching!

I actually got really indignant when I read in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Parents' Television Council is rockin' the mass-email-petition-drives too- apparently they and their gynormous mailing list submit like 99.5 percent of the complaints the FCC gets about indecent television these days. Last year the FCC received over a million such complaints, up from some smallish three-digit number in 2000, thanks to these tireless efforts.

Damn you, right-wingers! Pissed-off form emails are TOTALLY OUR TURF! Isn't Touched by an Angel syndicated on fourteen channels yet? Go watch that!

It sucks being jaded. I'm still on the lookout for a good ideology. Let me know if I can borrow yours.

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Monday, January 24

E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles

I think I have some kind of weird dissociative disorder that renders me incapable of ever getting anywhere on time ever, ever. This morning some creepy buzzing noises downstairs woke me up thirty minutes before my alarm. (I THINK they were coming from downstairs, anyway. Maybe they were coming from me? I've recently started waking myself up more often with random coughing, snorting, and shrieking, and I didn't think I did any of those things, so 1) I'm turning into my mom and 2) making oven-timer sounds in my sleep is probably just a short step from there. At least I don't fall out of bed anymore.)

What was I saying? Oh, so the buzzing noises woke me up half an hour early and I still managed to be late, because I kept hitting the snooze bar. I guess I was up pretty late last night. I was on a long and pretty much totally unsuccessful Internet search for lesbian porn made with/for women who actually enjoy sex with other women - I'm sure it's out there, I'm just not very adept at searching for these sorts of things. The heterosexual-lesbians who put on a show for the camera really don't do it for me. How can anyone enjoy watching women fake enjoyment of listless, boring sex? Does it remind them of their real sex lives?

Once I actually saw a girl stifle a yawn and check her nails as some guy was going down on her. In a movie, I mean. They didn't even bother putting the saxophone music over the scene to drown out her distracted murmuring. I guess they were on a tight filming schedule.

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Sunday, January 23

Things To Do Today

1) Locate cell phone which has been lost in squalor and wretchedness of bedroom. Again.

2) Start homework for Aesthetics class. Most of this will apparently involve reading and reacting to teacher's summaries of great philosophical tracts. Not actually expected, as dumb musician, to read or grasp great philosophical tracts - hence summaries. Feelings on this matter: equally divided between Grateful For Less Homework and Vague Sickish Feeling Like That Time My High School Did Romeo and Juliet in Modern English.

3) Try to spend more time practicing for upcoming NOI audition than jacking around with blog-fonts and cursing and/or downloading episodes of South Park.

4) Eat Chinese food with my friend Dave for his birthday. Get to and from restaurant without being killed by Vicious Poison-Breathing Philadelphia Snow Beasts or whatever the hell it is that makes this entire city shut down in terror whenever they're even anticipating a quarter-inch of snow. Pansies! In Omaha we went outside and played during tornado warnings. We made ice sculptures out of like basketball-sized hail as it fell down around us. I mean it. Negative two hundred and seventy-five degrees, uphill, both ways, carrying my little sister on my shoulders. Y'all don't even know, seriously.

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Saturday, January 22

Howdy

This "Internet" thing all the kids are talking about: far more complicated than it looks. I've spent two and a half precious, precious hours of my snowy Saturday jacking around with fonts and cursing. Probably none of this looks right on anyone's computer but mine anyway. I mean, it looks sort of lame and early-1990 on this end too, but at least the text lines up and everything's legible and I more or less know how to spell. I should just suck it up and admit that I'm a dumb musician and start using Dreamweaver like everyone else, but somehow that feels like cheating.

Anyway. I'm Jaime. This is my first blog. I'm not sure what it's about yet. Suggestions welcomed.

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