Vacation, Happy to get away!

Apart from channeling the Go-Gos, I’m feeling so much better. If I had listened to M., I would have already known this factoid, but I didn’t so it was a pleasant surprise. That is, my flight doesn’t leave until almost 6 p.m. I have hours to get my shit together tomorrow. Yahoo! I will need every minute.

I am so tired, I can’t believe how tired I am. Definitely should have gotten more sleep this week, but sometimes I just hum a little Warren Zevon, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” and keep going. ‘Course he died, so maybe not the best role model.

I mostly finished everything at work. Mostly. My albatross project still follows my ship as a harbinger of doom. But, hey, what are you going to do?

Tomorrow, I wake more relaxed and well-rested and tomorrow night, M. and I will be together. Not so bad a life, I guess.

Here’s a little insight into how my mind works. When I finally got home tonight, I headed straight to the shower trying to relax. I decided to shave, and in some movement of massive anti-grace I managed to gouge my foot with the razor. It’s been pouring blood, and the shower ended up bearing a remarkable resemblance to the one in Psycho. Afterward, I realized I’m walking through the house dripping blood. My thought, “Cool, if something happens and I don’t come back from California, leading someone to search for me and search my house. They would find the blood and suspect foul play. Even better, I have kept telling people that I’m going for the long dirt nap by my own hands in honor of the big 4-0. Everyone would think I’d done it. Cool.”

Shit, I’m dying. I need sleep.

I suck at paying my own bills, which is ironic because I earn my pay managing money. Consequently, my bills tend to pile up untended with vital payments set up as automatic bank withdrawals, thanks to the Internet.

SOOOO, imagine my surprise when I look my Visa statements over and have AOL service charges since November. WHAT THE FUCKING CHRIST IS THIS SCAM that feels like a bad prank?

I’m on the phone now. I’ve already called one customer service number and got a recording to try back during business hours. Then, I tried another, and reached India. A nice young Indian man, transferred me to the number that could definitely help me out. That led to a nice young woman who was going to help me set up my new account registration. Ahh, no. Another nice young woman earnestly told me that she could help me. I explained again that I had not signed up for AOL and I am getting billed. She transfers me to exactly the right department who can help me. That was the longest wait between people. Now, another young man, Alwen, I think might be his name. They all have melliflous names that they repeat and sound like Elvish in the Lord of the Rings.

Hmm, Alwen might be kind of a prick. Because the credit card is mine, and the sign up name is dee-rob, it’s mine, this account that I have never set up on any computer I have ever used. FUUUUUUCCCCKKKK. What Alwen can offer me is the next four months of my AOL service for free to compensate me, since I have called.

Alwen, I don’t use your service. I don’t need your service. AOL BLOWS, Alwen, and even if it didn’t, dial up? You want me to use fucking dial up?

Alwen is insistent that is the best compensation. I have waited too long there is nothing he can do. He will sign me up for my four free months. No, Alwen, no you won’t. I do not accept this solution. I do not use your service, I will not be using your service ever, fuck your damn free months, cancel me NOW. He is reluctant, I will get no compensation, because I have opened this account. He knows, because it has my name on it.

Maybe in a fugue state, heady with the dreams of the early days of the Internet before SPAM, before ‘blogs, when innocence was in my grasp, I slept walked my way into an AOL account. One that I do not use, that I cannot use unless I install software that is on none of my computers. Is it possible? Is this how middle age is mugging me and my memory, throwing me into a stranglehold of lost thoughts?

FUCK YOU AOL, YOU WILL NOT WIN. CANCEL ME, MOTHERFUCKERS. I WILL CALL YOUR FRAUD OFFICE AT 800 307 7969 AND REFERENCE CANCELLATION CONFIRMATION #944220238.

I type it here, because my mind is soft with holes of slipped memory. I cannot be trusted.

I think one of the good things about outsourcing is the melody and calm of disembodied voices that will be deliverying shitty news about a shitty product; information that will not help you. It is so much better to be told to fuck yourself in fluid tones of overly formal English that lilts over the phone line.

I heard a radio news brief thingie that said Mitt Romney, searching for new ways to cut spending, is reviewing who gets legal aid and setting thresholds. Here’s a newspaper article about it (Incidentally, The Cape Cod Times is Massachusetts’ newspaper of record).

So, you’re a mom barely getting by who indulges in a little basic cable to calm the kiddies while you’re cooking dinner? Guess what, Sunshine, you ain’t poor, you can afford a lawyer. Fuck you leeching off the system, we know that you have the cash to pay for your own damn legal representation, we see you watching Lifetime. Oh, and tell your 80-year-old mom, she’s a parasite too. What with the pack and a half of Basic smokes you know she’s living pretty fucking high on the hog.

Shit, I ain’t poor, and I’m not sure I can afford a good lawyer.

So, how in the fucking world is Massachusetts maintaining it’s old school rep as tax-and-spend, liberal welfare state. You know that’s coming up to haunt Kerry, and it’s a goddamned, dirty lie.

Get us, U.S., we Republican now.

By the way, I can’t think of Mitt without thinking of his underwear. The Mormons have their own undies.For me, the ceremony where they give you ‘wears and tell you it’s for keeping holy, right about then I’d be think “Yeah, right, holy underwear. Sure. That makes sense.” But Mitt must be down with it, right? Under them expensive businessman suits, holy long johns. I prefer a politician in boxer briefs or maybe even tighty whiteys.

I’m full on panicking that I won’t be able to finish the work I need to before leaving on vacation. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH I hate the feeling. It paralyzes me, which of course means I don’t get anything done.

I work in a secular world. I saw no ashes today during the work day, even though on the hospital intranet they were advertising free ashes for today only in the chapel. Finally, in the parking garage the man who always asks me about work and today showed me a keychain with a picture of his granddaughter (wearing one of them fancy-shmancy baby headbands that look like giant elastics) bore the smudge. There was a quick flash where I noticed it and almost told him he had something on his face.

Must work now. Must not animate.

I have to stop wasting my nights on foolishness, but here’s the latest silly M. animation:

(It’s pretty big, because I haven’t figured out how exactly to work with sound. Also, because I haven’t figured out the sound, there’s some fucking loading problem. Once it’s fully loaded, it loops and more or less syncs up. It was relooping the sound so there was a weird echo thing going on, but only on some players.)

CLICK!

Ash Wednesday has to be one of my favorite Catholic days, especially now when Catholicism is a distant cultural relic to me. (By the way, I thought it was one of theHoly Days of Obligation, but it’s not. Duh. It’s not even mandatory. But since there’s some story about a guy getting killed in a boar hunt after not going, you might want to think about it.)

When I was a kid, just about everyone was Catholic, but I don’t really remember people walking around with ashes all day. I think maybe we didn’t get them until an evening mass. I have a hard time imagining everyone in town getting up wicked early for mass.

Now, as an adult, even though I know exactly what’s up with the ashes, when I see a random ashen forehead, I feel like helping the person rub it off. You know, hand them a tissue with a little spit on it maybe.

Also on the Catholic front, I was just surprised by a commentator on the local 11 p.m. news saying something about Mardi Gras in New Orleans would be “winding down” tonight and the rest of the week, or something like that. What the fuck, winding down? What about ending? It’s suppose to stop, end, fini with the beginning of Lent tomorrow.

I was there at least a decade or so ago, and it was fucking amazing. At some point around dawn when it was clearly Ash Wednesday, everything shut the fuck down, the streets were cleared, and all partiers were to cease partying. There could be no stragglers.

OK, I confess, I have no fucking clue what time on Wednesday it all ended, since at some point prior to dawn the word “blackout” had a whole lot of shades of meaning. The drinking on Tuesday had begun in earnest at a 10 a.m. breakfast/brunch party. Some time during the late afternoon, I passed out at another party. My companions stapled a note to my dress with directions to the next party. After a quick little catnap to fight off toxic effects I roused myself, saw the note and met up with them on schedule. After a few more parties, meandering through the streets of the French Quarter and a few more parties gaining access to prime balcony real estate above the streets, there was nightclubbing to be done. Eventually, after smoking a little weed with Tyrone down from Baton Rouge to make a few business deals involving the product we just shared, who chivalrously poured me into a cab that I snuck out of on the other side, and just saying “no” to a threesome involving two, cute Aussie students, I did end up at my hotel at some unknown time. As did, Kevin, my partner in crime long ago lost in the madness and crowds.

Anyway, at some point on Wednesday, I remember going to the French Quarter. It was a relative ghost town. I could see my feet, impossible in the crowds the night before, and I could see a truly awesome amount of empty nitrous oxide canisters. You could shuffle your feet through them like leaves in autumn gathered in the gutter.

It was so done and the streets were so quiet, I practically felt pure and Lenten and clean.

Also on a religious note, I think it seems very American the hew and cry about the violence of Mel Gibson’s new flick. Um, the dude (Jesus not Mel) was whipped, stabbed with a spear, beaten a tad, forced to hike for a bit with a heavy load and left to die in the sun like a dog, if you believe the story. That couldn’t have been pretty. Across the world, in those messy, non-sanitized, little corners where Americans don’t typically hang out, realism is totally a part of the deal. Blood and gore are fucking holy. The whole story is about the blood. It ain’t symbolism if you have faith in that whole transubstantiation thing, it’s holy blood. Very hip and goth-like.

Check this out:

The people who made that wouldn’t be whining about icky gross violent death, and what about the kids? WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDRENS?

Americans are such pussies.

Happy Ash Wednesday (or serious and pious one any way) to anyone who feels the Lord

I should be sleeping, but instead there is this little Flash thing:

CLICK!

Even better is this version in Quicktime with sound track, special effects and whatnot. I guess there should be a version in which the music doesn’t end abrubtly, huh? (Unfortunately, something happened with the export and the blocks of paint from the original drawing. Gives the man a bit of a jigsaw look.)

One could say this is an early birthday offering. Or maybe I’m just filling a puzzling void. Puzzling because I have no idea what this fulfills:

CLICK!

Don’t know what I did in the joy of sitting around yesterday, but I seemed to have pulled something slightly above my left asscheek. Most of the time I’m OK, but if I shift a little, fucking ouch.

One thing that is cliched but absolutely true about getting older, sometimes you just wake up and it hurts.

Quick political observation: Nader is a complete tool. In 2000 there was a debate on as to whether he was giving a much needed wake up call to the system or a wrong-minded egomaniac. I think four years later, we have an answer. My conscience is clear, I voted for Gore.

On the single chick front, I guess the big news is that ““Sex and the City” c’est fini. Apart from the frightening moments in which I drew parallels to their fictional lives and my own actual one (clearly a bellwether of my impending psychotic breach), I will miss the show. Although, I never get so devoted to a show that I see all the episodes in chronological order, so it won’t really matter to my repeat habit.

A friend of mine, currently vacationing in Mexico, will be very disappointed at the rather happy ending of it all. She was rooting for Carrie or maybe Samantha to end up with no one, as some sort of validation of sisters doing for themselves or whatever. I think to my friend the show will have lost something, as though it is saying the whole fabulousity of singleness the show portrayed was a lie, because in the end all women must have a man. Or something like that.

I, myself, am not too sure. I liked the ending. They all have had messy shit ruining their neat little lives, which balances the equation. And, I don’t know, maybe I have a sentimental streak, or maybe I’m pragmatic or realistic, but come on, it’s pretty natural for every member of the human race to want to reach out to someone else in the dark and not go everything alone. I enjoy being single, but not so much that I won’t make the occasional sacrifice, if only to get laid.

I don’t think a happy ending where you end up with a guy necessarily means you have sold out a feminist dream. Of course, maybe I’m tainted at the moment, as I happen to know a guy with whom I like to spend a lot of time.

Working on this today. It’s stupid and undone, but I like the main character. Check out them cheekbones.

CLICK!

Ever now and again it is great to just have a day where nothing is expected. I have no place I have to be, no one I have to talk with, nothing.

I’ll probably do a little work, and I hope to work on some animation ideas, but other than that, I’ve been sitting on the couch. Sitting, sitting, sitting.

If I weren’t so happy to be less quick than a sloth or a slug, I’d mention a few ideas about comedy, shows, sketch and what I like and what I hate. But, fuck it. Sloths shouldn’t have opinions.