I get all my latest robot news from John Hodgman. And all the Barack Obama videos. The combination of the two seems a little suspect...

In the Year 2046

There will be still be insanely massive lines at the W. 110th Giant Eagle liquor store on a Friday night 5 minutes to 9. It's a bum rush! Literally! And everyone was holding a bottle that was reflective of their individual stereotype! The Puerto Ricans had rum, the old black guys had Cognac, the young ghetto girls had Tanqueray. Gin and Juice y'all! I had a 12 dollar bottle of Paramount vodka, which is like 580 proof. I think this says that I am a)white, b)a girl, and c) I don't give a damn about what kind of hard metals I put into my body. HOT.

Also, there was a massive line at the weird Giant Eagle DVD machine. It's the poor man's Netflix obviously.

Tonight it's 2046 and fried bologna sammiches!

Weird things I can do that technically count as writing

Case in point, this feed title....

"News: The Monitor ep 8: The Space Episode
http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/257881246/article.cfm

This Week's Episode: An extrasolar planet contains methane (which, being organic, could suggest life), Canada's space robot is aweseome, RIP Arthur C. Clarke, and matter vs. antimatter - why did matter win?"

It works on so many levels. First you're like "extrasolar, is that a word? Cause the spellcheck says it isn't.". Then awesome is misspelled, plus robots are ALWAYS awesome. And everyone who matters has known Clarke is dead for like, decades. BUT THEN, the last line...WHY DID MATTER WIN?

The real question is, did it? Maybe matter is in HELL.

Not so brilliant? One, the fact that girls clothes come in completely arbitrary sizes that differ wildly from one company to another, a fact that really puts a damper on online shopping. Someone as fat as me should not have to return items because they are TOO BIG for her. Two, the horrible movie we just watched called "Milwaukee, Minnesota". Started out with a great premise, mentally retarded ice fisherman who hears fish talking. Quickly went down hill from there with the addition of Randy Quaid and some really awful blonde girl. The guy who played the fisherman was decent, but he looked like an elongated Jason Schwartzman or a fat Mordicai.

Turns out he's a Fonda? Fondant? Fondue. Fondant Fondue. Foo foo fondant fondling fondue.

I wonder what the recruiters at Dancing With The Stars were thinking when they convinced Kristy Yamaguchi to sign on. She's a fucking ICE SKATING QUEEN. Did they think it would be hard? She's already a fucking athlete superstar. She's used to practicing 22 hours a day. There was one moment in the beginning when she was all like "I'm not used to being in heels, we're always flatfooted on the ice." Ha Ha, don't fall for her dirty Asian deceit. She has already won, and everyone knows it, and she knows it, and I might as well not watch the show anymore. It's like watching the Honors Student Snobby Girl in high school do announcements for all the clubs she's head of. You have no reason to hate her, but you still do. Plus Monica Selas is so sad :(

If I could afford it, I would take a pregnancy test every day, because finding out you're not pregnant, even when you're not worried about it, is the ULTIMATE mood lifter. But the fucking things are fifteen bucks a pop. Once I saw some at the Dollar Store, I should have stocked up on those, except using dollar pregnancy tests probably GETS you pregnant.

Cruelty To Animals

My Easter playlist entitled: Great Songs for Old Girls Out of the Loop

1. Andrew Bird - Heretics
2. The Decemberists - The Sporting Life
3. Eagle Seagull - I'm sorry, but I'm beginning to hate your face
4. Joe Dassin - Les Champs-Elysees
5. Joe Purdy - Can't Get It Right Today
6. Okkervil River - Song Of Our So-Called Friends
7. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
8. The Shins - Australia
9. Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
10. Loudon Wainwright - Daughter
11. Yael Naim - New Soul
12. Peter Sarstedt - Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
13. Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good
14. The Diskettes - 12345
15. Puppini Sisters - Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
16. Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings - 100 days

Sunny!

No, I have no tattoos. Also I have nothing smarmy to say about Easter. I love Easter. No matter how inaccurate it may be, my mind always remembers Easter as the first truly sunny Spring day in Cleveland, every single year since I've been born. People tell me I'm wrong, but I don't believe them. Case in point, this morning was beautiful and I had a CD of new music FINALLY, and we drove around all morning listening to Eagle Seagull and Decemberists and music from Wes Anderson films while drinking coffee and looking at all the wonderful dogs! I love dogs! I want a dog SO BADLY. It's reassuring that there is no biological clock on getting a dog, and I can have one whenever I want so I can wait until my life is perfect for one. Which might be coming up here soon. Dog! Where are you Dog? I need something to chase squirrels, run in the grass, and scare the crap out of my cat!

Now that Sir Clarke is properly in the ground and all, leagues away in Sri Lanka, I'm afraid he will start haunting me, so I've been reading lots of robot war stories to stave him off. Robbie! Where are you Robbie? Last night I got very drunk while watching a movie where the relics of a Buddhist saint went all "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and melted all their Turkish swords, and also brought the monk back to life just so he could rip the heart out of the blue eyed devil. Butcher Li! Protect me! Matt explained his temporary perpetual motion machine, and Colleen had to listen to the Salmon Dance too many times, plus Caroline in the City was in a movie about sex, which makes no sense. They have shot glasses that defy gravity by having no bottoms, but never getting broken, and also an inversion table that I never wanted to get out of. Please just let me hang upside down forever please! I would die on it. I would do nothing but get high and hang, until the blood rushing to my brain made my eyes explode. We have all been born facing the wrong direction! If everyone hung upside down on the night before Easter, we could rise out of our collective grave together, push aside the rock, and say hi to all the women! It would happen!

See Easter is many things, but it's always sunny and good, and besides I like having traditions. Traditions are fun, playing games with the pattern of our dullard working lives. Dullard! Don't worry Dullard, there are always daffodils soon and melting snow and raisin bread and butter lambs and sometimes pierogis! Though it's funny that we used to get kites in our Easter baskets, and now it's Ikea curtains.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

People who don't like to drink a lot often make fun of other people who celebrate St. Patrick's Day. You're not Irish. You're not Catholic. It's just an excuse to drink.

Well yes. It is just an excuse to drink. Now, if I lived in a Mansion somewhere in the wilds of California, you might make a case for me just being a lush. But I live in Cleveland, one of the poorest cities in the country. A city somewhere between Detroit and Youngstown. And I think that if you live somewhere like this, you might as well be Irish.

1. Clevelanders eat a lot of potatoes. Potato pancakes. French Fries. Pierogis. Potatoes are one of the main staples of the Cleveland diet. They are also a reason that we die early, just like the Irish.

2. Clevelanders are poor. If we had peat bogs, we would certainly use them for fuel rather than get raped by the gas company. If Indian burial sites produced lots of natural gas, we'd be getting robbed by American fuel companies too.

3. Clevelanders live by a sea. Lake Erie is an inland sea. Lots of people have died on Lake Erie, and we also have lots of ballads about them. Plus we have made up sea monsters.

4. Clevelanders are mostly an ugly lot. Irish are mostly ugly too. The pretty ones are very rare, most Irish people have squished Colm Meaney faces.

5. Cleveland men are known for talking too much and drinking too much, because their hopes have been crushed and life is shit. They also don't like British people very much. And they fight poorly.

6. Bush has fucked us over too.

7. We live in what used to be a beautiful glacier valley, which now resembles a scene from the Jungle. However when green does appear here, it can be pretty spectacular too. Kudzu is vibrant in August.

8. The luck o' Cleveland is pretty similar to the luck o' the Irish.

9. Almost every Clevelander is trying to get out of Cleveland, at least passively. Only they can't afford to. Or they knock up their girlfriend. Or they love their dad and mum too much. Also, every job in Cleveland is a dead end job.

Our city is dying. Our economy is dying. Our people are inbred. Beauty is reserved for the rich out of towners (ie Westlake), and the rest of us struggle to pay rent on tenements while eschewing proper birth control. So why shouldn't Lakewood have more Irish bars per sq. foot than any other city outside Dublin?

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It's the Poor Man's Holiday.

If you look at my links, you'll see all sorts of wonderful food writers, political writers, comedians....sometimes it makes me think "why am I even bothering to post anything in this world of literati?"

The answer is...because you depend upon me to bring you things like Eliot Spitzer's Hooker's Myspace page.

And I can't let you down.

News: Entangled-Light Pair Stored in Atomic Memory

http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/249314874/article.cfm

A new experiment bridges the old quantum trick of entanglement--the strange faster-than-light communication between particles--with the much newer technique of halting light dead in its tracks. Researchers report in Nature that they have successfully sent a pair of entangled states of light into separate corners of an ultracold atomic cloud, stored them there briefly, and then sent them back on their separate ways without completely destroying the quantum link in the process.

If any of you are in my situation right now
Which is to say you are completely snowbound with no hope of getting your car out for at least two days, only two cigarettes left, the only food in your house are the makings of cheese sandwiches, one PBR tallboy, and half a pint of pomengranete sorbet...

Then you should see if you have cinnamon to make cinnamon bread (butter white bread, mix sugar and cinnamon together, spread over generously, sprinkle with vanilla, then toast)

And order on Time Warner Movie on Demand the movie PAPRIKA, which is a fucking awesome anime that is so fucking sweet, I'm thinking of ordering it myself even though the blockbuster copy is still sitting at Sean's house.

Instead I ordered "No Reservations", which started its soundtrack with Phillip Glass, and at some point ended with a song that sounds like it was written by the lead character in Coyote Ugly.

A weird transition.

Seriously, PAPRIKA is great and totally worth it.

News from the Ice World

Yes. Everything is covered in ice. The stairs. The cars. The hearts of Obama supporters everywhere.

Two funny things have happened. One is funny awful. The other is funny haha. See if you can tell the difference.

1. My friend discovered that the house she lives in was actually foreclosed on last March, and it's going to auction Monday. As a renter this might not be a big deal if she hadn't been paying a lot of rent money to this guy who didn't own the house for the past year. And if she knew where she was going to be living in a month.

2. A very very large tree branch, like the kind that is the size of a small tree, fell on our house. It was encrusted in two inches of ice. I was home when it fell, and it is a hell of a sound to hear one of those things ripping and falling. Outside your bedroom window.
-------------------------------

Begin post again, 3/7/08

3. It took me three hours to drive home today in the snow, and the whole way I had to listen to the NPR pledge drive. If I hear "bamboo" umbrella once more time, I'm going to start burning plastic in my front yard.

One thing I really like about this democratic primary is that it gives me a chance to talk about something I really like (politics) with people I don't really hate (other democrats). For the past eight years the conversations have either been "Wow Bush sucks and our country sucks" or "Wow Bush sucks and YOU suck". Contrary to popular opinion, democrats don't constantly need their dicks sucked. Sometimes we like to be disagreed with, just not by religious fascists with Aspbergers. So its nice to have a real argument with people who are not morally deficient, they just like another candidate better.

However, since I'm not cause-driven but fiction driven, my debating skills have gone rusty, and I really need to get some practice in before it's the general election and we all go back to hating the Others. Too bad everyone I know is burned out on this primary thing already. And lets face it, ANOTHER Florida thing is just overkill. It's like the point in David Copperfield where they all confront Uriah Heep, and you're like "yeah we already know everything he did, just get it over with already", cause he had his true moment of villainy when he talked about marrying Agnes. Florida's true moment of villainy is past, and we should really just get over it already.

By "over it", I am implying we put Florida down, NCFOM* style.

And Michigan too, for conspiracy. And having too many lakes.

I voted for Obama, but really, I'm quite happy to see Hillary do well. I was torn between them anyway. I do agree with Sean's point, that's he's disappointed the party didn't just get behind one person and stick there, this year of all years. And I think the Obama votes are going to trickle away, because the new voters don't have the same feeling of enmity and betrayal those of us who voted in the 2000 elections do. They are there out of "hope", and Hillary's supporters are there out of "rage". It's just a matter of waiting to see which is the more powerful force. Though with March 4th dead and gone, so goes my brief idealistic fervor, and I'm back to my wonderful cynical self. Kick their stupid red tie wearing asses Hillary.

As a last note, my cat has a propensity for chewing on electrical wires, particularly up close the outlet. Also I just saw a rerun of America's Next Top Model where some girl named Elise told Tyra that being a supermodel didn't have to do with much besides physical beauty, and physical beauty was based on the amount of estrogen you got as a baby, that formed the big eyes/small chin look. It was awesome.

And then Kimora Lee Simmons, who is seriously an ogre**, was all like "are you telling me I should give that to my baby?", with that ghetto "oh no you didn't white bitch" inflection in her voice, and I came back down to earth.










*No Country For Old Men

** Seriously. Look.

For Allison, Carrie, and Kate. And Mom. Happy Lent, Eat Fish

Interesting Ohio!

Twas the night before voting
And all through the state
The Dems were all anxious
To end their long wait.

The machines are geared up
The volunteers trained
There'd be lots more voters
If it hadn't just rained

Cause Democrats melt in the rain
Like candy.

Yes darlings, it's the calm before the storm here in Lovely Ohio. The stars are twinkling, the snow is melting, hoards of Obama supporters are dancing to a free Arcade Fire concert, and Hillary is on the Daily Show. Because look! They're hip! They know where America gets its news! Myspace, Facebook, Comedy Central. This is old news, why bother restating it? But hey, here's a cultural turning point! Did anyone notice how completely non-influential MTV was this time round? Remember Vote Or Die? Wait, that didn't work. Fuck you MTV, you are the TV equivalent of Gogurt. Obama raised 139 million trillion dollars and he has never resorted to endorsing gang violence. Also I have decided I like Hillary a lot more when she's not smiling like a creepy marionette. I have trouble believing she knows how to smile. When she's not smiling though, I have no trouble believing she would ground me. Which is a presidential quality.

I have practiced what I will say to the exit pollsters. I have two speeches prepared, one in case I vote for Hillary, and one for Obama. But sadly, they will be lost to obscurity, cause no one in the media cares what the voters on Denison and Pearl have to say. I will say them to myself over and over again until I vote, to try and convince myself either way.

There is a book that came out recently about the science of elections, and what are the best, most effective methods of voting the majority candidate. When you have to choose one out of many, the most popular person doesn't really win. What the author suggests is that we should have a system like Hot Or Not, where we rank the choices in terms of who we like best to least. And whoever has the highest cumulative score wins.

I dream of a day where I do not have to wake up at seven am and drive to some school cafeteria, but can vote online and be done with it. And maybe, like American Idol, we can vote by text too! And tax all the fuckers who stay home!

Happy Election Day Texas and Ohio! And whoever the other two are.

And in other more important news, Norway is already operating the bomb proof, earthquake proof, meteor proof underground in the permafrost ARTIC CIRCLE SEED VAULT



which is the secret criminal lair of this heinous villian:



PS Yes the Doomsday Seed Vault is being guarded by a GIANT ICE BEAR.