Charlton, The Trigger-Happy Ghost

I don't ask a lot of my Facebook friends.

I know they're not all like me, and to be frank this world would be a rather scarier place were there more than one of me.  I realize they're all from different (in some cases radically different) walks of life, brought together on my profile by the common thread of myself--a tenuous thread indeed in some cases.  Accordingly, I realize all these people have their own unique tastes and viewpoints.  That's fine.  I'm not going to agree with all (or even most) of it, but then I'm into some pretty weird shit myself.  They can put up with me, I can put up with them.  In fact, there's really one thing I ask of my Facebook friends.

Don't be a fucking imbecile.

Allow me to explain what brings this on.  Until rather recently I had a certain fellow on my friends list, a guy I had known casually in high school.  This man, whom I shall refer to as "F.H." (short for "Fuck Head"), had managed something I very much had not and found a niche in the sedate redneck milieu of our mutual alma mater.  Reconnecting with him hadn't been something I'd planned--his name had popped up on my recommended list, I remembered not completely hating him and clicked "Add".  Nor, for that matter, did we ever directly communicate--his posts appeared in my news feed, vice versa, and that's as far as it went. 

At first I noticed only two things about F.H.'s posts--his atrocious grammar and his apparent all-consuming obsession with firearms.  Both of these, however, are pretty par for the course in that part of the world, so I didn't fuss about it.

But it wasn't long before F.H. gave me something to fuss about.

As you may have heard, the proposed plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks has aroused something of a furor amongst the more reactionary elements of this country's political landscape.  Aaaaaand right away you can probably see where I'm going with this.  Or rather, you think you can see where I'm going with this.  I've heard enough xenophobic fear-mongering over the past nine years to harbor the foolish belief that nothing could surprise me anymore.  Man oh man oh man was I ever wrong.

 So what were F.H.'s proverbial two cents on the subject?  He was...in favor of the mosque's construction.  Not for any of the typical, sensible, sane reasons, you understand.  No, F.H. approved the project for one reason, and one reason only...

Now, before I continue, I must insist that you, as a passive participant, make certain you are physically and mentally prepared for what I am about to relate.  I am not one to worry overmuch about the well-being and/or sensibilities of my potential readership.  I take it as a given that any reader of this blog knows what to expect, or failing that simply finds the subject matter not to his/her tastes and departs in disinterest/horror, never to return.  Problem solved either way, right?  Still, this is a bit outside the norm by TIP standards.  I just want to make absolutely certain this is understood.

So.  Seated comfortably?  Any sharp objects stored safely out of reach?  Not suffering from any ailments potentially exacerbated by shock?

All right then.

F.H. stated it was his belief the Ground Zero mosque should be built so that it could be haunted by the restless spirits of those who died on 9/11.

Yeah.

No...no!  I'm not fucking making that up.  He actually said that.

YES, F.H. is real!  This isn't some kind of incisive satire of the American right!  This is something a real, living person, one whom I have personally met, said and presumably believes!  No, I don't think he was joking!  Even if he was, it doesn't really help 'cuz it means he's really, really, really bad at telling jokes!

I mean...Jesus.  From this point on, every time I think I'm being a wee bit harsh in my estimations of my erstwhile hometown, every time I consider the idea I missed a prime opportunity to learn how to make the best of a bad situation, every time I entertain the notion I'm just a pretentious, elitist snob...I'm going to remember F.H. and what he said. 

So congratulations, Mr. Head.  You've made my already pretty abysmal childhood memories even more miserable.  It's like you printed them out, stuck them on a target (next to pictures of Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama, no doubt) and chewed them to bits with dozens of MP5 rounds.  I do hope you're pleased with yourself. 

So what did I do after he posted this comment?  Well at first I thought it important not to overreact; I merely hid his comments on my feed.  A day later I thought better of it and removed him from my friends list.  I briefly considered making this blog entry a name-and-shame exercise, but decided at last on an unflattering pseudonym, partly out of a desire not to alienate other high-school acquaintances still on my friends list, but mostly out of a desire to avoid being shot. 

The deed done, I found myself having twinges of something resembling second thoughts.  Had I just proven myself a hypocrite?  Was I not punishing F.H. for speaking his mind, something I myself have always insisted on doing?  Wasn't he entitled to his own dumbass opinions, just like me and everyone else?  And it's not like I'm any sort of virtuous paragon--I mocked a former Senator mere hours after his death, for fuck's sake.

In the end, I decided the expression of the opinion itself wasn't what bothered me, so much as the completely and utterly balls-out retarded means in which it was expressed.  Invoking the tragedy of 9/11 is a tasteless rhetorical device at the best of times, but turning it into an episode of Tales From The Crypt is sinking to a downright chthonic low. 

Hence, the banhammer.  Entitled to his opinion F.H. may be, but he's not entitled to my goddamn Facebook page.  

Travelling through time at the speed of time

I turn 28 this Sunday.

Not a very momentous age, I'll admit.  Apart from being a divisible of 7, there's nothing all that remarkable about it.  It's not like, say, 18.  Or 30.  Or 50.  Or 100.

Thing is, I don't feel a year older.  By that I don't mean I'm "only as old as I feel" or some other bullshit I got off a coffee mug (if only because I don't drink coffee).  I mean I have mental difficulty grasping the idea that a year of time has passed between this birthday and the last one.  It feels more like, I don't know, four months.  Maybe six.

Most people feel like time goes by faster as they get older.  Not me.  Time's sprinted past me with nary a hello as far back as I can remember.  This is a a large element of my memory problems: I can remember specific events from my childhood, to be sure, but often I couldn't tell you precisely when they happened.  Ask me about a specific year and, more often than not I'm pressed to think of a single memorable incident.  There are exceptions--1992 sticks out to me, for some reason.  I'm not one for nostalgia, but it's one of my favorite years, if only because that's the year Crystal Pepsi came out.

But that's not my point.  My point, in the most literal sense, is--where does the time go?

My theory is I just haven't been paying attention.  Certain predispositions have led me to find the most comfort with my head lodged firmly up my own ass--or at least in a book.  I spend so much time off in a world of my own while the "real" world (whatever that is) TiVos past.  It'll take care of itself...right?  Relaxing as this sounds, it does tend to grow dull after the first couple decades or so.

And now the frigging "Skip Ahead" button is stuck...

I do have methods for counteracting this, but I don't have much in the way of fine control.  I find if I anticipate some future event, the time leading up to that event slows to a crawl.  BUT!  Once the event comes, time goes by even faster, so it passes in the near-literal blink of an eye.  And once it does pass, depending somewhat on how much I'd been looking forward to it, I may go through an odd mental state where I feel as if the event never happened and I imagined the whole thing.  Then I get depressed for a while.

Something like this happened just last weekend--something I'd been looking forward to enough for me to go through all the above steps.  More often, though, it's something as simple as looking forward to the weekend or the end of the workday.  Those are frequent enough occurrences that I at least avoid the subsequent dislocation.

Another thing that helps--waking up early.  These days I wake up much earlier than I did previously.  You get up at 7, the day races by--and you look up and notice it's still only 10.  Only problem with this is, this has got to be the laziest fucking big city on the planet--good luck getting anything done when nothing opens before 10 am.

And another thing--for the first time since I was about 6, I don't live in the middle of fucking nowhere.  No longer needing to leave everything for the weekend and no longer needing all afternoon to run the simplest errands does wonders for one's schedule.  The closer you are to stuff, the less you miss out on.

Of course, it might also help if I didn't spend every morning and evening either on the Internet or playing X-Box...

But, you know, no sense sacking Rome in a day.  Baby steps and all that.

Not any stupider than Dinosaucers

So last night--well, early this morning--okay, in between bouts of thrashing around for the snooze button--I had a dream.

In this dream, I came up with, basically, the most socially irresponsible Saturday morning cartoon ever.  The animated hijinks of Joe Camel couldn't have topped this.  Were I to somehow, against all odds and sanity, succeed in ensuring its production it would be my greatest and final achievement all at a stroke.  Greatest because it would encapsulate every iconoclastic urge I've ever held or pretended, and final because I would in all likelihood be beaten to a stain on the sidewalk by a horde of enraged (and quite likely bereaved) parents.

In my dream the show was animated in a pseudo-realistic style, similar to Megas XLR (still the finest children's cartoon of the past decade).  The main characters were two young adult (young enough for children to identify with, yet old enough to live free of adult supervision) males of the stock "lovable slacker" character type; the sort who somehow manage to live in relative comfort despite the lack of any obvious employment or support.  These two young men (whose names I never learned) shared one joy, one specialty, one driving passion in life:

Blowing shit up.

A quick clarification: these two fellows were not petty terrorists, destroying random buildings in their neighborhood.  Rather, their specialty was homemade fireworks, the sort unlikely (at least initially) to cause property damage beyond scorch-marks on the driveway.  Though the duo frequently possessed pre-made fireworks, they rarely fired them off as-is; they preferred to take them apart, salvaging their combustible elements for use in their own creations.  These custom explosives were invariably large, very noisy and even more colorful, though the two's tendency to set them off in broad daylight dampened the effect somewhat.

Though the fireworks always had exceptionally long, match-lit fuses, this was the summation of the protagonists' safety precautions.  At no point did they ensure the ready availability of fire extinguishers (or even a common garden hose), wet down the ground before detonation, put on eye protection or employ any other risk-reduction tactics one might associate with such a dangerous hobby.  Yet they displayed no physical signs of any mishap--no missing fingers, no cauterized optic nerves, no burn scars.  The two remained as whole and handsome as my totally-not-gay subconscious first birthed them.  Every week some shadowy antagonist (the dream provided no details on this point, beyond his apparent existence) would threaten the duo's beloved neighborhood and they'd use their bomb-crafting expertise to save the day.

By itself, this all might not sound so bad.  It's nothing you don't see every drunken white-trash idiot do every 4th of July.  With the addition of about ten thousand disclaimers and parental-advisory warnings it might even reach the air.  Hell, just look at all the crap Japan pumps out with the seeming purpose of providing pedophiles with masturbation material.

And then came the moon voyage.

It's exactly what it sounds like--the heroes decide to take a trip to the moon and set about building a conveyance.  From what I recall it consisted entirely of a plywood board, with four plastic buckets attached one to a corner and stuffed with bottle rockets to serve as thrusters.  There was no way to steer (this will be important later), no oxygen supply and no life-support system of any kind, so I have no idea how the duo planned to survive the rigors of hard vacuum should the plan succeed--which they fully expected it to.  They lit the fuses and...

Now at this point logic should dictate that the contraption would explode (or simply catch fire) on the ground, held snugly by the Earth's gravity well.  Even if it were to attain liftoff, the would-be spaceship should reach only a few feet of height before plummeting back to terra firma.  Either should produce the same result--a fiery death for our heroes, becoming just another scorch-mark on the abused driveway. 

This is not what happened in my dream. 

For some reason I feel the need to point out that the two men did NOT, in fact, reach the moon.  This may or may not be an important distinction, given the result they did achieve.  Though outer space remained beyond the protagonists' reach, they did succeed in building a rather handy (and unlikely) flying machine.  Upon a bed of multicolored sparks they rode, zipping back and forth across their hometown with speed and ease--this despite, as previously mentioned, the machine lacking any steering mechanism.  The phrase "toyetic" floated through my unconscious--I recall a moment of pure shame at knowing what that even meant. 

There's not much else to tell--the dream ended just as the heroes managed to relieve one of the antagonist's henchmen of his pistol and started taking apart the bullets, to use the gunpowder within for--well, you know. 

So you can probably see how people would have a problem with this cartoon, were it to exist.  The sheer amount of "imitatable behavior" is nothing short of flabbergasting (is that a word?).  I've never been the sort to blame the stupidity of children on the media--kids are a little smarter than that, and even the ones who aren't tend to have a limited shelf life no matter what (if he hadn't put on a cape and jumped out the window, it would have been something else--say, eating spinach until his stomach exploded trying to gain super-strength).  But every fireworks-related injury would end up getting blamed on this show, rightly or wrongly.  And it'd only be a matter of time before some aspie tried to build his own bottle-rocket flying-machine and wound up cremating himself (and rest assured, it WOULD be a boy). 

So no, this show would never get made.  It's kind of a double standard, really.  So many people in this country--Michael Bay, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the US military--built careers and reputations on the premise that explosions are cool.  Isn't there room for one lousy cartoon saying it's cool to violate local fire codes?

Apparently not.

Erin, Go Fuck Yourself

Wow, didn't think I was gonna miss that many days. Work got all kinds of crazy and I wasn't paying as much attention to this blog as I told myself I would, you see. I had a choice between sleep and updating this blog, and being the lazy bastard I am I chose sleep.

Anyway...

So, it's St. Patrick's Day. Woo-hoo, I guess? It's kinda silly this is a high-profile holiday at all. Not many saint's days are, apart from St. Valentine's Day (in honor of the saint who discovered a heretofore-unknown scriptural passage specifically allowing the exchange of chocolate for sex--that the passage was in handwriting closely resembling his own is universally considered irrelevant), Halloween (named of course after the Hallowed St. Ween, who forbade the practice of putting razorblades in children's apples unless you really, REALLY want the little fucker dead), and of course today. And at least you get candy out of the former examples, unlike on St. Patrick's Day. So why, then, did it take off?

As with so many other things in life, we can blame this on the damn Irish. This country is home to many a long-distant descendant of those potato-snarfing bastards, many of whom think being one-eighth Irish is their most interesting personality trait. Most of them are right. So, come St. Pat's they celebrate by congregating in urine-soaked bars, getting piss-drunk on watery Guinness (sorry for the redundancy), loudly complaining about the blacks, watching The Boondock Saints (the alcohol having dulled their sense of artistic taste to an appropriately low level) and staggering home to beat their fat crucifix-fondling wives, bellowing like the damned every step of the way. You know, the same thing they do every Saturday. You'd think they'd switch things up a bit for the occasion--getting piss-drunk on watery Killian's Irish Red, watching Leprechaun: In The Hood (too many black people?), walking home quietly and beating their numerous children, for example.

Oh, and somewhere in all that there's something about wearing green, on pain of getting pinched. Not being one to kowtow to the Paddy O'Furniture I of course refuse such nonsense, indeed going out of my way to not wear green that day. This year I'm going one better--I have successfully developed the "anti-green", a hue which is the exact opposite and antithesis of green. It turns out to be a sort of brownish-pink color, like the stuff that comes out of a cyst. I plan to slather myself head-to-toe with anti-green paint before I head out to work today. Sure, it might be frowned upon, but it's not specifically prohibited in the employee dress code...on account of it being insane, but the point still stands I think.

Unlike every other holiday observed by the American public at large, St. Patrick's Day has resisted the encroachment of the greeting-card industry with surprising irascibility. I mean, you see green paper plates and crepe streamers, along with the odd leprechaun-festooned party favor, but they're usually pushed into one lonely cardboard display rack shoved in wherever there's space between the Easter candy. No, the real money in the holiday has always gone, and no doubt always shall go, directly into the pockets of producers and purveyors of alcoholic beverages. Because the Irish and all their half-blood ilk are all filthy, irresponsible drunks and inordinately proud of the fact. Did I mention that yet? I keep getting the feeling I forgot something.

And the leprechaun--Stickly, there's something else. Has any mythological creature undergone quite so much badass decay as the Fair Folk? Back in the day they were some nightmarish combination of Cthulhu and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac--now they hang around pools waiting to refill your life hearts. (A similar point can be made concerning the modern-day depiction of angels versus how they were portrayed in the actual Bible, but that's neither here nor there.) What, you think I'm making shit up? You ever see Darby O'Gill And The Little People? That movie scared the piss out of me as a kid, and not just because Sean Connery sings in it. I never cease to be amazed by the human race's tendency to reduce mythological pants-shitting horror to children's entertainment (i.e. fairy tales. Yes, all of them).

You ever think that's gonna happen to us? Like, centuries from now they'll be making animated movies featuring Freddy Krueger breakdancing and singing about friendship? Actually, that sounds kind of awesome. Never mind.

Couldn't suck as much as the Irish, anyway.

This one takes a very weird turn near the end

I used to love Marshmallow Peeps.

Couldn't get enough of them. Every year when Easter season rolled around, there I'd be at the store, snapping them up. I must have been eating something like three boxes a week back then, that time of year. The Bunnies were my favorite--'cuz of the texture, you see.

This wasn't always the case. When I was younger the very idea of Peeps revolted me. I'd never actually tried any--it was the very concept of the thing I found so off-putting. At some point my parents got me a single, giant Peep one Easter as a joke. I figured "what the hell", ate it--and discovered I actually enjoyed it. From then on, I was hooked.

Strange thing, though--even once they started selling holiday-appropriate Peeps more or less year-round, I still only ate them around Easter. Any other time just felt like cheating--spoiled the magic, if you will. Same reason people only eat candy corn around Halloween (apart from candy corn tasting like pre-chewed Tootsie rolls, that is)--it just isn't done.

Somewhere along the way, though, it all changed. I remember I was halfway through a box of Peeps when a sudden realization struck me like a DU round:

This is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted.

This is not the only time something like this has happened. My once all-encompassing addiction to Mountain Dew Code Red was broken in a similar fashion, by the abrupt (and, again, mid-consumption) epiphany that its taste resembled nothing so much as cough syrup.

The difference in these two cases lies in the completeness of the break. While I haven't so much as touched Code Red since that fateful day, the benighted Peep still, somehow, maintains a vestigial hold on me. Every year, sometime during Easter season, I find myself compelled to purchase and eat a single box of the blasted bunnies. Some kind of bizarre tribute to the Gods of Confection, perhaps, or a twisted feeling of holiday spirit, Easter never having held any meaning to me beyond dyed eggs and piles of candy nestled in Astroturf-lined baskets. Now that I think of it, the latter explanation seems more likely--I plan to feed my next batch of hard-boiled eggs through the Paas machine, same as last year. I even plan to make yet another annual attempt to drink the contents of one of the cups of dye. I may even succeed this time, obviating the need for any further attempts.

But that's besides the point. The point is, I got my Peeps quota out of the way this morning.

They were the bunnies, of course--always the bunnies. Pink ones. I'd hoped to find season-appropriate green ones, but no such luck. I noticed they're not holding the sugar so well anymore--the pink shit got everywhere, including my eyes (I'd rather not talk about that). Somebody's getting sloppy. Probably me.

About the eyes on those things--man, even when I actually liked these things the eyes always bugged me. What are they made of? They don't taste like anything. Actually, come to think of it that's not true. They taste like old scabs (or, uh, so I'd imagine). Appropriate I guess, since that's what they look like.

How were they? About as awful as I remembered. I didn't think it was possible to fuck up a marshmallow, but somehow Peeps manage it. Leaving the sugar-shit coating aside, they just taste...flattened. If there's such a thing as unleavened marshmallows, Peeps would be they. And the sugar coating just makes it worse--they use way too much of it, always have. It's like eating a marshmallow cocooned in fine-grain sandpaper.

So, yeah, pretty awful. Plus I think they've upped the dye content or something--when I went to brush my teeth I noticed the toothpaste suds were all pink. I never noticed that before. It makes sense--why go for quality when you can get vibrancy at a fraction of the price? All you need do is get beleaguered mothers to toss the product in the shopping cart to quell their screaming brats--then the money's in the register, regardless of whether anyone eats them or not.

What is it about these things, anyway? Did I ever really like them per se, or was I just so surprised by their failure to be sublimely horrid I convinced myself such? Despite what I said above, Peeps aren't the worst thing I've ever eaten, not by far. It just happened to be the worst thing in my mouth right at that moment. And I had a great many things in my mouth just then--I'm still compiling a list. Certainly I don't maintain a ritualistic relationship with any of the other appallingly unhealthy foodstuffs I've sworn off over the years. I don't, say, walk into McDonald's on the anniversary of my first viewing of Super Size Me and order the #3 combo. Nor do I mainline Mountain Dew Code Red when I get a cold. You get the idea.

Perhaps I should find a healthier, thematically similar substitute. Like say, every year around Easter I find a warren full of baby rabbits and swallow them all whole. Good source of protein, baby rabbits. Plus the fur is great for scouring out your colon--each one's like a little scrub brush! Oh, don't look at me that way--they're rabbits, notorious for their fecundity. It's not like I'm going to swallow a baby rabbit only to belatedly realize it was the last rabbit on earth. Actually, in that situation I might go ahead and do it anyway. It's not like the little squirt's going to singlehandedly refresh the lagomorph population or anything. Plus I imagine being the last rabbit on earth would suck. What's worse--suffocating in gastric juices or dying of a loneliness-induced broken heart?

Which, I ask? Which?

Gyaahhhh...

Well.

I know I said yesterday how my mind was clear for the second half-hour, and I might well write about pretty much anything. I was even formulating a humorous short piece--a re-telling of St. Patrick expelling the snakes from Ireland, utilizing several Irish ethnic stereotypes for comedic effect, if you must know.

But that shall have to wait. It's now abundantly clear that there's only one thing on my mind, and therefore only one thing I could possibly write about:

This. Fucking. Headache.

It feels like I'm being shot between the eyes in slow motion. It feels like someone was running a jackhammer in my skull, dropped it and now it's pounding away at the back of my brow. It feels like the pile of wasp eggs nested in my cranium are hatching and the larvae are chewing their way out.

It feels, as I mentioned on Facebook, like God shit in my brain.

What did I ever do to him? Questions I know the answers to I don't need to ask, I guess.

I just wish I knew where it came from. The last time something like this happened I was hung over, but I don't have that excuse this time, sadly enough--then at least I'd have enjoyed the lead-up. Right now I'm guessing a combination of stress, fatigue, the change in weather, several hours of listening to fire alarms, paint fumes, and a recent reduction in caffeine intake. At least, that's what I hope it is. High on my very long list of things I really, really don't need is a brain tumor.

There must be an upside. I have to see an upside. Luckily, there is an upside. Damn, I'm going all optimistic.

I now have something to write about.

I started this, the first day of my new writing regimen, somewhat at a loss for material. Hell, you saw the last post--I was reduced to wittering on about squirrels and how I revel in tormenting my stupid cat. But now? Now I'm good and worked up. Now I can sit here merrily tapping away about how it feels like I'm trying to sprout a third eye (having seemingly chosen to interpret Eastern mysticism a tad too literally) whilst cursing myself for never getting around to buying ibuprofen.

And it could be worse, as it always can be. It no longer hurts to breathe through my nose. Much. Getting some dinner down my throat seems to be helping (now, ironically, I begin to worry I'm not eating enough). And standing upright merely brings about a dull pounding, as opposed to a full-on horse's hoof to the face.

What's really odd about all this is how my Pandora station doesn't seem to bother me one bit. You'd think if fire alarms make it worse, Hate Eternal certainly would. Seems not to be the case, though. If this is cancer it might actually be helping--I'm pretty sure the music I listen to is capable of beating tumors to death with its metaphorical bare fists.

You know, I wasn't even gonna do this tonight. I thought the headache was the perfect excuse for getting out of this. But nope, here I am. Maybe I'm more of a writer than I thought. Well, I have always enjoyed complaining.

Nothing worth telling Facebook about

What does it mean when the name of the record label is printed in larger text than the name of the band? Lack of support? That can't be it in this case--they were a pretty big name back then. Mere carelessness? More likely--labels aren't known for their consideration of such matters.

An explanation. I was trying to think of something to write just now, happened to glance over at a CD laying on my desk and noticed that detail. You find inspiration in the strangest places.

I shouldn't leave that CD just lying out like that, actually. It's liable to get scratched up, and even with the album safely ensconced within my iPod it's always nice to have a hard-copy backup. I know where the case is--I'll get up and put it in there. One of these days. Probably. Pretty much my default attitude to any housekeeping.

I did at least get around to throwing away some of these surplus phone books, at least. Seems like every other week some phone company is dumping one or two on my doorstep. Like my bookshelves aren't warped enough from my horribly unfair insistence that they do the job for which they were constructed. I don't know why they even bother--they're probably all the same numbers and anyone I might want to call is in my cellphone already.

Nothing in my chosen profession on Craigslist today. I really need to just find another line of work. I want a change of pace, so why only go halfway? But doing what, exactly? Crap. I should've stayed in college.

The cat's staring out the front window, on the lookout for squirrels. Meanwhile she misses the squirrel scampering around the backyard...

Arrgh, this isn't working. I came here to write and I'm turning this blog into a glorified Twitter account. I think I'll cut this session short to half an hour. I'll do the other half when I get home tonight.

Still, this is something, right? On an ordinary day I'd write, let's see, nothing, and here I've gone and written something. I mean far as I'm concerned it's nothing, but it's a more substantial nothing than usual. A warm-up, if you will. Plus now I've cleared my head to think about what I'll write tonight. Maybe I'll work on one of those projects I've had piling up.

Ooh, the sun's coming out now! It's still early enough in the year I'm actually happy to see it. Of course I'll have changed my tune by about mid-July when I'm well and truly turned into living bacon. Even then I doubt I'll miss rain. I really did move to the wrong city.

The cat's washing herself on top of my monitor again. I keep telling her it's not a bathtub. She refuses to listen, no matter how many times I fill the actual tub with ice-cold water and chuck her in.