Dates
Oy. I keep forgetting that WordPress, like Blogger, doesn’t save stuff in this little entry box. If I’m writing stuff and I navigate away, it’s lost forever. And that’s what happens to me. I’m writing about the date, let’s say today (since 1/11/10 is so delightfully binary, though not as wonderful as 1/11/11), and then I say, “Ooh, something sparkly!” and I click on a link and poof. But that’s my problem, not yours.
This tickles me. This is what you get if you google “tentacle sex papacy” with safe search off.
So where were you on 9/9/99? Or 8/8/88? Or 7/7/77? Or 6/6/66?
Of these, I remember clearly only 7/7/77. Summer school: I was in George May’s art class at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles, where my dad taught math. Like my father, I can’t handle long periods of inactivity, so summer school was a must. Mr. May was this animated fellow who reminded me of Red Buttons. And for those of you too young to remember Red Buttons, well,
Fine teacher, George May. Taught me how to draw.
6/6/66, I would have been four, looking forward to kindergarten, not realizing that kindergarten was ruled by a witch who would forever be locking me up in “the kitchen” all because I wouldn’t stop harassing this one girl (with whom I’m friended on Facebook).
Where were you?
D.
Unclear on the Craigslist concept, Part Deux
To reiterate: the Casual Encounters section is for women looking to hook up with men. Or men with women. Or men with men. Or women with women. Or men with transgenders. Or transgenders with men. Or . . . you get the idea. It’s about hooking up. And it would be a lot more interesting place if the pro$titute$* had their own area, but that’s another story.
It’s not really about women looking for lost loves, so I was a bit surprised by
Jeremy where r u? – w4m – 29 (Bakersfield)
So sad! Always tugs at my heartstrings when people can’t find their special someones.
Looking for some dude named Jeremy, in the army, bald, tall, white guy. U came to Bako for the holidays. U gave me the clap so where r u bastard? Pay for my medication!
Um. Oh.
D.
*A dollar sign, not an S, get it? Those prostitutes sure are clever.
Unclear on the Craigslist concept
The casual encounters section is what it sounds like. It’s for people looking to hook up and share bodily fluids, some of whom don’t even expect money in exchange. Kind of a fun place to lurk if you enjoy snooping on the more tawdry side of the singles scene.
And then there’s
Charming girl seeks prince… – w4m – 28
which ordinarily would lead in to a plea for someone who can go all night. Instead,
I am a Orthodox Jewish female seeking the same in a older Jewish male. I am very conservative and traditional in keeping a jewish home. I do keep Kosher always and seeking marriage and to start a family.
This poor woman. What’s she going to do when guys by the dozen start emailing her pictures of their unkosher meat?
D.
Mother of all Emo
Natasha was the ultimate Goth chick. If it weren’t for her Herman Munster head, she’d have put some filthy notions into my prepubescent brain.
D.
You know what they oughta do?
It seems like our government is reactive and not proactive with respect to terrorism. Some guy hides explosives in his shoes and now we all have to take off our damned shoes at the airport. This most recent guy hides explosives in his underwear and now they’re strip-searching folks in Nigeria. And boy are the Nigerians pissed about it.
Remember Robert Redford’s job in Three Days of the Condor? He was a reader. His task was to skim through all manner of thrillers and determine if there were any ideas or themes that might be of interest to his CIA handlers. This seems rather inefficient, though, because you’re wading through a sea of published novels to find the occasional interesting tidbit . . . and the fact that they are PUBLISHED novels strikes me as an unwanted filter, such that you will only find plots that have some commercial appeal (at least in the mind of one publisher).
A book proposal featuring an earnest young man strapping explosives to his nut sack would not, IMHO, go far. And yet it happened.
So here’s my idea: our government should hire writers of marginal talent to serve as professional brainstormers. What they would do all day long is generate ideas for terrorist schemes against the United States. They would have to be marginally talented writers because those professional authors are too used to thinking, “Gee, will this sell?” to come up with any really rotten ideas. But take some guy who has published a couple of short stories in some lesser known zines but can’t manage to land an agent, let alone get his book published, and he’d be a wellspring for the half-baked ideas of which these terrorists seem so fond.
I’m not talking about me, mind you. I’m happy with my job. But I suspect there are a lot of writers like me who actually need the work.
There would doubtless be some unintended consequences. I hate to think what DHS would do with a plot about female suicide bombers hiding plastique in their breast implants.
D.
Truth, stranger than
Here’s a photo from a viral email my sis sent me:
Endangered pork
The email comes with the following explanation, as long as a number of other similar photos:
In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs.
Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely
and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health,
although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused
the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate
another mother’s cubs, perhaps she would improve.
And so forth. As I usually do with viral emails, I checked Snopes.com for the real deal. The true story is quite a bit more disturbing. At the Sriracha Zoo in Thailand, zookeepers have set up a number of such odd displays, all for the entertainment of jaded animal . . . um . . . lovers? Tigers giving suck to piglets, pigs giving suck to tiger cubs, dogs and pigs and tigers living in harmony, you name it. All in good fun, perhaps, except this particular zoo has some a few loathsome skeletons in its closet. Read more at Snopes.
D.
Yes, Jake, I am always stealing posts from you.
Jake says: You should make a category, “Things stolen from Jake.”
Make it so, Number One!
D.
New Years Resolution:
Get back to 163 and stay there.
I’m counting calories. That and exercise, and I’ll get back to 163 in no time. I’ve already lost three pounds; eight more to go. How hard can it be to lose eight pounds?
I love the way weight peels off at the beginning of a diet. If it kept falling off at this rate, I’d reach my goal in less than a week.
Any resolutions you’d like to share?
Oh, and I’m wondering: how many authors are selling their work as pdfs? Do ebook readers support pdfs? And will we eventually get to the point where authors sell directly, without a publishing middleman?
D.