Saturday, December 16, 2000

LOL! A not so disturbing search request: "how to cook crablegs" brings up my blog archive. Yum. I am sooooo hungry now.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 4:30 PM || link it email me

Aaargh! Kendra, I stumbled onto this very same website by accident too! I will not give this pampered little nerd girl the benefit of knowing she royally pissed off this old curmudgeon, so I will not provide a link to her site either. But WTF? Her statement, "i haven't bought anything from a corporate establishment [aside from Wild Oats Market - i do eat sometimes] in about a year and a half" is utterly meaningless. She's ****ing 15, fer crying out loud! Of course she doesn't need to buy stuff from corporate establishments! Mums and daddums buy it for her. Gimme a break! (I doubt she is an emancipated minor) And although I understand her dislike of corporate amerika and although I encourage not shopping corporations or big business if at all possible (and admittedly, sometimes it is not possible to completely avoid it), her solution is part of the problem. A BIG part of the problem. She is succumbing to the seduction of corporate amerika, and becoming just as much a brainwashed productzombie that I am under the impression she abhors. She is acquiring their crap, whether paid for or not. She has fallen under their spell, a greed junkie, a whore for schtuff. If she truly wants to make a statement, she wouldn't acquire the stuff, period. She would not buy it, she would not shoplift it. That way and only that way is the true path to shoving it the face of corporate amerika. But I bet baby's too spoiled for that kind of lifestyle. Baby needs stuff. Waaaah. What a little ****. What would happen if this pastyfaced privileged little nerdette forms a nice little profitable internet startup with help from mums and daddums, and in her youthful naivette hires employees of questionable character who perhaps steal from her. I wonder how she would feel then. And her other statement, "chick asked me to steal a glue gun for her from that **[ann's flagrant censorship]**ing Michael's craft store down the road ...and yes, it was a quickie! in and out and another very very very small declination on a corpulent profit line." Again, WTF? She steals stuff for other people when they ask her to? They are using her like a whore! She is their whore! Oh, ROTFLMAO...she works at Office Max! Oh, don't you just love these little hypocrites? Chicky, get a job at a granola co-op, start your own business, go work for the peace corp, but puhlease do not criticize korporate amerika when you work for them!!!!
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 4:13 PM || link it email me

Oh this is so incredbily cool! Always save your old mice! I had a mouse in the "defective" box that had a bad ball but the teflon feeties (what are those things called, anyway?) were still good, so I did a ball transplant from the one I was using with flat feet...works like a charm! This thing is zzzzzzzzippy! Just like new.

Some day, when OSX is stable and Cubes come down in price (or if I find 2 grand lying on the street), I will not have to worry about this with Apple's new Optical Mouse. I think. Sure, there's no internal parts to wear out, but what about the underside of it? Doesn't *that* wear out, like the little teflon feet thingies? Doesn't that make traction bad after a while?
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 7:28 AM || link it email me

OK...that does it. I cannot work with this mouse. Guess I'll be using the handly little iBook until I can get over to MacGalaxy hopefully early next week.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 7:14 AM || link it email me

2nd night in a row I haven't slept. I think I'm scared ****less what the economy is going to do now with the "changing of the guards." Visions of me having to take another job (besides my freelance one), getting sick from the HVAC system again, dying, or worse, having to live with a parent or parent-in-law because we're forced to move.

Property tax bill came in the mail the other day. Mortgage company didn't take enough out during the year...house assessed at more than they estimated. When we bought the house 10 years ago, it was assessed at half as much as it is now. Our income hasn't gone up proportionally to the rate of inflation. If we had to buy a house now, we'd be living in a van down by the river.

And thank you, Alan Greenspan, for slowing down the economy! That really helps out [sarcasm]*MY*[/sarcasm] business. Thank you so very much! And Happy Merry ****ing Xmas to you too!

Aw, heck, maybe I'm not sleeping because I'm just so incredi-freaking-bly excited to be learning Cascading Style Sheets!

Nah.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 6:58 AM || link it email me

You know you're old when you go to a party and the only person there older than yourself is the guy with the grey hair.

Does anyone else go through about two mice a year? I clean the gunk out, but I think my problem is the little teflon feet thingies going flat. I'm really hard on my mice.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 6:39 AM || link it email me

Friday, December 15, 2000

Hey...just heard on NPR that Dubya dislikes pagers and cell phones and takes his own pillow with him when he's on the road. Does this mean we actually have something in common? Hell IS freezing over.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:49 PM || link it email me

Ehhh...that didn't make sense. Make that a "stuffed TOY dog," not a "stuffed dog toy." The toy was obviously intended for a child, not a dog. But then again, Plato is more like a child.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:42 AM || link it email me

Thursday, December 14, 2000

From the "You had to have been there" department: Tim found this sort of old fashioned stuffed dog toy on wheels at his job that looked like Plato, so he gave it to us tonight and Plato just started to destroy it. We were screaming with laughter. Like I said, you had to have been there.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:40 PM || link it email me

I stand corrected. It was not the very same day we went to the Nova Color warehouse that we went across the border. We spent at least a day overnight in San Diego (went to the zoo...checked out the university) before we headed south. Don't know what I was thinking...early senility or something. Like it matters anyway...the only people that would know are me and Stan.

You know what's weird about Wisconsin? When we lived in Colorado and people would talk about going across the border, they meant going down to Mexico. Here, it means going to Illinois.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 12:46 PM || link it email me

Would like to put in a plug (no, they don't pay me) for some acrylic paints...Nova Color. They have very inexpensive prices. You can order online, and then they'll send you a total and you can mail them a check or call them back with your credit card. Paints are in jars, not tubes. You can get small amounts (4 oz) up to a 5 gallon pail. I generally get gallons of the black texture paste and black gesso, and I would recommend the pint or quart size if you use a lot of paint, but if you use it more as a tint like I've been using it lately, I'd recommend the 4 oz jars. Prices range from $3.25 for an inexpensive 4 oz color up to $546.00 for a 5 gallon pain of Cobalt Blue. (Cobalt Blue is $9.25 for a 4 oz jar). These are great prices! Take a look at tube paint at any art supply store and you'll see what I mean. I've been doing business with Nova Color since the early 80s and have never had a problem. In fact, when Stan and I made the west coast trip that I was discussing in my post below, we visited their warehouse facility in Culver City, CA to load up on a bunch of paint (the very same day as the moronic border guard incident, ironically). You can also request a catalog from Nova Color and they will mail you one with actual paint samples.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:54 AM || link it email me

Added a new feature under the archives section..."PreBlog" archives which consist of my pre-blogger journal that I kept during the last century.

*******

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" --Johnny Rotten

*******

Watched "The Hurricaine" last night. It was a very good movie...Stan thought it was sad...I didn't. It left me feeling very pissed off, however. How can you give someone back 20 years? Do you ever have an episode in your life and wonder, "hey, it wasn't supposed to turn out like this!" You do everything right, and then someone with their own agenda still manages to twist it to their liking? Yes, I'm talking about the movie, yes, I'm talking about the current presidential situation, yes, I'm talking about the times Stan and I have been ****ed over by some dip**** art professor with their agenda, yes, I'm talking about the times I've been "stopped" by "authorities" for not doing a goddamn thing. Not a goddamn thing, just minding my own business. Or Stan getting stopped by that dumbass cop (for the record, I have nothing against cops...just the dumb ones) for making a LEGAL U-Turn that just happened to be on the same weekend that they held "Weedstock?" (Although I've never been there, Weedstock is a giant pro-marijuana festival held in a small town near Madison every spring) You've heard of "Driving While Black." There are other categories too..."Driving While Poor" (like if your car has rust) and "Driving While Long-Haired." The cop had nothing on us. Stan made a legal U-Turn. Cop was looking for pot-smokers...assumed we were pot-smokers, which we weren't. We weren't in town for the pot festival, we were in town for an art exhibit! Stan was prepared to fight the ticket, and sent it in with his written statement that he was contesting it, and then the cop dropped it. What a dumbass...he knew he was the one in the wrong from the beginning. Then there was the time down in San Ysidro (sp?) trying to get back into the States after a small look around the border area of Tijuana and deciding it wasn't worth our time going further into Mexico as we had to get going on our trip, and we couldn't get back in the States without this dumbass border guard retaining us and nearly requesting a strip search! For absolutely nothing. I told the guard that while he was retaining us innocents, that there were a bunch of people getting through that WERE bringing in drugs, and I told him that he doesn't even know what a criminal looks like because if he did he wouldn't be holding us. He asks me what a criminal looks like, and excuse me while I be prejudiced here, but I started pointing to all these frat boy types with pastel plaid shorts (remember pastel plaid in the 80s?). I remember stories in college where I'd overhear coversations from *that type* [protected, rich, spoiled, white, smug, smarmy, kinda dim, country club frat boys...hmmmm....sound like anyone in the news lately?] and they'd be bragging up a storm of how they snuck drugs in over the border, so I told the border guard that he didn't have a good judge of character. I was absolutely ****ing with his mind, like the way Charles Manson did with the Geraldo Rivera interviews. They let us go, and I was absolutely seething...crying, yelling, shouting obscenities at them, I was LIVID. And these were just very minor violations against our personal freedoms. I can't imagine how I would handle imprisonment for a crime I didn't commit. Somehow I don't think I could do it with the grace that was shown in "The Hurricaine." I think I would become an absolute raving lunatic.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:16 AM || link it email me

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Ehhhh...looks like Stan's going as First Mother Barbara Bush next Halloween. I think I'll go as Katherine Harris. Of course this is premature...we my change our minds in 10 months. Hmmm...the last time I wore a SCARY costume was when I went as a witch in 4th grade...
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:03 PM || link it email me

Watched the movie "Gladiator" last night. It was my mom's most recent favorite movie, which is usually a red flag for me not to see something, but considering the subject matter looked interesting, we rented it anyway. It was a really good movie...very violent...lots of blood. It's odd how that doesn't disturb my mom, but sex and language does. Me...I can tolerate anything. It was rather sad at the end...made me cry. It's amazing how good I am at recognizing actors...recognized Richard Harris and the late Oliver Reed beneath all the white hair and whiskers. Stan didn't. I somehow have this pop-cultural acuity that I'm not necessarily proud of. Stan definitely lacks in that sensibility. He's better with the historical aspect of culture...I had to ask him a lot of questions about the movie historically. I was absent those days in school, I guess. I was always bad with any school subject that involved a lot of reading like history, social studies, science. I think it's because my mind is always constantly active and thinking about other things, so my reading comprehension is just not focussed if it is not a subject I'm interested in. Whereas if it is something that's not studied but just floating around in the atmosphere, like pop culture, my mind just assimilates it without having to learn it, and because I'm a very visually-oriented person, good at recognizing familiar faces like actors. I'm also bad with reading "how-to" manuals and tutorials, but much better with just diving in to figure out how something works.

It's like I can focus on something on a micro-level, but not a macro level. I'm good with the elements that compose something, like spelling, grammar, math (yes, the UnGeekGirl was a low-math whiz, but I never took anything beyond High School Geometry and College Business Math for Humanities Majors Expecting to Make $17,000 or Less a Year), but not very good with putting those elements together in perspective, like reading or advanced and applied math. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm one of those idiot savants or something.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:14 AM || link it email me

I can't believe I JUST NOW figured out how to do permanent links in Blogger. (I mean, I can link to other people, no prob...it's just that their links to MY posts didn't work until I fixed it just now.

No, Cherise, *I* am the world's most UnGeeky person, evidence the above statement.

You know what's weird, Joe, is that before I settled on "Eyeblog" for this blog, I was considering that name too, except I would've spelled it like my name...Ann-athema. That would've been too strange if there were three of them...er, three a-them-a.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:35 AM || link it email me

Tuesday, December 12, 2000

Last night I was searching for Boston Terrier sites on the web (for Plato's blog) and was just so touched by all the little Boston pictures I found. It's amazing how much all Bostons sound so much like Plato with their stories of what they like to do and how they act. It's always so sad when I find a site with an animal that has passed on. I start to cry, really! I went through my cat Vladimir passing two years ago...I've never endured a dog passing yet. I have no idea how I will deal with it when it happens.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:29 AM || link it email me

I am stiff today...too much bending over my painting yesterday. I don't exactly have an ideal studio set-up...never have. Room too small for a table, so I have to support my painting on buckets. When I have a show, people always say, "You do such large paintings [for a small woman]...you must have a huge studio." Uh...no...it's about 8x10. I think if we were to do it over again, we would've put the living area upstairs, and make the downstairs bedroom and living room into one huge studio. Oh, well. Too late to change it now. Already bought a headboard for the bed many years ago that we found out couldn't fit up the stairs, so we're stuck with the downstairs bedroom. It'll be beautiful beyond words when it's done. It's good to work on non-digital art again though...I haven't done it for a while, like since my bad houseguest experience in September. Gonna paint that houseguest right out of my life. BTW...the picture above is not the bad houseguest. It's Tim (with Stan and dogs). I don't have any bad houseguest pictures, thankfully. Just think of Jack Nicholson at his most psychotic, and you're there.

Can't remember my dreams too well. I recall I was trying to explain my views on the Florida Fiasco to my dad and how it should be handled, but he kept interrupting me (even though I told him not to interrupt me until I was finished talking) so I never got to tell him. Typical. Oh geez...I recall something...don't you just hate when you dream about rock stars and they don't look like themselves? What? You don't dream about rock stars? Why not? What's wrong with you, man? Anyway, I had Roger Daltrey in my dream. He was on stage giving a motivational speech. No Cockney accent. Didn't look a bit like Roger. Muscular, yes, but in a bad way. Looked like Popeye or something. Stupid dream.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:15 AM || link it email me

Monday, December 11, 2000

I painted today. I just love the way wet paint looks. Hate the way it smells.

This is sicko, but I have this Key Lime lip balm that is so delicious that I've actually scraped it off with my teeth to eat it. It's yummy beyond words. You know, they just don't make enough lime-flavoured candy. Remember a long time ago when Tootsie Pops used to come in lemon and lime flavors? Now they only have chocolate, grape, orange and "red". (I always thought strawberry, cherry and raspberry-flavored hard candy all tasted alike) I sure miss those Lime Tootsie Pops. Damn, I'm hungry. OK, don't tell me you NEVER ate a little scrape of delicious lip balm. You KNOW you did. It's like picking your nose. Everyone does it...just not in public.

I'm so worried about Stan getting home safely tonight. I just hate the local evening news..they make everything sound so damn Norman Rockwell: "Lots of businesses let people go home early and most folks are just staying home and keeping warm." Then they interview a pizza delivery guy, like "wow, some people actually have to work in this weather!" Poor pizza guy...I would've told the news team where to stuff it. He actually was very friendly to them...I wouldn't have been so nice. It's cruel to order pizza in this weather. I think we did it once, and we used Dominoes just because when I had my big smash up accident back in 1984 I was in a chain reaction pile-up and some pizza delivery guy for Dominoes (with pins in his back...can you believe it? He's working as a delivery driver and he has pins in his back!) wanted to sue me (not my automobile insurance company, mind you...ME!) because I caused the crash. Excuse me, I was in the epicenter of the crash (I was driving a teeny Honda station wagon and skidded on 32° ice and hit a Beemer, but I in turn was hit by a humungous Buick, who was tailing me too close, causing a chain reaction). I got up out of there and walked away, whiplash, gashed nose and all. Didn't even go to the doctors (mind you, I didn't have health insurance, so I sort of couldn't). But this pansy several cars down is complaining? Baby got hurt back! And the Beemer driver wasn't hurt at all, neither was the car in front of her. Something smells fishy and it ain't the pepperonis on that pizza. Yet, I digress. It's cruel to order pizza in this weather. And I'll never do it again, even to Dominoes, even though I think the company is no good.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 6:10 PM || link it email me

Warning: Extreme Curmudgeon Rant ahead. If you are easily offended by views that will most likely not jive with yours, I caution you NOT to read this and to quickly find another link on this site to visit. Keep in mind these are my own opinions, and in the spirit of blogging and the first amendment, I have the right to speak freely on the topic of my choosing on my own website. There is no profanity used in the following post, however you may feel like uttering some after reading. Please refrain from emailing your dissenting opinion...I am well aware that it exists, hence the following rant.

I took some stupid online test at Girl Geeks to determine my geekiness and I scored a 30. (30 out of what? I don't know. I think if the people behind it were thorough geeks, they would've provided a denominator so that one could calculate some sort of geek ratio, no? I mean let's be real.) Ironically, their test gave a javascript error after I hit the "submit" button. Heh heh. I think the only reason I scored any points was just due to the fact that you had to pick *some* answer, and there was a 1 in 4 chance I'd be right. If it was an essay test rather than multiple choice, I would've scored a zero for sure. Anyway, that makes me a "Geek in Training." Look honey, I've been around the block and around the labour force and through college enough that I'm through with the "training" period, OK? I'm a fully functioning pro, however, it's just not in the geek realm, and you know what? It's not going to be. So don't tell me I need to hang out online more and hang out with more geeks...I'm PROUD to be more than a few bytes short of a meg, OK? I'm sick of geek this and geek that. Everything's geek geek geek....bah...it's insidious like yuppies in the 80s. And you know what? It's all the same. The new geeks are the yuppies...no difference. It's all about status and money and cushy jobs. A true geek would get into high tech and coding and programming regardless of any promise of dollar signs, not because of it, which seems like the reason so many people are being pushed toward high tech. Revenge of the nerds? I doubt it...there's always only been a small percentage of nerdly or geeky types in the population...no reason that they are suddenly taking over in droves. It's "meet the new boss same as the old boss." It's all about money, not love of the profession or pursuing it as an art. And there's definitely no art to it. Art is something you rip off the internet and slap on your own website with no acknowledgement to the original artist...or it's something you get out of a can-o-clip art, making YOU look lke YOU are really creative and artistic, but it's just the clip art talking, honey.

Bah. I'm curmudgeoning out.

I'm hungry, there's no food in the house, and there's a blizzard. I think I'll just go hibernate.

Heh. I took another version of the test that actually allowed me to opt out of certain questions with "none of the above" type answers, and I only scored a 10....a perfect 10 of ungeekiness which I guess means I'm a "Geek Wannabe" according to their scoring. What about a "Geek DonWannabe?"

What bothers me about the whole geek thing is that it's taking over so that if you're not into that, or if your area of expertise is not with high tech, you're supposed to be made to feel like a luddite or a non-human or a retard, when in actuality, you can be very smart and witty and politically aware or well-read, or you can be a good person who is kind and helps others, but you're just not into the high tech aspect. What's wrong with that? I hate that ad that has the guy who's constantly being paged over various intercoms, making fun of him because he doesn't have a cell phone. Oh, but heaven forbid *I* make fun of someone because they have posters from K-Mart on their walls instead of real artist-created original art. Oh, no, that would be very politically incorrect. But it's totally within the realm of publicly accepted and sanctioned ridicule to make fun of me because I don't have a cell phone or call waiting or caller ID or high speed internet access or a palm accessory or a microwave or a car with an airbag or Onstar. But you know what? I could adapt to their high tech life. They could never adapt to my low-tech one though. And if they did, it would be in the form of a "retreat" or a "let's get back to nature and rediscover ourselves for a week without electronics" Disney Witch Woo Woo mid-life crisis getaway.

There's definitely a double standard. It's OK to make fun of those without technology (oh, unless they're in the third world, in which case we should feel sorry for them and try to get technology implemented in their country so they'll be just like the wonderfully empowered people in "civilized" cultures [I'm being sarcastic here]) but don't let the technology have-nots make fun of the technology HAVES because THEY have POWER. THEY'RE plugged IN. TECHNOLOGY is POWER.

Bah. Poor Unabomber. He was my favorite FBI's most wanted. Too bad he killed people to make his point. Too bad he didn't just blow up an internet backbone cable or something....but I guess those things didn't exist as much back then when he was doing a lot of his bombing as they exist now. Of course I don't condone destruction of objects either, but the guy had good ideas...just went about expressing his distaste for technology in a bad way. Should've had a weblog instead.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 3:50 PM || link it email me

Poo. Liquitex stopped making structural acrylic paint a couple years ago. I'm running out. It was integral in the style I was taking. Now what? Now they have something called "high viscosity paint" or somesuch. It's not the same, though. It doesn't have that rubbery quality that I liked so much.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:40 AM || link it email me

Now why can't all dreams be as fun and benign as this one? Stan and I were in a "dog mall" that was full of little dogs, mostly pugs. We were going to get another dog, not that something had happened to our other two...we just wanted another dog. The mall was round...you could walk around in a circle and come back to where you started...sort of like "The Square" in Fort Collins, CO (did the Foothills Fashion mall become circular eventually? I thought it did last time I was there in....1994 or something. I hate malls, however they are a recurring theme in my dreams) The stores were just full of dogs...no clothes or gift crap...just dogs. It was cool. Most of the pugs were older, however, and we wanted a young dog like 8 or 10 weeks, but were having a hard time finding one that young. We found one young one, but it didn't have a mask! Imagine a fawn pug without a mask! It was rather cute, actually. Then I was walking around the mall and found a partly empty store that had a few Chinese Cresteds (the hairless type...the kind I WANT). There were detailed care instructions that came with them, and I remember one of the instructions read, "If you live in Wisconsin and absolutely MUST have a Chinese Crested, please get one before January 1 before it becomes really cold. And you must make them wear jackets in the winter."

We're supposed to have a winter storm. It's already quite bad outside. Flights are being cancelled in Chicago...I don't see kids out on the street, so I bet they already cancelled school. I just hope so bad that Stan will be able to make it back from work safely today. Once this happened a couple years ago and he had to stay at work because the roads were too bad. Fortunately, the place has accommodations...it's not like he had to sleep on a floor or something. The place is supposed to be haunted though...dead souls of the mentally ill who are burried in mass graves on the institution's grounds from the 19th century. Winter driving freaks me out too horribly...probably because of the accident I had 16 years ago in slick snowy weather. Doesn't help matters much when you only have old cars to drive too.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:00 AM || link it email me

Sunday, December 10, 2000

Woo hoo...I just noticed that I finally got listed at Blogger. This is very coincidental because just last night I was noticing that blogs that were created after mine were listed, and mine still wasn't. Did someone read my mind or something, or did *I* tap into some sort of cosmic thing where I start noticing my blog's not listed *before* it is just about to be listed? It's also ironic it just got listed after I created Plato's blog. Hmmm.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:21 PM || link it email me

I can't remember much of my dream last night except that I was looking at a bunch of old vinyl Beatle records...like an album of pictures and records, and it seemed to be missing a bunch of stuff. Whatever...I know it doesn't make much sense. Can't explain it too well.

Hey...new feature! Don't know whether this comes from my need to design creative pages or my need to pamper my pooch in an ironic way, but here it is: Dawg Blawg.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:13 AM || link it email me