I knew it all along. Now you do, too.

The Well Bred You scored 20% Religious Right!

Congratulations, you are not a member of the Religious Right. Our sophisticated socring mechanism indicates you are a vestigial member of one of the older, more mainlined, Protestant denominations. It is quite likely you are a very fashionable dresser and were well aware of balsamic vinegar well before the average person. You likely set foot in church for weddings, funerals, christenings and classical music recitals. Beware the impulse to attend on Christmas or Easter.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Religious Right

Link: The Religious Right Test written by sunnytosome on Ok Cupid

Parental Warning Advisory

People--in particular Badger and Joke:

This morning when I was in the shower (where I do what passes for Deep Thinking) I was struck by a horrifying realization. That idiotic popular music meme--the one where you thought the punk and ska offerings were on the slim side? Ska shma. Punk shmunk. It gets far, far worse.

Because what about the mainstream stuff that even people like me have heard of?

For instance. This test includes a category for "80s Alternative." Also "80s Pop." Also "Classic Rock." Yet the list of artists doesn't include Elvis Costello--either with or without the Attractions.

Or Talking Heads.

Or--and this is simply mind-boggling, if you ask me--The Rolling Stones.

I mean, is it possible to include a "classic rock" category--and leave out the Stones?

So now my question is this: Shouldn't it be against the law for someone younger than the Olson Twins, and apparently blessed with the IQ of Barney the Purple Public Television Dinosaur to even express an opinion, let alone publish idiotic tests? I mean, I'm all for freedom of speech, but this dweeb is clearly not fit to unlatch my sandals (even if I do buy them at Tarjay.) Yet this moron sees fit to waste the time of his or her betters by concocting a test that reveals only the appalling levels of ignorance currently wreaking havoc on the internet?

It sort of reminds me of an anecdote I heard--the one where the 13 year old asked her mother what was the name of the group that Paul McCartney was in before Wings. Well, I think that 13 year old has probably grown up now and might even be paying a mortgage like real people, but her evil clone is apparently still running amok.

How much do you bet this idiot's parents have the internet connection screened against incoming spam for "pron," "Viiiiiiagra," and the encroachments of so-called "shy neighbor girls." When what they really need to do is protect us, the innocent public, from the stuff that is being disseminated from their computer to the internet.

I see a red meme and I want it painted black.

It ain't stealing / it's my meme-er

Your Taste in Music:

80's R&B: High Influence

80's Rock: Low Influence

Classic Rock: Low Influence

How's Your Taste in Music?

Joke, it's not stealing, so you don't need to call yourself all shameless 'n' shit, OK? It's just a blogthing, so relax, dude!

BTW I only liked five bands on the list, so results are very, very skewed. Like where is NRBQ? And where, oh where, is XTC?

--P.

In case you thought I was kidding

when I claimed to be Apple's bitch--or you thought I was indulging in a bit of hyperbole when I said that I wanted to suck Apple's toes, my current situation, which is sitting here blogging on an iBook while I listen to music on iTunes and at the same time, re-charge my iPod,* should convince you that I wasn't exaggerating.

And actually, it gets worse. See, we spineless masochistic submissive bitches have NO PRIDE. And we revel in it. WE LOVE IT. So I just downloaded--honestly, I have no idea how many and I DON'T REALLY WANT TO KNOW--an assload of songs from iTunes. At ninety-nine cents a pop.

And were they good songs? Of course not. We spineless toe-sucking boot-lickers have no pride and NO TASTE. I got some Talking Heads and some pretty much blameless stuff like that, but most of the stuff I was spending all my husband's money on was complete cheese. No, not even cheese. More like Velveeta.

So until I grow my spine back, imagine me groveling like a whipped cur, carrying my iPod around in my mouth like a chew toy, and trying to figure out a way to sell plasma or deliver newspapers or something--ANYTHING--to be able to keep making monetary love offerings to Apple.

--iPoppy

What sucks, Part 2

Clicking on links in a pal's blog, reading her pals' blogs, and finding two flagrant misuses of the nominative voice, one right after the other.

People, it's "with ME," not "with I." It's "for ME," not "for I." It's "to ME," not "to I."

And it doesn't matter how many other people are involved. I don't want to click on your blog and read "When we moved in next door, Ariel Sharon came over with a case of Moet and Chandon and a six-pack of Tab for Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and I."

Got that?

Now cut it out right now, or me will implode with rage.

What Sucks, Part 1

And now, the first in a series of brief--almost haiku-like--ruminations on things that don't actually piss me off all that much, but which definitely harsh my mellow:

1. People who have gotten rid of the "next blog" thingie at the top of their Blogger blog pages.

Here's a newsflash: just because I'm browsing randomly through blog after blog doesn't mean that I necessarily want to keep reading yours. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that I want to take a quick peek and move on. I mean, yes, I'm wasting time, but there's quality time wasting, and then there's reading about Joao's and Fatima's baby shower. In Portuguese. While cheesey music plays at me. So get over yourself.

I'm coming out

I just realized something important about myself. And this is a major, major insight, and not just more of my whimsical blithering. No, this is seriously big news. So I'll make like Britney and tell the internet first:

I'm Apple's bitch.

I've been using Macs since 1985 or so, starting with a 512K. I'm on my seventh, the most recent model being a total lemon. Total, because since August, 2003, I have had to send it back to Apple to be repaired three times. On top of that, there have been various phone calls and smallish trips to the local Apple stores and such. What with all this down time, I'm lucky I'm not actually trying to earn a living with the fucking thing.

I'm also on my second iPod. The first, the original click wheel model which had a big five, count-em, five gigs of storage (for those of you who are keeping score, the latest model has 60 gigs) finally pretty much died. Apparently the rechargeable battery had been recharged too many times and--in a way eerily reminiscent of my mother when I was say, 13 years old--it had decided that it had. had. it. And considering that this iPod was so old I practically could have used it to store 8-track music files if not 78 rpm records of Caruso's greatest hits, maybe that's OK.

So I got a new iPod. I got the iPod mini, the turquoise colored one, because I was feeling frisky. I don't know--I kind of wanted to thumb my nose at all the people who would assume I'd get the pink one.

Well, I didn't feel frisky for long.

I brought my new lil cute iPod home and charged it, then set it up with my laptop to download the songs in iTunes. And it didn't work. The software would load about 40 songs and then crash. This happened over and over again. I fiddled with it for hours and never got it to work properly.

So I brought the iPod mini to the Apple store. I also brought my laptop, in case they needed a demonstration of how much their software sucked. And this is when things started to look up. Not only did they fix my problem, but when the Apple guy noticed that my laptop's wireless reception alternated between sucky and nonexistent, he investigated and discovered that the wire running between my Airport card and the rest of the computer appeared to have shorted out. So the laptop went back to Apple. That was Monday.

On Friday the laptop got back.

Well, life is beautiful. My laptop works. My iPod mini works. I can do wireless internet easily and reliably for the first time in months. As proof, I am currently in my living room sitting in a comfy chair, blissfully--and wirelessly--posting to the internet.

I'm so grateful to Apple that I could slither moaning to the floor and writhe around in ecstacy. Sally Field's Oscar speech has nothing on it--this is straight out of Story of O. How I am loving the sweet surcease of my laptop torment. I could suck Apple's toes. Oooh, Apple--I'll bottom if you'll only laptop me. Oh, Apple, I am so lowly and thou art so great. Please sell me another overpriced flakey piece of computer hardware so that I might feel thy sharp lash and then the rush of orgasmic happiness when thou smilest on me and my computer hardware actually works the way it's supposed to.

Speaking of which, I badly want to browse--wirelessly, of course--over to the Apple website and buy myself a sexy piece of hardware.

So now I'm trying to decide whether I should be wasting my money on Apple's Extended Warranty. Because maybe I should be spending it on marriage counseling, instead.

p.s. Apple--just one more thing. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

OK, call me unimaginative.

I'm just waiting for the kids to go to sleep. Last I checked, i.e., last time my earphones were off, they were running around the backyard screaming like a remake of Lord of the Flies.

So I'm checking out people's blogs--can you blame me?

And I found this:

You May Be a Bit Schizotypal ...

A bit odd and socially isolated. You couldn't care less of what others think. And some of your beliefs are a little weird. Like that time you thought you were Jesus.

What Personality Disorder Are You?

So I guess there's ANOTHER television show for me to catch up on. I mean, now that it's off the air and all, it seems only right.

--P

If you thought I craved bad carbs before now ...

... my state in the matter of a few hours should be off the charts. On top of a benefit I'm chairing (which is next Thursday, and which explains the paucity of blog updates around heah) I have the usual housewife shite, financial doo doo--a whole slew of crap into which I shan't bore you by going.

On top of that, my son is turning 10 tomorrow, and tonight we're hosting a sleep-over birthday party for six ten-year-old boys.

Yes, you read that right. Six. 10. Year. Old. Boys. Who are going to be eating pizza, playing GameBoy, running around the back yard, making S'mores in my fireplace or, if the weather holds, outside on the grill, and then going to sleep (shyeah, right!). Next morning I treat the little bastids to pancakes, bacon, and sausages and then I kick them right the hell out, fill the wading pool with ice cold martinis, and begin to do laps in it.

So if I am discovered in a few hours, while ostensibly baking and frosting a birthday cake, actually eating fistfuls of frosting right out of the bowl, you now know why.

A Theory of Population Density

Right away, I'm guessing you're thinking I'm about to say something snarky about the relative denseness of the local population. Well, fooled you! Because I'm not.

No, today's so-called thought is this: Chicago is the greatest city in the world. (OK, so maybe I haven't been to a lot of cities--Tokyo, Beijing, Vienna, and Lincoln, Nebraska come immediately to mind--so maybe I don't have much of a basis of comparison. But so what--this is my blog, and if you think you can do better, then please, feel free to start a blog on the world's greatest cities. I promise not to take it personally.)

So let's just say that we accept the proposition that Chicago is the greatest city in the world. Why don't more people live here?

Obviously, it's the weather.

Like this morning. That Stud Muffin I Married, who is currently in Pittsburgh, tells me that it's spring there. The trees are blooming, the bird is on the wing, it's warm--the whole bit. Well, it's kind of sort of spring here, too. There is no snow or ice to be seen; daffodils, dogwoods, and forsythia are blooming; robins leap about guzzling down worms. Spring, right? Except that when my kids left for school, they were wearing parkas and mittens. In fact, if I remember correctly, they wore their parkas to school last year on the last day of school. Which is in June.

So I figured it out. Chicago is the greatest city in the world, but IF the whole world knew it, THEN they would all move here. And if that happened, the mass of people would become so great that the world probably tilt, fall off its axis, and go whistling through space ... and we don't want that, now, do we?

Well, neither does the divine Providence who decreed, apparently, that the greatest city in the world should be built upon a flat expanse of prairie on the shores of a lake that allows the Canadian cold front free and unlimited access--and doesn't even ask to see its I.D. Which is so not fair, because when I go to Canada, I have to show an I.D. and say how long I'm planning to stay.

I mean, isn't this why the Republicans opposed NAFTA?

So I guess the down side of all this is this whole Canadian wetback scenario, where the cold front decides to cross the Canadian/U.S. border and stay however long it pleases. Who knows how long it will take before local authorities wake up to the situation and increase border patrols between here and Ontario.

And the upside? Well, at least I don't have to worry about the earth wrenching itself free from its orbit any time soon.

Not to mention how hard they must be to parallel park

When I drive to Florida I see a lot of things I don't see in Chicago. Too many to list, so I'll just talk about one of them, OK? Recreational Vehicles, otherwise known as RVs.

You see a ton of these bad boys on the highway--enough to wonder whether there are fads in RV design, the way there are with automobiles and trucks and such. I mean, it stands to reason, right? Except that I wouldn't be able to tell a brand-spanking new RV from one that was 25 years old, unless the old one was all rusted out.

Yes, the sight of these behemoths fills the mind with many questions. Like: how many miles to the gallon can they possibly get? I'm betting seven or less. And: when someone else is driving the RV, can you just sit around normally inside it, or does it get really bumpy and unsafe, so you have to wear seat belts? And: do they have bathrooms? But the big question is: Where the hell do you keep them when you're not driving them?

Because I've heard there are people who camp out in Wal*Mart parking lots, but these people are already on the road. What I want to know is where do you keep them when you're at home? I mean, I can barely fit a minivan down my driveway. Where the hell would I put an RV?

Does everyone who has an RV live on a farm or something? No, wait a minute--that doesn't make sense, either. Farmers never get to go anywhere. They have to stay on the farm so they can milk the cows and chickens and stuff.

So basically, who buys these things? No one I know. So I'll probably never find the answer to any of these burning questions.

Still--and I'm sorry to report this, but it's the truth--pondering these and other road-trip inspired mysteries (which is better--Waffle House or Huddle House?) really makes me feel alive.

I, dingbat.

I'd ✍ something sensible …

Unlike my usual blather, that is …

Except I'm feeling like such a ☛dingbat☚ at the moment.

&mdash℗

Special -ed

I'm absolutely starving and have to go cook dinner, but I thought I'd meander on for a little bit about this thing I noticed several times on my way to and from Florida.

You see, there are quite a [SEE ROCK CITY] number of billboards [SEE ROCK CITY] to be seen on a drive [SEE ROCK CITY] of that length, so I thought I'd try to point [SEE ROCK CITY] out a little solecism that is frankly [SEE ROCK CITY] driving me crazy.

It's this. When you use a compound like "iced tea" or "old-fashioned," you don't leave off the final "ed." It's not "ice tea" or "old fashion." Please do not paint a phrase like "Enjoy our old fashion country cooking!" in red letters three feet high on a yellow background and expect me, the erstwhile English major and queen of punctuation (in case you hadn't noticed) to continue driving as if nothing had happened.

You really do not want me driving 80 miles an hour down your road in the mental state produced by such flagrant grammatical errors. I can not answer for my behavior when I see such vivid proof that the barbarians finally really are at the gate.

Stuckey's--this means YOU.

Super Size Us: The Prelude

So we just got back from Walt Disney World. This involved driving a rented minivan from Florida to Illinois. I must say, I'm feeling pretty smug right now. This is not something designed for pussies to do, no sir. I feel all macho 'n' shit.

On first day, we drove through appalling traffic (the entire state of Georgia is pretty much one big parking lot--also it poured rain a lot of the time) to Chattanooga, Tennessee. During the second day, we made it all the way back to the Frozen Nawth, a/k/a Chicago. Home of Jay's Potato Chips and not a Goo Goo Cluster or sack of White Lily flour to be found.

Not surprisingly, I spent a lot of time driving (when I wasn't watching DVDs with my kids or playing Tetris on my huzbin's Palm or camped out in the way-back seat reading P.G. Wodehouse short stories). Driving brings out my contemplative side (when it isn't turning me livid with road rage.) Not surprisingly, during two days of driving, I thought many deep, meaningful thoughts. Which I will be happy to share eventually.

But right now I have to get used to Central Standard Time before it changes to Central Daylight Savings or whatever they call it. All I know is that I expect to be suffering from time-change whiplash any second now. Plus I truly need to finish drinking this glass of wine so that I can bask in the sensation of knowing that if I want a refill, there's a bunch more of it downstairs in the refrigerator of my very own kitchen. It's not all that great, so I probably won't bother to get any, but just knowing it's there gives me a warm glow.

Home ... good.