I don’t care if douchebaggery isn’t a word.  I needed a good descriptor for what is to follow.

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I got a disturbing round of texts yesterday about the use of a friend’s photos in their ex’s new online dating profile.  Really?  Specifically about a picture taken with their pet.  Seriously,  pictures with your ex’s animal(s) do not score you points in the sensitivity arena.  How do you handle the questions about said animal in chats or on the first date?  Do you make up a story about how fluffy was hit by a car and it has been a hard few years, but now you can finally deal with the loss?  Inquiring minds want to know.

A long time ago, the staff put together a few lists of profile do’s and don’ts (here, and here).  As always, I say skip using your past to advertize your present self.  How hard is it to get a friend to take a few pictures?  If you don’t have friends, try a fucking camera with a tripod and timer.  My cheap ass netbook does a good job of taking profile pictures.

</soapbox>

People say that home is where the heart is.  Sadly I am feeling rather vacant in that area.  Home has been my car and an assortment of places I have keys for (BTW if I haven’t said it enough, thank you for giving me keys to your houses).  I am becoming a product of this sterile environment that I return to everyday after work.

For the last 4 months I have been living in a store display.  Apparently to sell a house, the house has to be lived in, yet void of life.  I have to say that living in a store display is taking it’s toll.  Personal items are stashed away in drawers and boxes.  My sewing gear is mostly packed away because I don’t want people touching it (Note to visitors: It is not appropriate to touch a seller’s personal belongings, nor should you use their bathrooms).  Books and DVDs are in the closet to avoid clouding anyone’s judgement on the purchase of my home.   I can’t even cook here.  People looking at houses do not have the same appreciation for the smell of butter and garlic that I do.  The longer the house is on the market the less it feels like home.

Today I went to work on the verge of a meltdown (If you know me, you know I don’t have breakdowns often).  I told my boss that I was going to stay in my office and put myself in time out. Why?  I knew it was a bad day when I dropped the f-bomb within 5 minutes of entering the building.  I was pissed. I busted ass and spent a rather large sum of money to have the interior of the house painted. Why?  To encourage a hasty sale of my home.  Sadly, the open house on Sunday drew in a single buyer and they weren’t interested.

Normally, I don’t bring personal into the business place but after 4 months of living in a store display I can’t keep it together.  I thought after 2 days of virtually nothing but chick flicks I had cried enough tears to feel too exhausted to be angry.  Instead I spent the day pissed off and listening to punk rock.

After work I decided that it was in my best interest to go to one of my temporary homes (the one with the streaming videos on demand) and chill out.  I watched a film (I think it should be categorized as a film) about a dysfunctional family, “Rachel getting married.”  I was crossing my fingers that it would numb the anger.  Otherwise I was going home and breaking dishes in the back yard. It wasn’t until now that I fully understood what was meant by this quote from High Fidelity. :”… I want to feel something else than this. It either that, or I go home and stick my hand in the fire.”

Yes, it’s come to that.  I told my mom that this house thing is making me crazy.  If I hadn’t just blown a ton of money on painting the house I would have a month and a half of rent in the apartment I should have been living in by now.

So what’s next?  No fucking clue.  I cannot afford rent and a mortgage. I appreciate the offers but I do not want temporary housing.   I do not want to unpack until I am in a new place.

Last night I danced it out at the Highball to the best of  2000 (or so they say).  I hate to think that Rhianna, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga were all that this decade brought forth. [Disclaimer, I left a little after 2am.  I strongly doubt they were able to bang out the missing hits before they closed the place down for the night. But who knows?  I could be wrong.] there was no cover so I shouldn’t complain.

We drank, we danced, yet we couldn’t help wondering… What about the the bounty that the vocoder brought us?  T-Pain… Little Wayne?  What about Outcast?  Hey Ya anyone? What about the Hey Ya of 2006? Gnarles Barkley’s Crazy.  As much as I hate to say it, where were the Black Eyed Peas and Fergie? 2000s were filled with some booty shakin (and milkshakin‘) music for the most part.

It wasn’t until the late aughties that disco and new wave made their triumphant return (Gaga, MGMT, etc…)  But where was Cut Copy? Bloc Party? Passion Pit? Pheonix? Ratatat? Ghostland? MSTRKRFT? NASA? All of the hipster dance anthems of the aughties.

I would like to think that the music deficit was based on the availability of the songs on kareoke and video and not on a lack of knowledge about 2000s club music.  What say you Action Pack?

Twitter Fail Whale

So M, 10HDG, and I hit the Houston Free Press Summer FAIL! Fest this weekend. Houston Free Press made an attempt at making their own Fun^3 Fest.  Granted, one could say it was a good first attempt at an indie music festival in Houston.  But I think that these guys overextended themselves with a two day, two stage festival full of music with no outside food or beverages. The whole weekend I was haunted by this image.  The sign of disappointment.

The first failure was getting into the festival. Our tickets were at will call.  We stood in the will call line, then some festival staff walked by the line and said that anyone with a printed confirmation or a phone with confirmation on it could walk up to the gate.  How was this a Fail! moment?  Well, we got to the gate in no time but we didn’t receive our VIP wristband or $20 in food/drink tickets.  We walked around in the sweltering heat trying to find someone who knew how to remedy the situation.  After walking to the other end of the park I managed to find someone to get us VIP wristbands but they didnt’ have food vouchers.  M and 10HDG didn’t have cash and apparently the festival only worked in shiny beads and trinkets food/drink tickets  that had to be purchased with cash.  At this point we were hot, tired and  ready to leave.  Emailling paypal to try and get our money back was sounding like a good idea.  We went back to where we entered the park and finally got someone of authority (they had a walkie talkie) to get us the tickets.  We also found an ATM. (more…)

I nearly threw up in my mouth today as I was catching up on the enviro-clips at work today.

From the Statesman

The State Board of Education on Friday adopted standards on the teaching of global warming that appear to both question its existence and prod students to explore its implications.

Language that instructed students to “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming,” which had been offered as an amendment and was adopted unanimously in an initial vote Thursday, led to outrage among environmental groups.

I laughed when Tina Fey gave her Palin impersonation…  “It’s just god huggin’ us closer.”

Then I was informed that we weren’t allowed to speak of Global Warming at the office.  Umm, I am a scientist.  WTF? Apparently in the land of Bible Beaters and Gov. Goodhair, the only GW out there is the one that just left office.

But your not.

I’ve been going through the band list for sxsw and it’s taking way too fucking long.  Why you ask?  Because bands did a bad job of promoting themselves.  I am currently using the SXSW music page, last.fm and myspace to listen to the bands.  Since M and I use the 3 song rule to determine whether or not we will go to a show, the sxsw website isn’t so helpful with their streaming media option.  That one song may or may not be representative of the bands set list.

Bands,think about what info you  display on the sxsw website.  Don’t give out your own website if it is going to take me more than 2 clicks to listen to your music.  My biggest dissappointment is when I click a few times only to get a link to your myspace page.  Just put the link to the myspace page on the sxsw site.

Another good option for bands is to use sonicbids and upload your songs to their streaming device.  That way I can listen to the songs while I read your bio.

Last.fm has proved useful for the bands that actually put their music on there.  Its not cool when you click to a band’s page and find that you can only listen to bands like them, not their actual music.  I like using last.fm over myspace because the pages are tagged with similar artists, reviews, bios and often a list of upcoming gigs so I can get a feel for who they tour with.

Back to the myspace pages.  Think about what you put on there. Some band sites look like web 2.0 puked all over them.  If you have 80k widgets on your page, 1) it slows down page loading and 2) many bands have forgotten to disable the autoplay feature (meaning the user needs to turn the apps off or be bombarded with every tune the band put up on the site).

Camel - from wikipedia

I searched through the old posts and apparently this hasn’t been documented.

So here is the definition

sex cam·el (sks kml)
noun A person, who can go for long periods without sexual intercourse in the same manner that a camel can go for long periods without water. They have found a way to store it up so they don’t need it as often.

In the case of myself and many of my girlfriends, it’s the dude that stops putting out.  In the beginning, there is non-stop sex (hell yeah!). Then all of a sudden you can’t remember the last time you had sex (booo!).  Or it becomes routine (woo hoo, it’s Wednesday night, let’s do it).  What happened? These are not elderly men who have entered the Viagra years.  These are able bodied dudes.  They just won’t put out.

One of my exes admitted to the fact that he was getting himself off nightly.  REALLY?  If given the choice, most guys I know will choose a women over their hand.  Or maybe a combination of the two.   He also admitted that he was trying to ween me off the sex.   He was frightened, he claimed it was like opening up Pandora’s box.  He didn’t think that I would be THAT into it.  First, he managed to get me down to sex on the weekends. Then, it was every two weeks. Then a month or two went by. That’s when I decided to get out.

Feel free to write in with your sex camel stories.  Maybe we can get these animals tagged so they can be identified in the wild.

From wikipedia - Train wreck at Gare Montparnasse, Paris, France, 1895

… you just have to stop and stare for a minute or so.  Like when you see someone wearing something from AA (Seriously, leotards are for mannequins and Jane Fonda only.  Ok, maybe for a workout, NOT for wearing in public.).

Am I evil for scanning the internet?  What if I were looking for things that  may have made me appreciate my life more? [btw, freedom is priceless] I could be childish and say that many other friends admitted doing the same.  If I am not the only one doing it, is it really that bad? [Don't you dare comment, "...if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"... The answer may be yes. I've always had the Thelma and Louise ending at the top of my list for ways to go]

I am not going to admit what information I/we were looking for. Besides, it’s their own fault for leaving that sort of information just lying around for google to find.

I was thinking sex toys but after a discussion with Meg, wedding dresses are the same way.

I wanted something simple and stainless steel (or maybe glass).  Something without a face or woodland creature.  How much does it cost?  Almost $200.  Meanwhile, if you wanted to go the woodland creature with a face route, it could be as low as $20.  WTF.

I remember several friends’ dilemmas when it came to wedding dress shopping. Something with scads of lace and frills, something that looks like the craft store threw up on it (minus the glitter), is super cheap.  For some strange reason simple dresses only come from fancy designers like Vera Wang and will cost you your first born child.

…and while I am on my soapbox,  I will add organic food, natural fiber clothing, light/plumbing fixtures, and sleek/sexy electronics.

"My" cat Louis

So my cat decided to roam off last May (5/20/08 to be exact).  I had a meltdown.  Then the ellusive kitty has been sighted in my yard the past three weekends.  Meg was with me the first time.  She happened to look out the window and saw a cat on the fence.  It looked like Louis.  I opened the door and called him.  He jumped off the fence, looked at me and ran. WTF?    I opened the back door and he darted off.  Every weekend since then he has been around the yard.  We go through the same exact thing.  I open the door, he runs off.

Ok, I get it.  After 10.5 years he has moved on.  I suppose he “belongs” to someone else now. I am happy he is alive but does he really need to continue to haunt my yard like a ghost?  After the first sighting I decided it wasn’t realistic to try and catch him and domesticate him.  I suppose I could get him enrolled in the catch and release program so he can get his shots updated.