The Employment Drought Ends - Temporarily!!!

Yes, an employer has finally been guilted into hiring me! For a few months, at least.

Now, I'm sure that, once y'all have recovered from the shock of such unexpected news, there will be questions. You know, "Who are you working for?" "Do they actually pay you?"  "Do they actually pay you in cash?" and so forth. So I'll try to answer some of those questions now. I've only been employed two days, so there will be updates.

1. Where are you working?

  Seattle.

2. Okay, smartass, for whom are you working?

  This is where things become complicated. I'm sure that everyone has read or heard various theories about the Government (federal, state, county, city, grange hall, etc.) being a hideous conspiracy to oppress the rich. Well... it's true. Whether it's making them pay livable wages and Social Security for domestic help (instead of offering room and board for escapees from Central America) or trying to tax them to pay for the freeways built so they can enjoy their Hummers and BMWs, the Government is all about oppressing the rich.

Some of you are saying, "The President/Governor/Mayor/Grange Hall President is rich! Why would they be interested in oppressing themselves?" Think of professional sports leagues - baseball or football, for example. Notice how there's an American League and a National League? Yes, they're all rich, but still, there are two leagues. Well, it's pretty much the same in government. Two leagues, both rich. So whichever league is winning (or running the government) wants to take at least some money from the league that's losing (or not running the government).

And that's where my job comes in. I'm a foot soldier in CORPS - Coalition to Oppress Rich PeopleS. It is a secret govt. agency, to be sure. I may have told some of you that I work for Roads and Bridges, or Housing for Indigent Mammals - and in a way I do, indirectly. But mostly I'm going to be about this:

If our training materials are to be believed, usually when we get a rich person to this point in our proceedings they'll agree to hire registered aliens or pay an extra $500/yr to repair the bridges they drive over every day.

I know this makes me sound like a class warrior. But I'm not. I'd love to be rich. I just wouldn't try to cheat the poor, that's all. Because we all know the poor control everything.

3. You actually get paid for this?

  Yes. Cash, health & dental, vacation and sick leave, and a bus pass.

4. This really sounds as if it should be a volunteer job...

  They tried that at CORPS and had 50,000 applicants. Too many to weed through. So they made it a real job. There were over 800 applicants for the platoon that was just hired on (of which I am a member).

5. And they really do pay you in cash?

  Some of my readers may wonder why the hell I'm making a big deal out of this. But my friends and former coworkers at Megadynecorp Technologies appreciate my obsession with cash. MDC Technologies paid in bags of expired croutons from the Marie Callender's restaurant up the road (cases of them if you were a unit manager) and belly button lint.

Oh, I almost forgot Binder Clip Day (BCD)! Once a year at MDC T we'd get to fill one pocket with all the binder clips it could hold. I would rent a kangaroo for the day, stick a plastic trash bag in its marsupium, and enjoy a binder clip bonanza! (So now you guys know why I always looked funny and refused to speak on Binder Clip Day.)
 
Other details about the job - 1 hour for lunch, two 15 minute breaks, non-stop snacking opportunities. And there is decent coffee (and a sucky restaurant) within a five-minute walk. And we get chairs at our desks, instead of having to construct our own out of busted-up shipping pallets and staples (thanks for all the splinters, MDC!).

My fellow platoon members all seem quite nice - in fact, they've elected me the most sadistic member of the group - woo hoo! But it's an intelligent group of people - after all, in the Puget Sound area, the rich generally do not advertise by wearing tiaras and floor-length mink coats. We have to be able to tell the shabbily-dressed rich from the shabbily-dressed working class.

I've met a couple of our IT folks - yes, we use the Interwebz to hunt down people - and they  seem really nice, friendly, competent:

One thing I want to mention - I've reported some MegaDyneCorp Technologies policies here in an unflattering light. These policies do not reflect on my friends and former coworkers there, who suffered as I did under the crouton and lint policies!!! I just want to make that clear.  I hold CEO Torquemada Johnson responsible for such policies, him and his Bored of Directors...

Anyway, as stated above I've only been working two days, so there's not much news yet... but I'll keep you updated on all the fun at CORPS!  And hey, you guys at MDC Technologies - save me some croutons, if you can spare them. I kind got used to them!

I'm rich! Rich, I tells ya!

Fresh from my adventures of being an unwitting spammer (can we say "AOL has no defenses against hackers"?), I was happy to see my luck improve with the announcement of a fine, large inheritance:

From: Mr. Thomas Glasgow

Remittance Manager

Barclays Bank Plc.

Phone Number: +44-762-419-0409

Attention: Beneficiary

 

This Is To Officially Inform You That We Have Verified Your Contract Inheritance File Presently On My Desk, And I Found Out That You Have Not Received Your Payment Due To Your Lack Of Co-Operation And Not Fulfilling The Obligations Giving To You In Respect To Your Contract /Inheritance Payment.

Secondly, You Are Hereby Advice To Stop Dealing With Some Non-Officials In The Bank As This Is An Illegal Act And Will Have To Stop If You So Wish To Receive Your Payment Immediately. After The Board Meeting Held At Our Headquarters, We Have Resolved In Finding A Solution To Your Problem, And As You May Know, We Have Arranged Your Payment Through Our Swift Card Payment Centre In Europe, America And Asia Pacific, Which Is Then Instruction Given By Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

This Card Centre Will Send You An Atm Card Which You Will Use To Withdraw Your Money In An Atm Machine In Any Part Of The World, But The Maximum Is (Ј15,000.00) Five Thousand British Pound Per Transaction. So, If You Like To Receive Your Fund This Way, Ј15,000 Gbp For You To Withdraw For A Day And Each Transaction Is Ј5,000gbp Minimum Which You Have To Withdraw Ј15,000 Gbp For One Working Day Also Be Informed That The Total Amount In The Swift Atm Card Is Ј14.6 Million Gbp.

(1) Your Full Name:

(2) Your Address Where You Want the Payment Centre to Send Your Atm Card.:

(3) Phone and Fax Number:

(4) Age and Occupation:

(5) Your Nearest International Air Port in Your City Of Residence:

We Shall Be Expecting To Receive Your Information You Have Stop Any Further Communication With Anybody Or Office. On This Regards, Do Not Hesitate To Contact Me For More Details And Direction, And Also Please Do Update Me With Any New Development.

Thanks for Your Co-Operation.

Best Regards,

Mr. Thomas Glasgow

Remittance Manager

Barclays Bank Plc

Barclays Bank Plc. Registered In England. Barclays Bank Plc Is Authorized And Regulated By The Financial Services Authority (Fsa). Registered No 1026167. Barclays Insurance Services Company Limited Is Authorized And Regulated By The Fsa. Registered No 973765. Registered Office For Both: 1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5hp. "The Woolwich" And "Woolwich" Are Trademarks And Trading Names Of Barclays Bank Plc. Barclays Business Is A Trading Name Of Barclays Bank Plc. Barclays Bank Plc Subscribes To The Lending Code Which Is Monitored And Enforced By The Lending Standards Board And Is Licensed And Regulated By The Office Of Fair Trading For The Provision Of Credit Products To Consumers And Related Services.

See? Good things can happen to all of us. I, for example, am going to send a copy of this along with my resume so they can see I'd produce much better written unsolicited emails than this one. Sooooo many things wrong with this I don't know where to start. But I'm intrigued by the idea that you could get 14,000,000 pounds from ATM machines.

If you have any suggestions on how to spend this munificence, please let me know. I expect to get my card any day now, as soon as I send them my SSN, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and send them the deed to my mother's house... 14 million pounds is nothing to sneeze at, after all!

A Pleasant Discovery

My French is better than Google's translator!

I've been listening to Daniele Balavoine's 1978 hit song, "Le Chanteur".

Interesting how different musical presentation is - I love that he just sticks his hands in his pockets! That bit at the end where he looks like he's undergoing some sort of monstrous transformation? Well, he's saying that he wants to (after achieving great fame) die unhappy but without regrets. (Considering he died in the mid 1980s in a helicopter crash in the deserts of Africa, he probably was unhappy, but in a different way than he meant in the song, I'm sure.)

Anyway, I can pick out some words here and there but wanted a better understanding of the song than my extremely rusty skills could manage. So first I found a good version of the French lyrics (not as easy as one might thing - lots of free lyrics sites out there but they often get lyrics wrong, even in English). 

Here are the first two stanzas (there's a reason you non-French speaking types are getting this):

Je m'présente, je m'appelle Henri
J'voudrais bien réussir ma vie, être aimé
Etre beau gagner de l'argent
Puis surtout être intelligent
Mais pour tout ça il faudrait que j'bosse à plein temps

J'suis chanteur, je chante pour mes copains
J'veux faire des tubes et que ça tourne bien, tourne bien
J'veux écrire une chanson dans le vent
Un air gai, chic et entraînant
Pour faire danser dans les soirées de Monsieur Durand

And here's the Google translation:

I m'présente, my name is Henry  (s/b something like "Let me introduce myself")
J'voudrais do well my life, to be loved (s/b "I want")
Be nice to earn money
Can be especially intelligent
But for all that would have j'bosse full time (s/b work hard, slave away, etc.)

I'm singing, I sing for my friends  (s/b "I'm a singer" - that one is like first month French!)
I Want to tubes and it runs well, runs well  (Idiomatic for "I want to make hit records" - Google gets a pass on that one)
I Want to write a song in the wind
A gay, chic and resulting  (it left out the word 'air', which I think is either a light song or an attitude)
To dance in the evening Mr Durand  (I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be "I will dance at the soirees of M Durand - soiree means 'evening' but is a very common word meaning an 'evening gathering', etc.)

For those who are concerned with the lyrics (that would pretty much be just me), this is pretty ridiculous - this isn't terribly idiomatic French in these two stanzas. The translator should do better than simply plugging in the first dictionary definition it comes to.

And for those who don't give a rat's ass about Europop, let this be a warning about how far to trust Google translator. Even if you use it, make sure you find someone with knowledge of the original language, or who knows what sort of mad scientist activity you'll end up involved in.

Farcebook

News flash (not) - a lot of people are on Farcebook these days, for many hours a day. And from what I can tell it’s mostly designed for office workers and students. I mean, I’m unemployed but if I spent as much time on Farcebook as other folks do, I’d have died of starvation by now.

That’s not intended as criticism of people who spend a lot of time on the site. Actually, I kind of envy them. But I think I might not be envying much. Like my friend’s young daughter who saw the Snuggie ad on TV and envied those people their fun-inspiring blankets. Only to discover, when she finally got her Snuggie, that it wasn’t the blanket that was the agent of fun.

So even though I am on Farcebook, I’m still antisocial and cranky and would rather be looking at Victorian knitting patterns. I guess I need a site for the cranky and antisocial. Snarkbook, perhaps.

What I’m really trying to say about being on Farcebook is that I don’t belong there.

It’s not that I don’t like, or am not interested, in what my friends are doing. But Farcebook replaces meaningful conversations with something else, the equivalent of sound bites, and games instead of actually one-on-one meetups and hanging out. I miss seeing the people I worked with and chatting with them, and making them look at my knitting. Farcebook is no replacement for that.

Perhaps if validation by others was important to me, I wouldn’t notice the shortcomings of such a site. But I’m self-absorbed enough that I don’t care if everyone knows what I’ve read in the NY Times today. I have a few people who get that sort of spam from me all the time - I figure the rest of the world can live without it. So status updates aren’t something I’m driven to do. “Still unemployed” would cover it pretty much every day.

And then there’s the Farcebook activities. I suck at those.

When I first joined all my friends were inviting me to this thing and that - like Super Pets. Since I haven’t fed my pet dragon in something like 9 months to a year, I’m sure he’s now a specimen in the Museum of Natural History.

 What's left of my SuperPet Khan

Or the farming games. I got invited to two of them by people whom I really like. But I simply don’t have what it takes to check on my crops. I tried, dear readers, I really tried. But my poor Farcebook friends who’ve invited me to be their neighbors have an absentee landlord. My farms, last time I visited, looked like the Dust Bowl.

My Farmville plot last year

I fixed them up… but haven’t been back in months, and my turnips were going to need harvesting within three days… I’m sure that once again I’m lording it over plantations of dried crops, starved livestock, and tumbleweeds blowing everywhere.

Trying to save the farm - yet again.

 Getting the hell out of Farmville while we still can.

There are other games that I joined, find the monster egg, etc., and some of the gift things were fun, I thought. But no one seemed interested in getting pestilences from me, and I could find no one to give me 20th Century composers. Wimps - what, are y’all afraid of Xenakis or Takemitsu?

Xenakis & Takemitsu only look scary...

and sound scary...

but they were really nice guys.

Honest.

I do check the site once a day. And realized last week that, since they changed the setups recently, I hadn’t seen my wall in ages. When I finally discovered how to get there, I had several birthday wishes that were ignored. Not because I wasn’t looking for them, or hated the senders. It was because I couldn’t negotiate the damned site.

So I’m going to stay on Farcebook and check it once a day, and continue to suck at being a good citizen, and dream of the day when Snarkbook gets up and running.

{Oh yeah, Twister? I have a Twister account. I’ve participated in two Twister knit-alongs (KALs). Yes, I only joined for the knitting. I had a follower, some young lass, I had no idea who she was. I guess she eventually figured out she didn’t know me either, because she quit following me…}

Aurantium Shawl, KAL #1

(not the one I'm knitting)

Twister KAL #2 - Lithuanian Wristers 

(not the ones I knitted)

"But I was so hungry, I had to eat it."

Russian cannibal who ate his mother given lighter sentence by judge who says 'he was starving, he needed to eat'
 
A cannibal who killed and ate parts of his mother had his sentence reduced by a judge who said 'he needed to eat'.

Sergey Gavrilov secured reduced time in jail after confessing: 'I did not like the meat very much. It was too fatty. But I was so hungry, I had to eat it.'

The 27-year-old was given a lenient prison sentence because the judge said he was starving and needed to eat after spending all his money on vodka and gambling machines.

Happy Tuber Year!

This little goody is sold by the Royal Society for the Abolition of Tuber Blights. A catchy little image, what?

I admit, I've been neglecting y'all. I've been cheating on this blog with my knitting blog, mostly because those folks know to expect old crap - old photos, old movies, old knitting patterns. Y'all want modern stuff, consarn it!

The last part of 2009 can be summed up as "too poor to do anything but stay home and re-write history." My holidays have been a combination of nasty cold and back spasms. My only solace these days is the Charlie Chan dvd set, requiring neither mental acuity nor heavy lifting to watch them.

I promise you, though, if anything interesting happens to me that I haven't made up from sheer boredom, I'll post again. But right now, Charlie is about to nab the killer, so I'll catch you later.

Happy New Year!

I'm A Star!

In truth, I still have to scenes to finish (they are only half done),

and the finale which is completely blank.

I'll write them tomorrow.

I expect they will be abbreviated versions of what will happen in the next draft,

placeholders for the next round of writing.

Then I'm going to take a month off

- from this novel, not the other one -

to start my research.

That's right, I wrote a novel before I did the research.

But I've written over 50,000 words this month.

I rock.

Special thanks to Kathleen, and Anton-R!

Oh, and Weyerhaeuser, for laying me off in the worst

job market ever -

so much time, and so little money equal

fifty thousand words.

Medieval Help Desk (with subtitles!)

Captain Kirk's Compensation issues

A screen shot from Star Trek: TOS.

Capt. Kirk obviously feels his own equipment is inadequate to the task. I wonder what Spock would say? (Suggestions welcome.)

Good Summer Reading (circa 1875)

He's dead, Jim!

I just finished reading the first half of that classic novel, "The Somnambulist and the Detective" by Allan Pinkerton. Yes, the Allan Pinkerton for whom the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was named. Allan moved here from Scotland with his bride, began as a private detective in Chicago in 1849 or 1850, eventually met up with some muck-a-mucks (click the link if you want details; I'm not going to repeat a Wikipedia article), popularized such detective tricks and shadowing (tailing, following) and what we would now consider undercover work, and eventually put his name on a series of fictionalized accounts of his career (rumor has it they were ghostwritten).

The story begins with a young bank clerk being killed and a bank robbed. This all takes place somewhere down south; most of the evidence is overlooked by the locals, since it leads to the best friend of the deceased because class matters in 1850 Mississippi, and the best friend, Mr Drysdale, is of the best of families. But ol' Pinky, who is called in as a last-chance attempt to catch the killer/robber, is a cranky Scot, he is, and he dinna care fer a man's standing in the community. After examining clews, weighing evidence, and sucking down mint juleps galore, he trots back to Chicago, and formulates a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. A large, inefficient, clunky weasel.

Next we know, a widow (Mrs Potter), a man of means (Mr Andrews), and a young carpenter (Mr Green) descend upon this small town. All are operatives of ol' Pinky - oops, I should have said spoiler alert. Now y'all will know how the story ends.

Their job is to figure out how to get a confession from the murderer Drysdale. Mrs Potter (not her real name) befriends the innocent wife of the alleged murderer...

Hard-boiled female detective schmoozes up innocent housewife

...you can see the evidence for yourself. In fact, this heartless undercover agent fakes an injury to infiltrate their household - a shameful pretense of being dependent upon the kindness of strangers. Indeed!

"She's suffered severe trauma, Jim!"

Mrs P starts smearing blood all over their home in the middle of the night in order to freak out the suspect. Talk about the house guest from hell...

Meanwhile, Messers Andrew and Green (not their real names) plot to drive Drysdale insane, in case Mrs P's imitation of "The Shining" doesn't work. (Okay, okay, this book came before "The Shining".) Mr Green looks like the deceased, so they dress him up to look like, well, a zombie in order to freak out the suspect even more.

"He's undead, Jim!"

And it works - but only some of the time. Our alleged murderer gets up and wanders in the middle of the night to the locations where he has buried the stolen money, and doesn't notice the zombie during his late-night strolls.

"He's the living dead, Jim!"

At this point, I know, you're hoping for a zombie war, or perhaps a face-off between a zombie and, say, a nosferatu. No such luck, dear readers. If the title hasn't already given it away, he's sleepwalking! Yes, sleepwalking. Wow! And FYI, that's a large, flat rock that our sleepwalker is holding. He's not wrestling with an alien life form or anything. Sorry.

By now, Drysdale is in hysterics. No southern belle could out psychosomatic him at this point, and I mean it. For instance, every time he finds the blood smeared in his room, he faints and says that he is weak from loss of blood... but he hasn't really lost any blood. So why is weak and faint - hysteria? Nerves? Guilt? A secret opium habit we're never told about?

No matter. They've succeeded in making him crazy. And yet, he still won't confess.

From what I can tell, the operations of these three detectives has probably taken three to six months. Honestly, if all his cases were this labor-intensive and drawn out, there is no way Allan Pinkerton would have become the rich, worker-hating lawman that he became.

Anyway, Pinkterton returns to the south, and gets together with everyone to plan one last attempt to coerce a confession from this dude without using a waterboard or lynch laws. Mr Green gets into his zombie togs again, and hides in the bank - the scene of the original crime. They arrest Mr Drysdale and take him to the bank. (If you're like me, you feel like you're suddenly in an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies", but you're not; hillbillies could not afford Pinkerton's fees back in 1856.) I'll let the lovely illustration show you the moment when they break the killer:

"Dammit, Jim, I'm a murderer, not a doctor!"

Ah yes, they just don't confess like this anymore. And look at Mr Sourface McMustache in the background (just to the left of Drysdale) - stern and judgmental. That's a level four glare of disapproval. If it had been a level five, Drysdale would be a heap of ashes or a puddle of goo on the floor.

Eh, I give the story a C, mostly for being brief and having some lovely illustrations. The plot was ridiculous - but not as ridiculous as "The Ghoul", a book which I will review in loving detail someday. If you're not going to be a realistic mystery, you should go all out for crazy, over-the-top thrills, which "The Ghoul" delivers. The second half of the Pinkerton book is a tale entitled, "The Murderer and the Fortune-teller". If it's any good - or if the drawings are the least bit entertaining - I'll let you know.

Why I always travel with my knitting - even to the grocery store!

Always Keep Your Knitting Near!

by Shannon on April 8, 2009

One bright spot in the news about the recent Italian earthquake: a 98-year-old woman pulled alive from the rubble spent her time knitting and crocheting while waiting to be saved.

From the Telegraph:

Maria D’Antuono told rescuers that during the 30 hours she was trapped, she occupied herself by knitting and doing crochet. The stone house where the 98-year-old was buried under her bed in the village of Tempera, was a scene of devastation having completely collapsed on one side.

Let this be a lesson to you — always keep your knitting nearby, you never know what might happen and it’s good to be prepared!

{NB - The earthquake took place in Abruzzo, the same region my grandfather was from. It must be something genetic that compels us to be near knitting at all times!}

How The Unemployed Spend Their Saturdays

• I had a knitting project I wanted to finish.
• I have neither cable nor fancy new converter rabbit ears setup thingy to watch broadcast TV.
• That leaves me with streaming video.
• hulu.
• And TJ Hooker.

This show debuted in my last year of college. I did not see many episodes during its short (I think it was short) run. I do remember a few things about it – bad 1980’s clothing (there was a reason I was a punk), baaaaad acting (with William Shatner leading the pack), horrible scripts which seem to involve violence to scantily clad women.

Watching the five episodes on hulu, my memories were refreshed – and it was worse than I recalled.

If you’re going to watch just one episode (and I really think you ought to, particularly if you’ve been wishing you were 30 years younger), I recommend the pilot episode. Here are some frame grabs (I’m not very good at these, but I think they’ll do the trick):

Here’s Adrian Zmed busting a move on the dance floor. And we’re talking busting a move. He’s the rookie who becomes Shatner’s partner for the rest of the season (or longer – told you, I didn’t watch the show much).

Talk about your disco infernos - this guy would have to be a disco pyromaniac!

Next shot is of a deceased gang member. Notice the colors he’s wearing.

Far as I know, there would have been only one group in California in the early 1980’s who would have chosen lavender for their colors. And the name of the gang on the TV show made me wonder if one of the writers was trying to get something over on the audience (consider – The Purple Stallions). Perhaps they thought the Lavender Stallions was more obvious than they cared to be, but with the gang colors they were sporting, anyone under the age of 40 would have guessed.

{I really want to make some comment about purple helmeted warriors of love riding the purple stallions, but I can't think of anything clever enough for posterity.}

Final shot is of one of the characters in tight short shorts at the squad picnic.

For god’s sake, please please please – I don’t care how tight your arse it – nobody come to the MDC picnic in this outfit!

OMG OMG OMG!!!

I'm not going to write extensively about this; I'm just going to ask my readers to please please please read as much of it as you can. It gets REALLY good in the later sections. He's about to be rich, after all. {Watch him become really rich - probably through some swindle - but still...}

I don't know why the sound of phrases such as the one below don't appeal to me from a prospective mate - there must be something wrong with me:

I would love to find a woman who herself is a leader (but I do not require that she be a leader)... and I am referring to her being a leader in the world, NOT the leader in our Love Dance. In our Love Dance, she surrenders her exquisite femininity to my powerful masculine lead and lets me FEED her with the energy she needs to be powerful and effective in ALL that she does in the world.

Needless to say, if this is what's out there for single girls, I'm most likely to remain single for the ages.

Note to Noisy - he doesn't like 'rock 'n' roll', so there would be no Butthole Surfers played in his home. How boring!

Oops!

Got so distracted by the idea of diaper-wielding zealots that I forgot to post today's jammy cam - check out the cool rock!

Looking for Work

Some of you may know that I recently interviewed for a job. Sad to say, I did not get the job. I attribute this in part to my failure to wear my kick-ass boots - the ones that say, "Hire me or else."

However, in my long hours looking at weird photos on the internet (I'm unemployed - I've got those long hours to waste), I did come up with a look I think I may use at the next interview - it's sure to get me hired!


If one of these women showed up for a job interview, would you dare tell them "No"? In fact, I think all admin should consider this basic attire for the job. There is historical precedent:


And of course friends are always helpful with suggestions for ways to earn money. Here's what some of my tech friends are doing since they were laid off:





I'm looking for a nice piece of that plastic-coated poster board for my own sign (it's Seattle - it rains - I don't want to have to make a new sign each day or week) - "Will Control Your Documents for food or a roll of quarters for laundry - Thanks!"

As long as I don't end up in a diaper listening to bible verses, I'm okay.

Play by FoxSaver®

A Plea to my Friends

In today's news:

TOLEDO, Ohio - A man held a woman captive in handcuffs and an adult diaper for three days while he read Bible passages to her, police said.

Troy Brisport, 34, was charged with kidnapping and felonious assault. Bail was set Tuesday at $400,000.

He picked up the woman Wednesday night in Detroit after she told him she had nowhere to stay, and brought her to his home in Toledo, about 55 miles (88 kilometers) away, police told The Toledo Blade newspaper.

The woman told police that after she fell asleep Brisport handcuffed her wrists and ankles, gagged her, undressed her and put her in an adult diaper, then read Bible passages, said police Capt. Ray Carroll.

She apparently was not sexually assaulted, Carroll said.

However, court documents alleged that Brisport tried several times to suffocate the woman using a pillow and blanket.

I sent the following plea to one of my friends, but I figure I better send it to everyone - consider it insurance:

If I end up homeless, please let me put up a tent in your backyard. I'll work for shower and laundry privileges, and I'll sit in my tent with my iPod on loud when you want your private time in the yard, I promise. I don't want to end up in a diaper listening to bad recitations from the Bible. Please.

{The text was changed to protect the names of the innocent.}

Marblemount - January 2009

I recently went up north to help out some friends who were living on generator power and wood-burning stove for a week due to serious mudslides. I took some lovely photos; it was so quiet, with the main road blocked, there was almost no traffic. Only the sound of the occasional generator here and there. These are photos taken whilst driving (woo hoo!) or walking around on State Route 20 when there was almost no traffic.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's, folks!

First, flowers from a friend:

Gifted in advance of, and not because of, Valentine's Day - but still, lovely to have some roses here next to the futon. Lovely colors and scents to brighten up the weekend. And nice to have someone think of giving me flowers - thank you!

Next, a box of gifts from a knitting pal - our first anniversary, in fact. We had our first swap VDay last year, and had so much fun (and got on so well) that we've had quarterly swaps ever since. Chocolates, yarn, booze, and a book on lace knitting:


So I spent an hour cruising the internet for knitting patterns for my yarn...okay, more like 2 hours. That's why I recommend Valentine's Day swaps for knitters, single or no. And Gypsygirl, my swap mate, is appreciative of my unemployed status, so I didn't need to spend extravagant amounts on yarn or other goodies. Knowing that I'll be doing swaps during the year allows me to look for mark downs on yarns and books. And then there's the Daiso $1.50 store in downtown Seattle - that place absolutely rocks! Much, much better than American dollar stores, I actually find some useful, crafty things there - and non-crafty, too! See, the Japanese like their cheap stuff from China, too, but they still want quality and a pleasant aesthetic, so you get much nicer things there. And if you're willing to spend $5 you can get some super fun vintage Japanese tunes! Anyway, Gypsygirl still raves about the onion bag I gifted her with back around Halloween, all courtesy of the fine folks at Daiso!

There were many vintage valentines being sent around on Ravelry (don't bother even clicking the link unless you knit or crochet). Some of them had very interesting images, and got me pondering what message they would convey in the 21st century.

I really liked the following image:

But notice the shackle this poor fellow is wearing - an indication of a co-dependent relationship, at the least, if not some sort of serious top-bottom relationship (don't click unless you want TMI).

This must have been intended for the Lawrence Welk generation - lucky for you, I'm too lazy to link this to some really bad accordion music (which I've got in spades).


Here's one for the person concerned with global warming - or hot flashes - or some sort of hemorrhagic fever:


Do you know anyone who's into steroid use? This one's for you, A-Rod!


I hope this little girl got a raise in her allowance:

Mind you, I actually like the Post Office. They're far from perfect, admittedly, but if you've spent as much time arguing with UPS as I have, you'll understand why I like to go postal.

Anyone who has known me for very long knows I appreciate things piratey; and I'm not some poseur who thought they were cool only after Johnny Depp donned his eyeliner. I was a pirate for Halloween a year or two before the first movie came out. However, even I have to wonder exactly what message you're sending your sweetie when you've got a heart (theirs? yours? the last person you got in a bar fight with?) on your dagger.

"Arrrrgh, lassie, them wot don't dates me be the lucky ones," he seems to be saying. You know, I'm going to bet on the bar fight scenario - he's wearing a sword, so I bet he cut his enemy's heart out with his eating knife. What a little terror this laddie is!

For the next one, I'm just going to say "Lumberjack Song" and leave it at that.
Now, now, before you make that joke about Idaho, where men are men and sheep are scared, remember, I'm a knitter - I like wool - I like sheep only in a completely platonic sense. Okay, I do appreciate lamb when cooked nicely, and of course, there are some fine sheep cheeses out there - but they won't let you shear them if they think they'll end up in a curry when you're done.

You're on the Titanic. You're lucky enough to obtain a life preserver and hope like hell that the North Sea (or wherever the hell they were - no, I don't care, I'm not looking it up) doesn't freeze you to death before you're rescued. I'm pretty sure the word 'nice' wouldn't be how you'd describe your life preserver.

Hey, I like kitties. Nothing snide here, just a cute kitty.


In the 21st century, if you use the words "horn" and "butt" in a valentine, you know it's all about teh booty call.

The next one's for you, Noisy:


This last one is just weird. Is it the heart-ball? Is it the kid's big arse? He looks like he could be doing 'roids with A-Rod...I dunno, but it definitely bothers me.

Happy VD, everyone!