Saturday, March 28, 2009

2:48 PM - eep... now I'm bragging.

tricks of the trade

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have learned a few things. One of my favorite life lessons is that a little assertiveness can prevent a lot of silent suffering. As an example: I've seen a lot of respectable, well-educated adults get completely flustered when it comes to telemarketers. I've seen people take the phone off the hook and walk away, say hurtful things, fly into a tantrum, wait meekly and listen to the entire sales pitch with family members holding on the other line, or simply hang up. The telemarketers call back the next day, and the whole thing grows into a cycle of fear of answering your own phone.

I'm not sure how I started doing this, but somehow I learned to simply interrupt the telemarketer with, "I'm sorry, we don't take promotional calls at this number. Would you please remove this number from your list?" That's all it takes. Most of the people I've used this with have been very kind and gracious, and I never get the call again. And the telemarketer never sells my number to 15 of his best telemarketing buddies. In the one or two cases where people have persisted, I just inform them that there has been a mistake, they should not be calling the number, and they need to remove it from their database. Period.

It works.

I guess this is kind of a long way of introducing two assertiveness stories that Susannah linked in her blog this morning. I'm re-linking because frankly, both are awesome.

Kathrynt: "What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!"
Kathrynt: How to make an idiot shut up.

Monday, March 23, 2009

1:16 PM - warning: cat medical TMI, not for the faint-hearted

and.... it's back to the vet for Monty

As you may know, I sew from time to time. Before I got a cat, one thing people warned me about was that cats like to eat thread, and it can damage their digestive systems. There's nothing, these people warned, like having a thread sticking half-out of your cat's bottom and having to pull the rest of it out by hand. Nothing indeed.

Before I got Monty, I cleaned the house pretty thoroughly, trying to ensure that there was no leftover thread from the Steampunk costume project. On Saturday, as I was using my laptop and Monty was curled up next to me, my worst fears came true. I happened to notice a white thread poking out of Monty's butt. "Oh no," I thought, "Monty must have found a leftover thread somewhere and eaten it!" I knew at this point that I was going to have to pull the thread out.

I leaned in for a closer look, and much to my surprise, the thread squirmed and pulled itself the rest of the way out into Monty's fur. My 9th grade biology class came back in a rush: flatworm. I'd seen one in a petri dish. Flatworm!!! Ew.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I discovered that this was probably a flatworm or roundworm, not a life-or-death situation for Monty. I called the vet and asked them to call me back Monday morning for an appointment. I spent Sunday pissing Monty off by periodically wiping worms off of his butt but refusing to cuddle with him or let him into the bedroom. And obsessively washing my hands.

I just got back from the vet, where I got a good lesson in tapeworms. First, the tapeworm had to come from fleas, which means from the shelter, since three months ago the vet started Monty on Frontline and today she confirmed that he's flea-free. Second, it's one tapeworm, sending off segments of itself with lots of tapeworm eggs that are wriggling out of Monty's butt, but there's no chance of re-infection because there needs to be an intermediate flea vector. (This has not stopped me from a rigorous routine of cleaning until the tapeworm is gone and gone.)

Finally, the tapeworm-removal injection that the vet gave Monty was a bit uncomfortable. We are home now, but Monty is itching at his sides and when I listen to his tummy, there are small gurgling sounds. The vet told me that either I wouldn't see anything unusual, or that Monty was going to vomit up a tapeworm. (I told her that I loved the scale between "nothing unusual" and "vomiting a tapeworm.") I assume that the alternative is that the tapeworm will end up in the litterbox, and I'm cheering for that one. Both the vet and her tech (both of whom were really kind and awesome) got that scientist's look of excitement on their faces as they invited me to bring the tapeworm into their lab, if I found it. My thought process: "grody, grody, grody, cool!, grody, grody, grody!"

So now I'm sitting at home with Monty, working from home and waiting for him to vomit up a tapeworm. Or not. (Please, not.) The good news: Monty is up to 7 lbs, which is double his weight from December. My little boy is growing up! Now if he would just stop hanging with the wrong crowd....

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

5:32 AM - do not tempt my ire at 5:30am with bad poetry

the things that truly matter

We all have our causes, and I am no different. There are things that I would like to see achieved in my lifetime: equal rights throughout the globe for queer people, widespread adoption of solar and other renewable energy sources, and Wikipedia neutrality. Just now, I have struck a blow for the latter.

I have been up most of the night, alternately sneezing and coughing so hard that it hurts my lungs, waiting for the antibiotics to kick in and make me a radiant dewdrop again. Even though the kitten was very sweet and kept me company through my tossing and turning and coughing fits, I eventually realized that I wouldn't be sleeping any more tonight. I began wandering the internet, and since all roads lead to Wikipedia, I eventually went from the Stonewall Riots to amazing queer activist Sylvia Rivera to Ellen Degeneres.

At the bottom of Ellen's article, after all of the descriptions of her achievements, awards, professional history, and estimated net worth, there was a half-sentence which mentioned that her life had recently been commemorated in a poem by a company I had never heard of. Still, if this honor had made it into a Wikipedia article, I assumed it must have been significant. I clicked the link to the tragically-named company, and found a self-indulgent advertisement masquerading as an encyclopedia article. The article includes a sample poem which was presumably custom written as a gift for Martha Stewart. I enlarged the image to its maximum resolution and read the poem.

Remember in second grade when you would write a poem about someone by spelling out their name vertically and then selecting a word that begins with each letter? This simple format has been elevated by an "American poet" in these "personalized poetry masterpieces" so that each letter begins a line with multiple words. That rhyme. Except when it's inconvenient.

Look, far be it from me to discourage an aspiring artist from exploring their craft. I don't expect every modern wordsmith to follow the old conventions of classical meter. But if you are going to graffiti across several people's biographic articles that you sent them a "masterpiece" from an "American poet", and if you are going to support those statements with links to your promotional videos on YouTube, do yourself a favor. Count your fucking syllables. Don't bring your trashy excuse for couplets (at least the ones you felt like attempting) all up in my free encyclopedia that anyone can edit at 5:30am after a night of no sleep unless you expect to get served. And don't make up an award so you can send your crappy product to Oprah and then list it in her Wikipedia article as a significant milestone in her life.

The offending lines have been removed from several biographic articles. This has been the most Wikipedia fun I've had since I added a [citation needed] to the sentence, "She has helped many people and is just all around amazing." It's going to be a beautiful day.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

11:02 PM - crumbling piece by piece

childhood illusions

I miss the 80s. I was young, and my idea of heaven quite literally was an Atari 2600 and a glass of chocolate milk. (This was the treatment I expected in the afterlife, no joke.) As I've grown older, certain pillars of my vault of cherished childhood memories have started to crumble, thanks to the internet. The animation in Scooby Doo is not nearly as photorealistic as I remember. Pac Man, where I thought the ghosts were semi-random, actually can be beaten by memorizing a series of patterns for each board.

The latest in this series of crushing realities came to me because I've been sick all weekend, and an unusual chain of events had me looking up Peter Tomarken of Press Your Luck in Wikipedia. Well. I always loved Press Your Luck. I always wondered why it was so hard for the players to get $5000 + and spin (apparently they didn't have my Atari 2600-honed reflexes). Well today I discovered the sinster truth: in 1984 Michael Larson used a VCR to memorize the "random" patterns on the board, go on Press Your Luck, and win over $100,000. Apparently there were only 5 patterns to memorize.

Watching this video struck me with a couple of realizations... First, I don't play nearly enough video games any more, because that flashing square moves much faster than I remembered. Second, I always take random number generators for granted, but this is an extreme example of why programmers these days try to be meticulous about the seeds of their random generators. And finally, game show contestants from the 80s are terrifying. I mean... just the glasses alone on the guy on the right... luckily they had a reunion episode in 2003 with the original players so we can see how they aged.

As for Michael Larson, Wikipedia states that the "real estate investment" that he mentions on the show actually turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, and he lost a good chunk of his money that way. The rest was stolen, and then the man died of cancer.

On that cheery note, I'm going to get some chocolate milk and take my old-school games emulator for a spin... just not Pac Man.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

12:15 PM - lemon ginger tea

sick like elvis

I am sick. Again. Bleh. My immune system is usually quite strong, but the past two winters I have been sick much more than usual. At least the stuffy head and congestion is yielding to the evil sore throat... it's nice to rotate symptoms, because at least it makes me feel like the virus is running its course.

Monty has been very cute and patient about the whole thing. He's 7 months old now... I think he's going to be a tiny kitty.

Now that it is March, I'd like to start thinking about my creative projects for the upcoming year. I have a few ideas... and I don't want it to suddenly be October and I've done nothing at all.

Okay, clearly the sickness is making me too delirious to write a coherent blog post. Time for more tea.