KingOfAnkh’s Neighborhood

saw this at the bakery down the street and couldn't resist.

bad boy tiger

I had a bite and that was it though. It definitely looked better than it tasted.

While out driving today, I tuned into yet another conservative talk radio show (there aren't any other kind in my listening area, unfortunately).   The host was ranting and raving about Janet Napolitano, whom he sneeringly called "Janet From Another Planet", saying that she is unfit to be Secretary of Homeland Security, because of the Christmas Day "crotch bomber" incident.  The host based this opinion on the question of how the hapless terrorist was able to board the plane.

Now, I can't say how good of a job Napolitano is doing in her post, as I've not really kept up with what she's been doing since being appointed to that position.

That being said, I think it's ludicrous to blame her for the terrorist getting on board that plane in the first place and being present when it took off.   This is because he boarded in Amsterdam, which was, the last time I checked, not a part of the United States, but, rather, a part of the Netherlands, over which the US Department of Homeland Security has no jurisdiction.

Just saying...

Have you ever had a dream that you're in your house, or a house you used to live in, and you suddenly find a brand new door that you never saw before?

Well I've lived in this apartment for a few months now, and one problem is the lack of storage. Especially in the bathroom. I could really use a place to keep towels, sheets, or anything really. Well guess what Baldy suddenly found today?

He's never taken a dump in this apartment, but he did today. And from the new vantage point, he suddenly saw something strange. Something that looked suspiciously like a door to a closet! He opened it, to find a big empty closet.

"I opened the door, and I saw the empty closet, and I thought either you didn't know about this because you obviously need extra storage (indicating all the stuff everywhere I've somehow accumulated since moving out of the capsule), or for some reason you just chose not to put anything in it."

Then we laughed and laughed like idiots. I couldn't fucking believe it. I just never saw the closet! It's really hard to see and it just looks like part of the wall. It's big enough for someone to hide in. I can think of lots of tricks I can pull on people. Like Baldy can hide in it, I'll bring a friend over, say I have to go to the loo, then I'll hide in the closet, and he'll go out and pretend like nothing happened and freak my friend out.

I made a new discovery in a mundane place. Like a little bit of magic.

I've been absent for a week or so, thanks to my laptop wishing me a happy christmas by dying on its arse while my live-in computer fix-it man was in Inverness visiting his family, so apologies to anyone whose comments or posts I've not replied to/ written about. As I'm back at work now with quite literally bog all to do until the sites start generating some work for me I thought I'd have a look at some of my stats for the years 2000 - 2010.

Things Lost/ given away:

• 3 grandparents, 1 sort of surrogate grandmother brought in replace one of the actual ones who was a cow, 1 great aunt and 1 great uncle. Blimey, there's been a bit of a cull in the family this past decade!
• 2 boyfriends, one of whom was a nice guy but just not for me, one of whom was a complete twat that I can't believe I bothered with. Let me give you the benefit of my wisdom - never date anyone you met on a train, it didn't end well for me and it ended even less well for my cousin who married the nutjob she met on one. Now that's a long and bizarre story which also happened in my 'decade under review'!
• 1 family dog, Barney, a hairy creature that moulted more than I ever believed a creature could without ending up bald. His ability to start a random fight with dogs much bigger than himself, leaving the owners clinging onto their beasts for dear life while I tried to drag the grouchy bundle of hair and teeth up the road by the scruff of the neck was awe-inspiring. I will also never forget the time he chased a chav down the road and over a fence for no better reason than that he had a rabid dislike of anyone in a beanie hat. Plus his attacks on the hoover never stopped being funny. He was put down last year after the tumour on his back began to affect his mobility and I'm sure that wherever he is he's having a great time starting fights with dogs 4 times his size and scoffing his own bodyweight in dog biscuits.
  
• 1 job, when back in 2003 my dad fired me as an incentive for me to go out and find a proper job instead of flouncing about being the cook for the nursing home they own.
• 3 cars - my first car, Cyril I, a silver Nissan Micra that was 12 years old when my parents bought it off my grandparents (as a way to stop them driving) and that ran like a dream until my then boyfriend Ben had been driving it for a while. After that you had to get up early if it was set to rain because you'd have to disconnect all the plugs and wipe them out with WD40. The RAC man was out to it so often that I got a christmas card off him. Nice chap. I loved that car. Also a ginger Peugeot 106 that coordinated beautifully with my ginger best friend and a harlot scarlet Ford Fiesta that ended up with my brother in London after a rather complicated swap involving my parents, my brother, a Peugeot 307 and a bank loan.
• 1 friend/ flatmate who turned out to be a sociopathic slut who would offer my live in boyfriend sex while I was at work. He didn't take her up on it but it pissed me off none the less. Possibly it was not a good idea for me to attempt to have it out with her while fuelled up on cheap vodka but to be honest, she deserved every single one of the names I called her and I feel no guilt about aiming for her weak spots - popularity and looks. 
• Umpteen thousands of pounds on pointless crap that I didn't need/ alcohol/ cigarettes/ clothes that I looked shocking in and shoes I couldn't walk in.
• 7 guinea pigs. Shit, that sounds really bad when you write it down doesn't it? I swear I'm not some sort of psycho small furry critter killer.
  

• 1 job. I've been here 7 years this march which is truly terrifying.
• My 30s, and I don't want to even think about it, let alone talk about it.
• 20 odd pairs of shoes / boots (conservative estimate). This decade I made the awesome discovery that is Duo, a company who makes boots in different calf widths, meaning finally I could have a pair of knee high boots that didn't look like wellies. A revelation, I'm sure you'll agree.
• 1 dog - Geoffrey, who has featured in the blog before. He's a barmpot and as camp as christmas but everyone loves him.
  
• 9 guinea pigs. 7 of which I have managed to dispatch to that great rabbit run in the sky, leaving me with 2 currently. Who, to the irritation of my other half are currently living in an indoor cage in the conservatory because it's minus 8 outside. "Of course they'll only be inside for a couple of days" I said 2 weeks ago. Smirk...
• 6 second cousins, 3 of which were born to the same family. No family should have more than 2 kids, at least not if they expect me to remember all of their birthdays and buy them decent gifts at christmas.
• 1 husband. We've been married for 4 years this year and that means that even if we were to divorce tomorrow we wouldn't have the worst marital record in my family, as two of my cousins only made it to the 2 year mark. Happy days.
  
• 1 degree and 1 diploma. I am now a very highly qualified time waster, an achievement indeed.
• Some wrinkles, the number of which I have not had the courage to count.
  
• About two stone in weight, 1 of which I think I put on this christmas. I put my work trousers on this morning and decided, as I desperately struggled with the stupid button that either the mischief gnome had been in the wardrobe over the holidays and altered the dimensions of all my clothing or I needed to step away from the Terry's Chocolate Orange and head towards the salad. Sigh...
• The ability to get from A to B without major injury. Only one this decade, a fractured kneecap, which was a vast improvement on the previous 2 decades when my inability to judge what was going on at the ends of my limbs led to me practically having my own dedicated seat in the A&E department. I think it might have been a family thing because my brother was also well known for his ability to fall over or into things as well.
  
• A number of friends I'd lost touch with but in particular the lovely BGS girls who I went to school with and a girl who I went to primary school with and lived down the road from. I can't imagine now why we didn't all keep in touch, it seems ridiculous when we have such a good time.
  
• A sister in law. Which is weird because that means my little brother is married. I realise that at 26, 6ft 4 or so he probably isn't that little but still....
• Lots of lovely friends on Vox and even a few from back in the days when I started out online, on Diaryland!
  

Oh right I almost forgot -- I finally watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen .  Now, I'm pretty generous with the 5 star rating system.  If it's at all entertaining I figure it deserves 3.  I'm trying to decide if this is 1 or 2.  It was that bad.   I think there was maybe 2-3 itty bitty moments here and there that were actually worth watching.  MAYBE.  What a crappy movie.  And I LIKED the first one.  So much so I had wanted to see this one in theaters and only missed it there because I'd been pretty MS'Y (that was when the dizzy stuff was starting to be more often and lots of exhaustion stuff then).  Thank goodness I didn't see it in the theater as I've never fallen asleep in a theater so I'd have been embarrassed as this movie was literally putting me to sleep in several spots -- really, ask Brian.  I was wide awake and alert when it started, not tired at all.  BORING.  I started drifting off to sleep several times as there was just nothing there to keep me interested at all.   If you wanna see Megan Fox in shorts or getting humped by a robot, cool.   But beyond that, nothing.  Even Bumblebee lost his charm for the most part.  Only one scene with him was cool.  Shame.  Brian kept apologizing and saying he knew it was bad but didn't remember it seeming THAT bad in theaters but he was suddenly glad he didn't buy the dvd and only spent $4 to rent it instead.  I think I'll skip the next one altogether.  I think I'm leaning toward 1 star -- had it been bad in a I can make fun of it sort of way then 2... it wasn't even bad in that kind of way.  Just boring bad.   And if anyone can follow the transforming / fighting scenes then they're better than I am.

So a few days into the new year and now post from me, oopsie. Mainly because I'm feeling like hell.  Tingly.  Crampy. Headachey.  Anything ending in y, you name it.  Needless to say we didn't get around to seeing Avatar again, so we'll probably save it for next weekend, or during the week.  We'll see.  During the week may not work since Brian works.

Didn't sign new lease yet since we have til the end of February and we want to clear up how they're gonna charge us for water now that it's not included in rent for new tenants and for lease renewals.  All the office could tell us was it SHOULD be between $20 and $40 a month and they'd base it on the fact that we have two people living here.  Beyond that they didn't know how it worked.  Erm, what?  No guarantees what the bill would be.  No telling us if it's based on OUR use or the the building then divided by number of tenants or the whole complex divided by number of tenants or if it could be triple that estimate some months, etc.  They said we'd have to talk to the manager to find that out as they didn't know. 

Lister needs Prozac.  Okay, not really.  But he's on a month long diet.  Special f00d and no kitty treats.  For one week also kitty ear meds.  They're trying to figure out if he has f00d allergies -- they think it's possible that's what caused both his tummy and ear probs.  Kitty f00d allergies wouldn't show up on the kitty allergy blood tests so it's easiest to test for them first by very strict f00d controls = only one kind of f00d and nothing else at all.  He's moping.  He doesn't like the f00d.  He seems to think he's being punished.  He doesn't even want to play with his toy mousey.  He'd putting on sad kitty face and crying a lot.  Kitty guilt trips are fun.  I just tell him I'm sorry but humans get to go on diets too and he's still not getting kitty treats or different f00d no matter how much he sulks.  I swear he even sighs.

Link stolen from Krizzzzz:  The problem with a vote against all option = politicians are sneaky ;)  As I said on Twitter, if we had that option ALL of our politicians would change their names and we'd never complete an election.

Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of "banished words"; words they consider trite, overused, annoying, or a combination of all three.  Following below is the list, with my comments in italics:

SHOVEL-READY

"Apparently, the generally accepted definition of this phrase is to imply that a project has been completely designed and all that is left to do is to implement it...however, when something dies, it, too, is shovel-ready for burial and so I get confused about the meaning. I would suggest that we just say the project is ready to implement.” – Jerry Redington, Keosauqua, Iowa.

"Stick a shovel in it. It's done." – Joe Grimm, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

I'd like to take a shovel upside the head of the person who coined this obnoxious phrase.

TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY

"In the lexicon of the political arena, this word is supposed to mean obvious or easily understood. In reality, political transparency is more invisible than obvious!" -- Deb Larson, Bellaire, Mich.

Someone throw a blanket over "transparent".

CZAR

Long used by the media as a metaphor for positions of high authority, including “baseball czar” Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, appointed by team owners as commissioner-for-life in 1919. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had an “industry czar” during World War I. Lesser-known “czar” roles in government during the last 100 years include: censorship, housing and oil czars in 1941; rubber czar in 1942; patronage czar (1945); clean-up (1952); missile (1954); inflation (1971); e-commerce (1998); bioethics, faith-based and reading czars (2001); bird flu (2004); democracy (2005); abstinence and birth control czars (2006); and weatherization czar (2008).

I thought the Russians took care of "czars" in 1917.

TWEET

And all of its variations…tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere….

Jay Brazier of Williamston, Mich. says she supposes that tweeters might be "twits."

Personally, I'd go for "twats", myself.

APP

"Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv? Why does the English language have to fit on a two-inch screen? I hate the sound of it. I think I'll listen to a symph on the rad." -- Edward R. Bolt, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Put "cr" in front of "app" and you get crapp!

SEXTING

Sending sexually explicit pictures and text messages through the cell phone.

"Any dangerous new trend that also happens to have a clever mash-up of words, involves teens, and gets television talk show hosts interested must be banished." – Ishmael Daro, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada.

A "word" spoken by those who aren't getting the real thing.

FRIEND AS A VERB

Came into popularity through social networking websites. You add someone to your network by "friending" them, or remove them by "unfriending" them.

"'Befriend' is much more pleasant to the human ear and a perfectly useful word in the dictionary." – Kevin K., Morris, Okla.

I pretty much hate any noun that is made into a verb and vice versa. 

TEACHABLE MOMENT

What might otherwise be known as 'a lesson.'

"It's a condescending substitute for 'opportunity to make a point,'" says Eric Rosenquist of College Station, Tex.

So, portions of time are now capable of being taught, hmm?

IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES….

"Overused and redundant. Aren't ALL times 'these economic times'?" -- Barb Stutesman, Three Rivers, Mich.

I think this stuffy phrase has outlived its fifteen minutes of overuse.

STIMULUS

"Everything in the news is about the stimulus packages...it is no longer a grant, it's stimulus money, stimulus checks, etc. I think it is just being over-used." Teri Heikkila, Rudyard, Mich.

I've got your "stimulus package" right here! 

TOXIC ASSETS

"Whatever happened to simply 'bad stocks,' 'debts,' or 'loans'?" -- Monty Heidenreich, Homewood, Ill.

This list wouldn't be complete without an oxymoron.

TOO BIG TO FAIL

"Just for the record, nothing's too big to fail unless the government lets it." Claire Shefchik, Brooklyn, NY.

Tell this to the owners of the Titanic!.

BROMANCE

"I am sick of combined words the media creates to make them sound catchier. Frenemies? Bromances? Blogorrhea? I'm going to scream!" – Kaylynn, Alberta, Canada.

I've been lucky to have never heard this one before.

CHILLAXIN'

"Heard everywhere from MTV to ESPN to CNN. A bothersome term that seeks to combine chillin' with relaxin' makes me want to be 'axin' this word." – Tammy, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

What?  Does this mean to put an axe into the refrigerator?

OBAMA-prefix or roots?

The LSSU Word Banishment Committee held out hope that folks would want to Obama-ban Obama-structions, but were surprised that no one Obama-nominated any, such as these compiled by the Oxford Dictionary in 2009: Obamanomics, Obamanation, Obamafication, Obamacare, Obamalicious, Obamaland….We say Obamanough already.

Let's bomb all the Obama coinages.

My personal contribution to this year's list would be:

FAIL used as a noun.

For example, a football team loses big in a game and it's dubbed "an epic fail".  This one made me grind my teeth the first time I heard it.  It may be an "epic failure", but it's NOT an "epic fail".

What's your New Year's resolution for 2010?

I don't make resolutions other than the one I make every year and have no trouble in fulfilling: to get laid as often as possible!