Okay, I'm boring...

Have I forgotten to mention within the past five minutes that I'm sick of my job? Gods, but I hate that place.

I'm turning into a boring, boring person over this. And it's so pathetic, whining about your work all the time. You're an adult with all these choices and somehow you've voluntarily choosen this Hell because you're too stupid or inept to do otherwise.

All righty then. Employers on Cape Cod, who wants to hire a smart annoying person who is trying to enter the Accounting field? I'm detail-oriented, don't need my hand held, clean up nicely, and I'm working on my snottiness and self-pity issues.

That reminds me.

I have some long-standing issues and people from my past that I just can't seem to move on from. I originally posted much more about this, but going into it just seemed too petty and pathetic.

You don't really want to hear about all my insecurities, do you? Bleh, they bore even me.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Except to say that if I wasn't spending a significant chunk of my day working a job that I hate, I'd probably be dealing better, and could just move on.

My work is turning me into not only a bore, but just a generally tedious person.

Of course, I realize it's ridiculous to blame my work for all of this. After all, don't I have some free will in the matter? But you know what? Working all day in a place you dislike wears on you. Just can't pull on the bootstraps anymore than I am.

Okay, on a lighter note...

The spousal unit thinks we should have a classic cocktail weekend. (We're both into cocktails, which makes us very American, but that's another story.)

But anyway, we'll spend the weekend going through the Mr. Boston bartender guide (our copy was last published in 1959), pull out the ones that sound most interesting and try them. A weekend of debauchery.

At the end of it all, I won't have a different job, but at least I've have been distracted for the weekend. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Is there a reason...?

That some people have to talk to themselves at their desks? Are they afraid they'll disappear unless they treat the world to a running update of how fast their Word file is being saved?

I find it especially nerve-wracking when it's something I know they're going to eventually ask me about. Before they actually come over and ask me if they need to do a restart, I'll hear them sighing and shuffling and cajoling at Windows for a good fifteen minutes.

Also, when help is requested, it's inevitably in some cutesy form, "Oh, I think my computer's feeling a bit under the weather today!" Really? I never would have guessed. Seeing as you're so restrained and quiet and all.

Now I'm going to be sighing.

We Climbed Mt. Monadnock

Here's some more info. It's touted as a relatively easy climb as far as these things go, but you know that you climbed a mountain when you're done.

We did Cascade and I think Red Spot coming up, White Cross Trail coming down. White Cross was very steep and we wouldn't be quick to do it again. Cascade was pretty with a lot of running water. I feel excrutiatingly out of shape after this expedition, gotten all my yearning to visit the White Mountains out of my system for the time being.

Worst. Vampire. Movie. Ever.

I will watch virtually any supernatural horror movie. I say "supernatural" because my taste doesn't run to slasher flicks or giant ant movies or medical horror. What I'm looking for is something that goes bump in the night.

I prefer a ghost or a haunting, but I'll cheerfully watch mummies, vampires, screaming skulls (remember those?) or psychological thrillers with a supernatural element.

If I had to make a partial list of my favorite horror movies that list would probably include The Haunted, Sixth Sense, Perfect Blue , Big Trouble in Little China. That partial list probably makes me sound more hoity-toity on the horror front than I actually am, with the exception of Big Trouble in Little China. My first preference is for atmosphere and a certain subtly, but I'll also cheerfully watch something produced by John Carpenter or Hammer Films.

This broad-mindedness is the only reason I watched Modern Vampires to the very end. I figured it would be a bit of light background while I worked on my beadwork, but as the movie wore on, I was sucked into the sheer awfulness of it. It reminded me of of any number of movies that are too camp to be serious and too serious to be camp such as Starship Troopers or the modern remake of the House on Haunted Hill or possibly the Dungeons and Dragons movie.

Without getting too deep into a fairly nonsensical plot, we have good American vampires, bad Euro-trash vampires, bad vampire hunters (ex-Nazi and gangbangers). All of them torture and kill at the drop of the hat, but that's okay because you don't care about ANYONE in this movie.

I'm sure it says something deeply meaningful about the American psyche that in this movie, anyone with a Euro-accent is a Nazi or snob, anyone American is open-minded, friendly and good (in a sociopathic crazy killing vampire sort of way) and all of our good Americans come from a deprived background of some kind. (white trash, black ghetto)

The script seems to have been written at the height of the cigar craze, our male lead good American vampire (Casper Van Dien) smokes cigars, "Cuban?" "No, Cuban seed grown in Nicaragua". (Which would mean he's either smoking a Padrone or a Majorga. ) He uses his fang as a cigar punch. That must come in handy. FYI, if I was Casper Van Dien I would be worrying about my career. This and Starship Troopers? Not good.

The scriptwriter must have been reading Maxim right before writing, "I thought vampires couldn't do sex?" "That's just a myth. Give us the right blood and we can go all night." At least that's what I think he said, I was laughing hard at the time. After having sex with the female lead good American vampire (Natasha Gregson Wagner) , he gives her his cigar.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

The female lead good American vampire develops a friendship with a human girl. Well, "friendship" meaning, "lock tongue at any and every opportunity". (My suspicions that the scriptwriter was reading Maxim deepen, although the human girl was played by Natasha Lyonne and maybe some of her previous roles in But I'm a Cheerleader and Walls Could Talk 2 were the inspiration for all the tongue-wrestling.)

The movie ends with her becoming a vampire, "Oh! Your fangs are soooo CUTE!" and of course Lead Female, Lead Male and Former Human Girl go off into the night for some serious vampire threeway action. It's that kind of a movie.

I haven't even tried to go into the plucky gangstas and the cute way they engage in murder, mayhem and gang rape, not to mention the camp Nazis. Because nothing's funnier than gang rape and Nazis. As I write this, I notice how awful I keep saying this movie is but I think with a pitcher of martinis and a gang of friends it could have a lot of potential. Make that two pitchers, possibly three.

I know I deeply regret that a friend of mine wasn't present for last night's viewing. He's the one who made me watch Teenage Catgirls in Heat, and one of his deepest regrets is that we never got to see Rabid.

It's not the heat...

The weather has cooled and become less humid for the first time in weeks. I can't even describe how moist and nasty everything has been and still is.

We have at least five different types of mushrooms growing in our yard. So far, I've seen:

Indian pipes.

Big white mushrooms

Smaller big white mushrooms with nodules.

Small orangish-brown mushrooms.

Biggish brownish-orange mushrooms.

I'm sure there's some I've missed.

Also, my China flats had MOLD growing on them. In the LIVING ROOM. I washed them and they seem okay now, but ew.

Oh, it just occurred to me that last sentence will confuse some people in other parts of the country. Central air conditioning still isn't very common around here. We have a window air conditioner stuck in the office and a de-humidifier in the basement, and the rest of the house fends for itself. The spousal unit fiddles with window fans and strategically closed doors in order to maximize airflow through the house. It does make a difference, believe me.

But no matter how much the air is moving, it doesn't change the fact that it's been so humid that everything is perpetually damp. Books curl, papers stick, towels don't dry and floors feel sweaty. No wonder I have mold on my shoes.

Who Wants to Marry My Daughter?

This piece was broadcast this morning on my local NPR (National Public Radio) station. A woman in Southbridge, Massachusetts is conducting a search to find a husband for her daughter.

Don't let the fact that it's NPR fool you, this is pure comedy gold. A frightening example of what happens when the clueless take control of their lives.

This link will bring you to the article, I strongly suggest listening to the actual interview. You'll need to have a Real Audio player to listen to it, which you can download for free.

Let's just say that no one in Southbridge can make fun of anyone in West Virginia for a long, long, LONG time.

Who Wants to Marry My Daughter?

Spoof of the Budweiser "Whassup?" ads with a Boston twist

Wicked Pissah

While we're on the subject of local color, I'd like to recomend a book. If you have any interest in better understanding the environment in which Cape Cod police work, read the book Midnights: A Year With the Wellfleet Police.

It's a little bit dated now (events depicted took place during the seventies) but still very true. It more accurately reflects my sense of Cape Cod that was formed in childhood than the Cape Cod of today does. I still think of Cape Cod of being a Very Small Place, where everyone knew your business and we all lived in each other's hip pockets. Which is still true, but not the way it was even twenty years ago.

The book is also very funny, especially if you know the region at all.

Aren't you the dour little elf?

Bitter editorial in the Cape Cod Times today about the "flash mob" phenomenon.

I have mixed feelings about flash mobs. I think gathering in a public place to do something surreal is hilarious. However, I think it's the height of arrogance to make some poor retail clerk deal with a flash mob.

If the flash mobs consistently stuck to public meeting spots, I'd want to participate in them myself. (Well, they'd have to have one occur on Cape Cod, but you know what I mean.)

But the sourness of today's editorial is too much. I quote,

"For the life of us, we can't see how converging around a rug at Macy's, or the greeting cards at the Harvard Coop in Cambridge, another flash mob site, empowers anybody."

Unless the phenomenon can be transformed into something more useful.

Indeed, our first reaction, after reading about the new craze, was to wonder about the "what ifs."

What if the high-tech tools used to organize such brainless activities could be used to create a social good? What if hundreds of people, contacted by e-mails, instant messages, Web sites and blogs, converged on Boston Common to pick up litter, help the homeless to shelters, and visited their state legislators on the Hill?

Uh-oh. Must have uplift! Must have a purpose! Can't have any aimless fun!

What an unwelcome insight into a pinched little life.

I will bet the author of this piece tried to tell their kids that "raisins were nature's candy".

Read my lips, no more summer classes

You know that point when you're falling asleep, midway between sleeping and waking?

For the past couple of days, the last thing I remember as I'm falling asleep are word problems being plugged into accounting formulas. I'm not trying to remember them, they just start to play themselves out beneath my eyelids.

Right at the point where I'm thinking sleepily, "Oh I know how to do this! You use this formula, and you start with this part..." I fall asleep.

I've never been able to visualize anything mathmatical so vividly before. It feels like my brain has been permanently altered. Very weird.

Done!

I took my final last night. I am never, ever, ever taking a summer class again. The pace in the shorter summer session is just too intense. I don't learn anything because I'm cramming the information, I have no time to do anything summery, and it makes me a nervous wreck.

I came home and immediately had a martini and some ice cream. Oh yeah, comfort foods. Although that particular mix of consumables wasn't a wise one. Hard liquor and sweet milk products don't mix.

This is the best part of my day.

First thing in the morning before anyone else comes in. It's just me and a fresh day and the humming of the air conditioner, and perhaps listening to WBUR on the web while I answer email.

It doesn't get any better than this on a work day.

It's all about the conformity.

BOSTON (AP) State police arrested a teenage boy at Logan International Airport on Friday morning after security officials found a note containing a reference to a bomb inside his luggage. David Socha, 17, of Paxton, was on his way to Honolulu with his parents, but was arrested after security screeners found a profanity-laced note in his checked luggage, said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration. The note said, ''Have you found the bomb yet?'' and then, ''Nope, just clothes,'' according to Davis.

The kid is being charged with making a terrorist threat. Please. Does anyone really believe that this was an actual terrorist threat as opposed to a kid smarting off?

This just illustrates the lack of humor or perpective that has gripped America recently. Gods forbid you question or not take seriously all of the ridiculous paranoia in the name of "security" that has overtaken us.

Remind me to make my contribution to the ACLU.

Oh, and you can buy the above poster here.