Cabin Fever

Who cares if it's cold and rainy, time to get my *color refreshed!

The bright streak in front is really fuschia, the camera just shows it as really bright red.

Unlike most other alternative kids who came of age in the eighties, I never did much experimenting with permanent hair dye. I mostly played around with semi-permanent solutions that were woefully ineffective on my dark hair.

In middle school, I owned two types of mousse that were supposed to dye your hair purple and red. You could barely see them on my hair.

Not even if you put a lot on.

A little later in middle school, I worked up the nerve to bleach out two locks of hair. Woo woo.

Then, I dated the Cape Cod equivalent of a redneck and took on his values and it never occured to me to dye my hair weird colors, even though I admired them on other people.

Then I went to college and started meeting more interesting people than the redneck. Then I started working as an exotic dancer (the redneck would've flipped) and doing anything too weird to my hair was out. Bad for business.

I did get part of it shaved though. The rest of my hair mostly covered it up. I still have my old student ID with my partially shaved head.

I went through a natural phase and dabbled in henna. Black henna. It didn't really blacken my hair, it left a greeny black tinge. And it made a godawful mess and took hours.

That turned me off hair dying for approximately seven years.

The spell was broken when a friend gave me a red semi-permanent dye job. It looked a bit unfortunate. People go grey early in my family and everyone at family gatherings assumed that it was a "cover up the grey" dye job.

I quit working as a dancer, but I got nagged for the longest time into keeping the long hair. Then, the time was right and I went to an absolutely wonderful Iranian woman who cut my hair brillantly super-short and gave me beautiful blonde highlights. It was the most amazing, transformative haircut I've ever had.

I've let it go and I've kept it up, but I've always had some sort of color in my hair ever since.

*P.S. I am really tired in this picture. Even my nose looks tired. I fell asleep at the hairdressers while I was lying back and waiting for the fuschia streaks to take. I dreamed that my hair was wet after taking a shower and I remember thinking in the dream that I had to go up and get a towel out of the linen closet and then I woke up.

Ptooey

It's late March.

We were supposed to have a nice weekend.

Not only did we not get our nice weekend, it's overcast and only four degrees above freezing.

Can I throw a pity party now? weeps

Movie Night

Finally finished Kwaidan, which has been taking fuck-all forever because it's a collection of stories which we've been watching one story at a time.The movie is based on several stories from a book on Japanese folklore called, strangely enough, Kwaidan. The movie is slow but rewarding, if you like Japanese culture or weird folklore, you should check it out.

I've developed a happy knack for hunting down weird movies with supernatural themes. I happened across Kwaidan quite randomly when clicking through the Independent Film Channel's offerings, but we currently have recorded Onibaba and have Don't Look Now out from Netflix.

Give 'em hell Jesse

In recent months same-sex marriage activists have rounded up a host of clergy, labor unions, legislators, legal experts, elders, mental health professionals and kids of gay parents to speak out against a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

And on March 22, they rolled out the "tough guy" contingent: former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura and State Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci, a former Golden Gloves champ.

His days as a bald-pated, boa-wearing body slammer behind him, the 6'4" Ventura attended the press conference clad in jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. He dismissed the claims of amendment proponents who say marriage needs protection.

"Now, if it's the defense of something, that means it's under attack," he said. "And I'm trying to figure out how - my wife, the former first lady of Minnesota, and I have been married now for 28 years - how is my marriage under attack if two gays or lesbians down the street want to make a lifelong commitment to themselves? I don't get that

Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal!

DAYTON, Tennessee, March 19 (AFP) - Officials in a rural Tennessee county held a five-minute emergency session to scrap an anti-gay resolution that earlier this week triggered a national furor, but failed to quash the controversy.

But the controversy was far from over, since many Rhea County residents, including Crystal Lawson, found the wording of the rescinded motion was not the one Fugat proposed Tuesday night.

In Tuesday's meeting, Fugat said: "What is pertaining to homosexual marriages that's going on across our country, I'd like to make a motion that those kind of people cannot live in Rhea County or abide in Rhea County. If they are caught in Rhea County living together as such, they should be tried for crimes against nature.

All eight members of the panel supported Fugat, but some later disavowed their votes, saying they thought they were voting for a ban on gay marriage.

Don't they sound like a bunch of geniuses? "Gollee! I voted for something I didn't understand!"

On the other hand, I view it as a good sign that they clearly think it's preferable to have people think that they're too stupid to be let out without a minder than it is to have people know that they're flaming bigots.

For a long time, predujice directed at gays has been the last expression of bigotry that people have felt comfortable being open about. Feeling shame, feeling the need to hide their bigotry, preferring to look like abject morons as opposed to owing up to their bigotry, that's all a step forward.

Indian Winter

I told you we were getting snow. No one listens to Zathras.

Next to My Steps

Supposed to snow again tomorrow though. Feh.

I Love This Air Filter

I never thought I'd be this enthusiastic about a household device that wasn't a coffee maker or a vibrator, but I love this air filter. It's huge and it's noisier than I'd like, but goddamit, it works.

It's turned me from Pathetic Sniffly Allergy Girl back into a human being. I've had it less than 24 hours, and it's the first time in ages that I haven't had to blow my nose immediately after waking up. My head is clear, my senses alert, I swear that my skin even feels cleaner.

If It Was A Snake...

I've indicated that I don't work with the brightest of bulbs?

Dense Coworker: Do you need a copy of this? (waves a report in my general direction)

Me: No thanks, I got my copy this morning. (While standing four feet away from you, but who's keeping track.)

(Dense Coworker looks vaguely at the papers in her hands)

DC: I have...two copies. Why did NumbersGuy give me two reports?

Me: We each have two reports. One's in company name order, the other's in customer number order.

DC: Oh, that's right. I remember NumbersGuy mentioning that this morning. I should have remembered that.

Me: (Or possibly you should, you know, actually look at what's in your hand. There's an idea.)

Finally!

(stands up)

Hi everyone. My name is Marina and I used to live in the suburbs. Sometimes you can tell, like when I get way too excited about cheap stylish furniture and Swedish meatballs coming my way. Weeee!

I miss regular access to an IKEA much more than I miss anything else about having lived in the Mid-Atlantic. I may even have to visit the New Haven store to keep my spirits up.

Tricksey spammers, we hates them.

Disembodied voice from the next cubicle.

Coworker: This virus is tricky. They're getting smarter.

(Because you know, computer viruses evolve, the human element has nothing to do with it.)

Me: (I'm afraid to ask, but my duty compells me.) How so?

Coworker: It tricked me into opening it.

Me: !?!?

Coworker: But there was no attachment.

(Sound of crickets chirping.)

Me: Wait, there was no attachment? How do you know it was a virus?

Coworker: Well I opened the email and it was just an ad for Viagra.

Me: That's spam, not a virus.

Coworker: Well, it was really sneaky.

Really sneaky, eh?

I guess if I left early without telling anyone or ate all the cookies, that would make me a virus.

No More Bare Walls

I just got my ReadyMade and they had a piece on Blik wall decals. Why weren't these around when I was living in an apartment or the townhouse with white walls of doom?

They're like Wallies, but for people who prefer modern shapes or Space Invaders on their walls instead of Precious Moments figures or folk art chickens.

Now I just have to figure out where I would put something like this.

What Would Jesus Drive?

Courtesy of New England Anomaly,

"NEW BRITAIN -- A local woman with psychological problems purposely drove her car into the water at A.W. Stanley Quarter Park in an attempt to re-enact a scene from the blockbuster film, "The Passion of the Christ," police said."

"She drove her vehicle partly off the bank. Just the front of the car was in the water," said Sgt. Darren Pearson. "According to the officers on the scene, she told them she was attempting to reenact a scene from the movie, ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ which she said she had recently seen."

No More Sharing

One of my co-workers just got back from vacation.

She wants to give us a through description of everything she did.

"First we got up. The bathroom had a nice large shower. Then we went to breakfast and had toast. We met this nice couple that was also staying at the Bed and Breakfast. Then we went to lunch. I forgot my umbrella, so I had to go back to the B'nB to go get it. Then we went on a tour."

What could be better than listening to that for two hours?

Recently Watched

We like to save movies to TIVO that catch our eye and we finally watched The Emperor and the Assassin on Sunday night. What a great movie!

We had no idea what it was about. The Spousal Unit had a vague idea it was something Hong Kong action-y and having just watched Big Trouble in Little China for the umpteenth time, it seemed like a good way of rounding out the evening. Oh boy was that impression wrong. The Emperor and the Assassin is a beautiful epic tragedy.

If you're the sort of person who will watch and enjoy "the Scottish play" or *Richard the III, you should watch The Emperor and the Assassin, it completely sucked us in within five minutes.

*Even though Gandalf's evil and that's so wrong.

Also, a few days earlier we finally watched a TIVO-ed copy of the orginal Cat People. This movie has a well-deserved excellent reputation, it's a subtle, psychological thriller with a bit of the supernatural thrown in.

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will observe that the hero is a classic Lovecraftian type. He's a sensible modern American tangling in matters that are beyond his ken and woefully ill-equipped to deal with sinister secrets originating from Old Europe.

Although that makes me wonder, how did this movie got produced during World War II? I wouldn't have thought that'd be an approved message for the times.