http://www.dft.gov.uk/drivingchallenge/

This is a link to a quiz which wants to show you the dangers of talking on a cell phone while driving, hands free or not. You are driving down a road and need to hit the space bar whenever you hear the person on the phone ask you a question while you are also counting points for every yellow or red tee shirt you see.

19% of the people who take this quiz pass it.

My score: I missed 8 questions
I was absolutely dead on for tee shirt points

The only thing that irks me: Did I pass the bloody test or not? What do you think?

P.S. I am really impressed with myself for not only seeing all tee shirts but also for counting correctly. I had to drive and do math and listen to this woman drone on about shopping and parking. Math, sweeties. I don't generally DO math, sweeties.

http://videogum.com/archives/cute-as-balls/amelie-jr-1_033501.html?utm_source=bb&utm_medium=mc

You have to check this out, people. Oh the humanity! And les animales!!!!

(Yes, I stole this from someone. But she left it as a comment to one of my posts, so I'm not a total thief. No, lion, do not take my magical powers away and make a dead person in heaven! NOOO!)

hi people! This is being composed one fingered no less, on my I-phone so it will be short and to the point . God , I really have to figure out how to write with borg hands , but no, I am better with one. Go figure.

I am sitting on a park bench somewhere in San Francisco and have been reading Dracula while simultaneously eavesdropping on people going by. These two middleaged bums just walked past wearing tie dye shirts and military bomber jackets arguing how hiw drunk one of them got Friday night. Jacket dude says: "Dude, you were drunk Friday night." Spoken in tones of impressed amusement. "You drank a whole fifth, didn't you?".

"Dude," tie dye protested, "I drank a fifth AND a pint! I was hella drunk!".

I felt sort of sad because I coud picture them having this same exact conversation 20 years ago when they were in their twenties when they had control of the bottle instead of the other way around.

Saturday night I put on a blue dress and silver heels and went clubbing. Me!

Dirty danced with some guy who then could not take a hint and thought he was taking me home, but Liz ran interference for me and he finally gave up. Jesus!

Also , I had the crazy experience of swing dancing to Sisters of Mercy pretty much in time with the beat and in three kinch spike heels. Holy shit!

Yesterday I wandered around Union Square and made my way to Liz's fabulous apartment. We wandered around for a bit, and watched "Donnie Darko" and "Grindhouse". I laughed my ass off at the ending of "Grindhouse". That was great! I need to own this movie. "Donnie Darko" was sad and disturbing but it was on my list of movies I never saw but needed to.

Anyway, I am going to try to post this before it gets monstrously long because if it does not work, the more I type, the more pissed off I will be.

B

I just got sucked into an hour long conversation about New Orleans with a man who was displaced by Katrina just like me. The conversation started because of Hurricane Gustav - which according to my sources - may be heading for New Orleans, at the moment that looks more likely than Texas, but of course that could change, especially this far out in the projected future.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon reading my archives from just before and just after Katrina. After all Friday is the third anniversary of when Katrina hit. So I've been living in Houston nearly three years now which doesn't seem quite right in some respects but then feels natural.

This man desperately wants to go back to Mandeville where he used to live. He talked about Napoleon House in New Orleans and I remembered going there when I lived in the Quarter (and after) and for the first time since Katrina I started feeling a little, dare I even say it, nostalgic??? Where are THESE feelings coming from? I am done with New Orleans.

Maybe because I no longer have to worry about the house? About paying for damage? About the city using me for batting practice?

Sometimes all I can remember are the bad, annoying, disgusting things about New Orleans. The stench, the garbage, the laziness, the monotony, the drudgery, the way it was three times as hard to do things like get utilities, groceries, normal things. I forget the magic. Or I try damn hard to.

He tells me Houston is not home. He wants to go home.

I look at him and wonder to myself where my home is. I don't know. I keep coming back to that and to the idea that I can't let myself settle in, settle down, because it will all be taken away from me just when I am finally happy.

( New Orleans was home once, but it isn't anymore. )

That's an easy one - the new Night Stalker series with Stuart Townsend and Gabrielle Union. ABC really screwed us over when they canceled the series in the middle of a two-part episode. Plus, they also showed episodes out of the original order and gave it basically no shot.

The series went to DVD and to the Sci Fi Channel, I believe, and when it is watched in the order it should go, it becomes even more clear that this series deserves a second chance. Only I wouldn't put it on network television, I'd revamp it and put it on HBO where it could get really involved and gritty and real.

Plus, Stuart Townsend. Come ON.

Link: The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test written by wolfcaroling on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(wolfcaroling)

I think I'm more one minute to midnight than noon and I thought that's what it said when I took the quiz. Oh, well. Most of it is correct, except for the worries part. Me always have worries, I just don't think about them all the time!

Oh my fucking god. Throats are being cleared all around me. I am being slowly and methodicallly driven insane.

One is a guy with a normal clearing sound that wouldn't bother me (much) if he didn't do it once a minute and generally in unision with the woman who is the true problem.

She has one of those sultry voices that at first sound attractive but then the more you listen to her jabber on the phone and give her fake little laugh, the more you begin to realize it grates. It really grates.

Then she catches a cold and starts clearing her throat in a dainty, suspended sort of fashion.

Sort of like.

Er.....ummmmmm. Little bits of stuff sound caught in her throat and she purringly explores them as she draws out her clearing.

A shudder of revulsion makes it nearly impossible for me to continue typing. Goddamnit. My only hope is that everyone around me is moving cubes next week and SHE WILL BE VANQUISHED.

Oh, yuck. Yet again she clears her throat. And then, as if by magic, so does the guy.

I. Am. In. Hell.

I cannot let the day go by without posting something so here is a little of my usual nothing. :)

I dressed in an orange sweater and flirty black skirt today with my boots and felt very witchy/autumnal.

Tonight I'm wearing black pants and a black shirt with a stylized copper moon that is shaped like a heart and several copper bats are flitting out of it towards my right shoulder.

Goliad was unchanged as ever, but the weather was gorgeous. Crisp and cool and I think my favorite part of the weekend was sitting out on the battlement drinking hard cider and watching the sunset. Until I jumped down and dropped the bottle and it smashed to pieces. Luckily the cider was all gone. Whew!

Harvest moon was pumpkin orange this year and coincided with our trip.

I rented a car, a strange little gold Chevy HHR which is sort of like a PT Cruiser I guess. Zippy was the adjective that came to my mind as I, well, zipped along the country roads.

The people at the fortress had the gall to rearrange the furniture in our bedroom and the first thing Tom and I did after setting down our stuff was to totally rearrange it the way it has always been.

The new way made it easier to make the beds since they weren't pushed against the stone walls, but made the room small and cramped and really, what is the point of having an arched mullioned window if it can't let the moonlight beam down directly onto your sleeping face just like some gothic novel????

We were going to rearrange before we left, but we said fuck it and left it as is.

I poured some champagne on the grave of the woman who rests just outside the chapel. I hope she enjoyed it, it was from France, darling! ;)

Tonight we're watching the uncut version of "Wicker Man" with Austin and Kristen. One of my favorite lines in that movie is as follows:

Stupid Police Bastard: Those women out there are jumping over that bonfire NAKED!

Lord Summerisle: Well you wouldn't want their clothes to catch on fire would you?

Dirty minded Catholic asshole. The female form is a beautiful thing. Male form too now I think about it.

And this may sound like I'm bragging, but honestly, I think I look quite thin in my Halloween clothes tonight. I'm about ten pounds away from my ultimate goal I think. I cannot believe I haven't eaten pizza in eight months, but I'd rather have nice clothes than a pizza I think.

Okay, enough damn rambling.

Happy Halloween!

I know, I know it's Wednesday, but JESUS CHRIST THE CUTENESS OF THIS KITTEN! I have such cool friends!

I'm siting at my desk experiencing an ever increasing sense of disconnected free form irritation.

Papers rustling - how goddamn annoying

J clearing his throat - oh, no, please stop. Please, please stop before I punch you

My messy desk that needs to be packed up today so I can move to a fucking touch down room (a tiny hole with one table and a phone because we are hiring a new attorney who starts on Monday and the building is being restructured and there are no available free cubicles so I have to be shunted to the hole while the attorney gets my cube because I am a fucking nobody lowly peon.

As J points out, without a college degree choices can be limited. Yeah? No shit.

Just as I realize I have PMS (in itself making me feel wrathful), my goddamn phone rings and it's the traveling corporate nurse.

Can I come down for a random drug and alcohol screening in half an hour?

This is why I don't walk around armed. Except with a bottle of fucking water which I have to chug so I can successfully pee into a cup.

I don't want to even think about what a monster I'm going to be on Monday. Maybe it's a good thing I'll have a door I can close to shut me away from the rest of the world.

I can't wait to go home tonight and dive into a glass of champagne.

Crap, J just cleared his throat for the 30th time in an hour.

Maybe I will need a bubble bath too.

I wish I could twirl my head around my neck like Regan in the Exorcist. That might bleed off some of this malevolent wrath I've got building here.

Must go drink water, goddamnit.

I do not like it when people refer to going on trips to see the fall foliage as "leaf peeping". What? People, you are going on foliage tours. Leaf peeping sounds like you are trying to see the leaves doing something naughty or undressing without knowing you are watching them.

It's just wrong.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact I don't like the word "peep" too much as well. It's not very dignified really.


We decorated for Halloween this weekend. Our place looks pretty spooktacular. (Yeah, I know, I know. I bitch about "leaf peeping" but I don't have a problem with "spooktacular". I am a quixotic creature to be sure.)

I bought a paperback book at Kroger's during the weekly shopping. "The Other Bolyen Girl" about Anne's sister, Mary. I've always had a thing for this era in England's history and a sort of fascination for Anne Boleyn. I stood on top of her grave at the Tower of London one August afternoon a few years ago and it was one of the weirdest moments of my life.

Anyway, I recommend the novel and look forward to the movie coming out soon starring Scarlet Johansson and Natalie Portman and some guy I never heard of as Henry. (Although the cover of the book reveals he is rather cute, although not a red head which is disappointing, but whatever. On second peep (heh), maybe he does have dark red hair but that's not how I picture the Tudor red hair color. It was always red gold in my head, but then I was not there so I cannot bitch too loudly.

I am rambling, so I will stop here and post.

 A and I went shopping at Target for our lunch today.  I needed some fall clothes.  

Guess what, people?   I found two skirts that fit - size 8!  Woo!  Of course the jeans and the pants didn't fit, but I have sort of calculated that I'll be at ideal weight in November and so I've got two months to go - roughly 15 pounds or so.  

I am proud of me!

Yesterday J, A, V and I went to lunch with S.  (She doesn't work in our department, but she is funny as hell.)

We got into some strange discussion (us?  No way!) about drinking.  S was suggesting that if American kids were brought up allowed to drink wine in limited amounts, etc., drinking would be no damn big thing.  That's how they do it in Europe and it seems to work just fine.

J was disparaging.  "Kids are still gonna get to college and get shitfaced drunk," he insisted. "It's a rite of passage."
  
"Yes," I agreed, "but they won't be likely to drink 21 shots on their 21st birthdays and drop dead of alcohol poisoning."

"Maybe," he allowed, "but they are still gonna do 10 shots at a frat party and end up with their skirt up to their chin in the back of somebody's pick up."  

"Well," I said, "that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun!"  

He had to agree.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As usual, bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (79) !!!
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66) !
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
The Historian : a novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
Foucault's Pendulum ( (This fricking horrible piece of shit is the worst book I ever tried to read…) (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and Sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52) !!!
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
The Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being(49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-Five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44) 

Finally! I read a question and answer in a advice column today that actually made sense. What a crazy concept!

This girl wrote in to say that she'd caught herpes from her ex boyfriend and she takes medication for it.

She started seeing a new guy and when things got to the point where they wanted it to become physical, she told him about the herpes. Well, he freaked out and broke up with her apparently telling her she'd wasted his time and should have told him right off the bat so he wouldn't have kept seeing her. (As a side note, I started seeing red around this point in the letter. Jesus, I hate people sometimes.)

She told the advice columnist that she didn't feel comfortable telling people right off the bat she had herpes, but maybe she had overlooked something and should have told him sooner. She asked for advice about what to do next time, presuming she ever got the courage to go out on another date.

The advice columnist said:

Keep the same time table when you tell him but next time date a kinder guy.

And, shock factor here people, she DID NOT take the PC High Road and seize the opportunity to lecture about using protection even if she was on medication.

An advice columnist who gives a person accountability and good advice. Whoa.

Just when I was about to give up reading the damn things, something sane comes out. Oh, well.

Well, Kristen and I went to Massage Envy yesterday and got massages. I had had one supposedly deep tissue massage at the Houstonian in May for Admin Day but it didn't feel deep to me. I was expecting to be sore the next day and be congested,etc. but nothing.

Well, yesterday hurt me, man. But I told her to. Last night some terrific bruises came out on my arm and there's this one very sore muscle in my right leg (right side of my body needs more help I guess) that hurts even as I type this.

Ow in a good way.

I became a member and so now I get a massage once a month. God, the decadence of my life. A and I are going shopping for some new fall clothes for me next week and we'll see if I can fit on any size 8s yet.

My Tiffany bracelet was a good investment because I wear the damn thing every day and I'm on my second bottle of Armani Code perfume.

So yeah, I still get clothes at Target and Ross, but I sometimes wonder if Future Mina will be wearing something a bit more upscale?

I must be in my rampant materialism stage, but that's cool.

Next stop Mustang GT, baybee!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20920371/site/newsweek/?GT1=10357


This shit just gets better and better.

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=276713>1=7703

Can anybody think of anything more disturbingly horrible, not to mention excruciatingly funny, as a Christian Theatre Group? Can't. Stop. Laughing. Can't. Breathe. From. Laughing. Flashback to Touch of the Child. Laughing. Hurts. But. Feels. So. Good.

I also think it's great that these assholes spent 90,000 fucking dollars on a stupid ad to say it's not okay to mock Christ instead of spending it on some sort of charity, which you have to say, might have been a better option. 90,000 to charity with a little publicity blurb about how they are doing it to counter Kathy's mocking attitude or 90,000 for a nonintentionally hysterically funny, whiny stupid ass ad in USA Today? You tell me what would Jesus do?

Oh, and the best thing? I may not reach all the USA Today readers (are there that many??? Every bored person at a hotel, I guess...), but I get to mock Christ for free right here. Although technically I'm mocking some of his followers, but whatever, it's still free. And with impunity...

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Tansy Saturn (Kinda catchy. I'd dance to it.)
2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Coffee Oatmeal (WTF?)
3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
M. Sey (Um. Riight.)
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Gold Lion (Okay, this sounds like a hotel.)
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Lee Manchester (What a bitch.)
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Seymi ( Don't even know how to pronounce this.)
7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put "The")
The Purple Champagne (What kind of superpowers would I have? The ability to be dark and bubbly even under the most trying of circumstances???)
8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Ernie Phillip (Yee Haw)
9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy)
Armani Ghiardelli (Better make them fifty dollar bills, boys...)
10. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names)
Lee Lemuel (I need protection from this name.)