I’m Still Scratching My Head!

And shaking it. Am I awake? I am.

I was watching the news, and the music start sup, and the lady comes on and says, “Tonight, we’ll tell you why scratch tickets aren’t the greatest stocking stuffer idea…” I’m like what the hell? What could possibly be wrong with a goddamn scratch ticket? Don’t take away another shred of harmless fun.

And the ridiculous story starts. “If you buy a child a scratch ticket, you could be gambling with their future.” Their demented stupid theory is that the kid will see a scratch ticket like some kind of paper slot machine, and want to buy more and more. Ok, first of all, if the kid is that easy to get hooked on something, s/he must be really young. If s/he is young, the kid isn’t buying the scratch tickets! You have to be 18 to play, and any store clerk with sense isn’t going to sell to 10-year-old little Jimmy.

Second, if the kid is young, s/he probably doesn’t have his/her own money. So mom and dad are buying the scratch tickets, and if the kid asks for too many, well guess who’s going into scratch ticket withdrawal? It’s as simple as that.

If the kid is old enough to pass for 18 and sees scratch tickets like slot machines, the kid probably has bigger issues, and scratch tickets won’t be starting him/her down the path to addictions. There are things like booze and drugs that’ll do that just fine.

Then they went on this bit about “it’s illegal for kids to claim their winnings.” Well duh, that’s why mom and dad will get the money and give it to the kid! My god! We are getting dumber by the minute. We’ll be zombies before my time’s up in this world!

The worst was the two news anchors actually took this story seriously and did a little sad banter back and forth about it! Come on! That’s one of those stories where you have to take the let’s move on approach, not actually stop and think about it.

Ug the news. It’s going to make me go mad. No, it’s this complete lack of common sense that’s going to make me go mad, but the fact that it’s made it to the news just shows how serious it is.

Badda, Ba, Ba, ba, I’m a Cheap Prick.

Oh boy. We now have the most corny and cheap gift possible. Mcdonalds gift cards! I saw an ad for them yesterday, and just about died. The chirpy chipper girl on the ad said, “Why not buy them something you know they already love?” Ok, I’m all about the gift cards. They make things easier for sure. But a gift card from Mcdonalds? I’m all about the thought being what counts, and Christmas not being about how much a gift is, but I think only kids under 12 should be allowed to buy those. If anyone older than that buys someone one of those, it just smacks of a line from the song “Didn’t I Get this Last Year?” from Bob Rivers where he says, “Surprise…surprise, a coupon for some fries, that was really very thoughtful you guys!” Like come on, I think I can come up with a better Christmas gift than, “Here, go buy a cheeseburger.”

Update on the TD Bank Machines

I’m awake, and trying to burn out so I can go back to sleep. So here I am.

Last week, I talked about the new talking feature on the TD bank machines. Well, my number of beefs with them has gone down from 3 to 1. I figured out how to adjust the volume, and you don’t have to enter the decimal point. My only beef now is it doesn’t seem to speak the select a language prompt. But that’s the only prompt it doesn’t speak. So maybe when I send a thank you letter to whoever’s responsible for these machines, I can recommend some braille be fastened to each machine that says which button to push for each language, if they don’t want to tweak the speaking features. I found more cool features, though, so I have more things to rave about than rage about. The machine will even give you an audio orientation to the machine, tell you where your card goes, your money comes out, and where the receipt is printed. It even says please remove your cash when it comes out. You can change where the navigational keys are positioned. They’ve pretty much thought of everything, so I’m damn happy. After all my, and likely some other blinks’ pissing and moaning to tellers, TD now has a machine that’s pretty damn close to perfect!

People Are Strange…When You’re a Stranger.

I dunno, I just thought that title seemed appropriate.

What is with this tendency for blinks on email lists to randomly add people they don’t really know at all to their msn messenger lists? Are they that loneley that they want to get to know new people, and this is the only way they know how?

I’m a little freaked this morning. Wanna know why? I’m on an email list with my email account that is not my messenger address. Still, one of the list members found my messenger address, I don’t know how, and added it to his list. Um, why? I don’t know him from a hole in the ground.

There’s a reason I join email lists with an account that isn’t my messenger address. At one time, that was the account I used for lists. Sometimes, several people who I don’t know at all, aside from answering some question about screen-readers or Microsoft Word, would all add me. Some of them would repeatedly demand voice chats. Some of them had nothing to say, but had to say it often. Some of them just turned into weirdos and pervs. All of them got hoofed!

I’m no longer as freaked as I was. I figured out that he’s one of the guys who added me when I was using my msn address on that old list, and I guess he’s changed accounts. But he’s one of the ones that had nothing to say and said it often. So at least he wasn’t a creep. But I still never understood why he added me in the first place!

Man people are weird.

I don’t know Why I’m Telling This Story, but…

It feels like it has to be told, because every time I tell this story to someone, they laugh their ass off. So, since I’ve been writing all day, I figure what the hell.

In another post, I mentioned some of the weirdos I went to school with. Well one of them gets a starring role in this story.

It’s not really fair to call this guy a weirdo, since what made him weird wasn’t something he could help. He was deafblind, and something a lot of deafblind people do is make noises all the time. I guess it must feel good, and if you don’t realize that no one else is making those noises, why would you stop? Every deafblind person who makes those noises seems to find his or her own unique type of noise. Our starring actor’s sort of sounded like, “o-aa, o-aa, o-aa, o-aa-o-aa-o-aa, o-aa, o-aa.” If I could leave a clip of me making the noise, I would, people tell me that I do a good impression of this guy.

Anyway, one morning, I was sitting in French class. We had a small French class of five, and once a week, one of the students would go into the back room with the teacher and have to talk to him for a few minutes. This was one of those mornings. There were 3 guys, two of whom were twins, and two girls in the French class, the other girl went in the back, so it was the guys and me out there.

As we sat working on various assignments, we heard our deafblind buddy going by. We didn’t think much of it, because they always pass through on their way to somewhere. But this one seemed to be alone, and was taking his sweet time about it. His noise changed from “o-aa, o-aa o-aa o-aa o-aa, o-aa, o-aa,” to something that sounded like an evil genius laugh, and we all sort of giggled. One of the dudes started imitating him, and did a damn good job! This kept me and one of the guys laughing, while the guy doing the imitating got scolded by his brother and told to stop it. He didn’t, which was fine by us, because it was damn funny.

After each utterance our deafblind friend made, the dude in the class would match it. Then, oh then! Something changed. I thought maybe he’d gotten up and moved around the classroom, because now there was an “o-aa, o-aa, o-aa o-aa, o-aa” right behind my head! Then the creator of that noise shook his head violently from side to side. I said, “Um, dude? That was too real.” That’s when I heard my classmate across the room, and realized the one shaking his head behind me was the real thing!
Then we all froze, not really because we were afraid, but because we were kind of in shock. Had we called him? Could he hear us or hear that and follow the sound? Where was the staff that was usually with him?

Then, our teacher came out of the back room. He seemed just as confused as we were. Not really knowing what to do, he just sort of gave our noisy visitor a little shove out towards the hall and said, “There ya go.” I remember the guy closest to me saying, “And that’s going to do what?”

Luckily, a staff that knew him showed up and said to him, “How did you end up here? You’re on the wrong floor!” and promptly whistled him back to where he was supposed to be. I wonder how long he’d been missing?

The weirdest part of this whole thing, if it could get any weirder, was what happened after. Without speaking a word to each other, the guy sitting closest to me, the guy who had been imitating him, and I, started having a competition of who could imitate which deafblind. One of us would go, “aaaaa!”, someone else would go, “pffft pfft pfffttt clap slap clap slap,” and someone else went, “wee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eegguuuuuoouuuu!” And we’d all laugh. What the hell? What made us understand that we all wanted to play a game of name that deafblind dude? And what had the school done to us?

I hope that the story didn’t lose something in the writing. Maybe I can come up with more later. I think people will really think I’m weird now.

This is Scary.

I read about this story, and it freaked me out, and continues to freak me out. This woman went in for a colonoscopy. She was put in a twilight state, that is she was partially sedated. She woke up with semen on her face. The doctor, Aniruddha Chitale, was found guilty. His sentence is disgustingly light, considering he did this to four different women, 180 days in jail and 10 years’ probation? Give me a fucking break.

Anyway, this whole thing freaks me out for a lot of reasons. First, there was a nurse present while this was going on. Why couldn’t she have done something to stop it? I don’t expect her to become wonderwoman and beat this guy down, but I’m sure she could get security or call for some more help. That’s, among other things, her job. That’s the reason they have extra people in the room. To make sure the patient is ok from medical complications, and for extra security for the patient. He did this to four different women. Were these four different nurses? Or does he have a buddy who just happens to turn a blind eye at the right time? I can’t find out that little detail.

Second, I had to have a colonoscopy, and believe me, you don’t remember anything from the time they start sedating you until…well…way afterwards. Here we go into long story ville. A couple of years ago, I was really really really sick, and nobody could figure out why. Since part of the being sick involved a lot of nausea and diarrhea, they decided to test me for everything. In that battery of tests was a scope into my stomach and my colon. Well, they told me they’re definitely doing the stomach, and they may do the other. Isn’t that fun? You don’t even know what’s going to happen.

I’d say the worst part was the stuff they make you drink the night before to clean you out. They call it “go lightly”. I want the inventor of Go Lightly to have a good chug-a-lug of his creation and tell me if that is an apt name. I’ll tell you it’s not. Ug. When they deliver you a 4-litre jug of this stuff and say “drink it all by midnight,” it tastes absolutely horrid, and you’re fighting over the bathroom you share with 2 other women because they have to go just as bad for different reasons, you’re going. Oh you’re going. But I would never call it lightly. I still remember the nurse saying, “Do you want a commode? You’re going to have to go fast and furious.” That’s one thing that’ll make me cry.

Then the time came for the big test. I was scared shitless, and afraid to do anything. I wanted to have a shower, but I didn’t quite know when they were coming for me, so was afraid to go ahead and do it. Plus I didn’t really know where the shower was. I knew where the john was, but had no idea about the shower. Then I didn’t know what they’d let me wear for this test. I had a pretty good idea they were doing both tests when they told me all I could wear was the gown. I had to take off everything metal. And then they wheeled me in. That was creepy. I was perfectly able to walk, but I had to be wheeled on a weird bed thing. The guy in the elevator really freaked me out. He said to me, “I’ve met you before.” I said “oh?” He said, “Yeah, last week, when you were in the ER…you had had your fill of emerge.” I just stared at him, dumbfounded. I couldn’t remember what I could have possibly said. I’m sure I would have been angry about the whole process of what happened the two times I went to the ER because of this crazy illness, I waited a few hours and was told to go home. But did I say it to this complete stranger? Hopefully not! Maybe I was on the cell phone home, saying I was coming home and nothing happened. Anyway, enough babble.

So I get there, and they’re hooking me up to all these machines, and sticking something weird on my nose for oxygen. I’m glad they were all women, because before I knew it, woosh, they were opening my gown and sticking things to my boobs, I guess to monitor my heart. To relax myself, I started playing games with my breathing to make the beeps change. I’m weird. Then they were trying to find a vein. They couldn’t find one, story of my life. I was starting to freak, starting to think I was going to have to do this without any drugs. Then an anesthesiologist came to help. He eventually got it in with a kids’ needle or something. As the sedative hit, I looked up at him, grinned, and said, “You rock!” There was a pause, and a British voice said, “Thank you!” I was told that he was beaming, and is very seldom told that he rocks. Then something was sprayed down my throat to numb it. I was told it will taste terrible. I think I said to her, “That’s terrible? Try Go Lightly!”

…and…there is a large chunk of time that is absent. Actually, it’s more like a camera flashes and someone tells me it’s hours later. But there is no lag. There is no sense that I have slept for a while. Even when I was in a car accident that gave me a concussion, I had the sense that time was passing. I just don’t have any recollection of a few days except for confused snatches of sounds and smells. But anyway. I was told before the test that I would be kept partially awake through this whole thing so they could ask me questions about pain and so on. I never expected complete amnesia of the time period. I thought I’d just feel stoned or something. Apparently, it’s written on my report that I was very talkative. Um what did they give me? Sedative, or truth serum? What exactly did I say to them? Was I a whiny baby? I’ll never know.

The next time I knew what time it was, it was about 2 in the afternoon and I had a slightly sore throat, a hoarse voice, and a need to repeat all my thoughts to the nurses and poor Steve, who got a very annoying phone call home. . Apparently, I told him in about six different ways that I was fine, the scope went ok, I don’t remember a thing, they made me take my favourite necklace off, I told the anesthesiologist he rocked after he was able to find a vein, I think mom and dad are coming home, or did they come home. But these thoughts all just kept coming in random order and it didn’t matter how many times he told me I’d said that before, I’d say it again! I remember asking the nurses, “Is it over? What time is it? Where’s mom? They’re going home…but how will they get in? They have my keys? What time is it? Is it over? Where’s mom and dad? what time is it? …” you get the idea. Then, mom and dad came back with my mail and my medicine, and this is where memory just becomes foggy. I remember trying to read a braille wedding invitation. I was reading the braille sideways. it made no sense, but I kept on reading it. I’d miss whole lines and just let my hand land on some braille and try and read it. I’m sure that was pretty funny to watch, because they knew what it said! They had the print, and what I was reading, well, wow it didn’t make sense.

But the point of this whole rambling mess is the period from the time they sprayed my throat to several hours later when I started repeating myself is non-existent for me. If someone told me what happened during that time, I would have to believe them because it’s gone for me. As much as I’m grateful for the lack of memory I have of the scope, as I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant, it was still a freaky experience to have a drug have the power to make me forget what happened to me for a time. Now I read the story of a sexual assault, and the freakiness of the whole thing amplifies to horror. A doctor could so easily get away with this. The patient wouldn’t remember, and if she didn’t wake up with semen on her face and get it swabbed, she wouldn’t have had a hope of proving it! I’d seen things like that happening to people on shows like Law and Order, but at the time I went in, I wasn’t worried, because there were a couple nurses in there, so I was sure no funny business was going to happen. But now that it has, all I can think is, what a thought! And, that could have been me! I’m so glad it wasn’t! But it could have easily been me.

Smart Dog? Dumb Master? Dumb Dog and Master?

A Doberman Pinscher named Victoria figured out that she could turn on a stove, and after one showing of this new trick causing a minor fire, her master didn’t fix it so Victoria couldn’t get to repeat it. Victoria repeated it while her master was gone. Now her apartment is gutted.

Here’s a tip for ya. If you know woofy can turn on the stove, when you leave home, make sure woofy can’t get to the stove to turn it on! It’s as simple as that. I can’t figure out who’s dumber here. Is it Victoria for causing a fire once and not figuring out, “oo maybe I shouldn’t do that again.” or is it her owner, Caroline Wheeler, who was home for the first incident, so knew the dog did it, probably had to pay for the cleanup of the first fire damage, and never made sure that when she was gone, her dog was unable to get near the stove. I think Victoria was smarter, because I can’t expect her to make the connection between her flicking a switch and the fire because it probably took a while for the fire to happen. But she figured out how to turn on the stove! That’s pretty impressive. She survived the ordeal, and it seems her master has finally thought to prevent it. Now hopefully she doesn’t figure out how to turn on the iron!

Tis the Season to…huh?

Am I going deaf, or does anyone else, while not really paying attention to the TV hear, clear as a bell, “Tis the season to wallow?” Then you realise it’s “Tis the season to wow them,” because a commercial for Best Buy starts. But every single time I hear that commercial, I think it’s saying wallow! All I can think is “Now that doesn’t sound very festive.”

Why?

Tell me why some geniuses created the Micro Grill. Just try. It’s a grill in your microwave. It does everything a grill does, just as fast, but it’s in your microwave! So…just buy a grill! The only difference, besides it being in your microwave is you can put it in the dishwasher. Yee ha~! So your dishwasher can try and get it clean, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, like it does the rest of your dishes…if you have a dishwasher.

They even make you buy it for 90 bucks. 3 easy payments of $29.95 my ass! It’s 90 bucks! And that’s before the bastards known as shipping and taxes come along for the ride. Come on, I think I could get a single person grill, at least, for cheaper than that. And it’s self-contained, so, quelle surprise, when your microwave breaks, you don’t fuck yourself out of two appliances.

And here comes the ridiculous part. It claims to block microwaves. How do we know this? Why not just grill your food, and then you’ll know there are no microwaves in it.

If this came before the invention of the grill, I could see calling its inventors geniuses for real, not sarcastically. But now it just looks stupid. Or can anyone see a sensible reason why you would grill in your microwave instead of just buying a grill?

Decisions, Decisions!

Which is more disturbing? Someone who cannot possibly see that they are inconsiderate, selfish, obnoxious and demanding, or someone who suddenly asks you if they are selfish, inconsiderate, obnoxious or demanding, and you say, well, sometimes a little, but it’s no big deal, and then they try to force their personality to fit into what you may want like some kind of shapeshifter?

I had an, well, acquaintance, who has already tried to make himself a boyfriend, even though he will never admit it, acted like a semi-stalker, and then wonders why I won’t tell him my deepest, darkest secrets. The other day, he said he was having some trouble connecting with people and wondered if he was doing something wrong. He said to me, “I always feel like I’m unloading on you. Am I?”

I thought. and thought. and thought. I’m a terrible liar, and I like to be honest with people wherever I can. I admit sometimes I stay silent, not saying what I think, but if someone asks me a question point blank, well…I have a hard time squirming away from the truth. I thought some more. Sometimes it does feel like he’s unloading on me and not leaving me any time to talk. He’ll message me late at night and scream that he has a computer question and he needs help right now. Sometimes he’ll call and talk for long times and talk about nothing, or ask vague questions where you know there’s more to it.

But then again, he’s not exactly someone I feel comfortable unloading on. You know how you have certain friends who just make you laugh, but you wouldn’t tell them anything serious? Maybe you have some friends who you can always lean on, and they lean on you too, and then there are the friends who seem to lean on you more than you lean on them, and part of the reason is you’re pretty sure they can’t handle it, or would say something that would hurt. He’s one of the third type, and I keep him at an extra distance because of the creepy factor that he’s shown me before.

But he does ask me how I am, which is more than I can say for some of my friends who just talk and talk and talk and they might as well be talking to a machine.

So I thought some more. I decided to tell him, “Well, sometimes, when you call late at night and need computer help right now, without asking if I can do it, it feels like you’re demanding. But part of it is me just giving in and helping you without standing up for myself. Sometimes, you just call and rant and you don’t even ask if I have time or whatever. But at least sometimes, you ask how I am, which is good. So don’t really worry about it. It just might be nice to be asked at 10 at night if I’m up for helping with the computer before dumping the problem on me. Other than that, no biggy, don’t worry.”

Next, I get this creepy email that says something like, “Do you want me to change, or just stay the same?” Um, what do you want to do? It’s not about what I want, it’s what you want. I don’t want to order you to change your personality, and I don’t want you to put on an act for me. I told him to just be himself, I didn’t want any kind of forced change. I said if change was going to happen, it was going to be an evolution.

Then I get this call. It was so fake. It was like he was holding himself back, thinking about every single sentence as if it was a move in chess. It was mercifully short, interrupted by a call waiting beep, but even as short as it was, It was creepy. It was, just, ug. And part of me wonders if it was ug on its own merits, or if it was ug because of who he is, who he has been.

What is it with people who think a friendship is like a scientific or mathematical formula, and if they just add x and subtract y, it will all work out? It makes me sad, because they must have 0 ability to read social queues, so of course they must be confused. But how does someone learn something like that? How does a person grow a gut instinct? Are they doomed to wander around lost, unable to really take direction and apply it without it looking fake? And then I wonder if I’ve created a monster by being honest, when I probably should have known that he couldn’t possibly take what I said the way it was intended and said “oh no, not at all. Don’t worry.”

ThenI wonder if I’m doing what I always couldn’t stand about dad. No matter what you did, it was wrong. If you were silent when he was yelling at you, you were just being stubborn. But if you said something back, you were being argumentative and lippy. If you helped out, but not precisely the way he wanted you to, you weren’t doing it right. But if you tried to stay out of the way, you were being lazy. If you played outside on a Saturday, you weren’t doing enough schoolwork. But if you did homework for too long, you weren’t getting enough fresh air! Arg! So here I go. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said, “I wish the people who are so inconsiderate would realize how they’re driving their friends away and stop to think of others for a second!” Now this person has, and I just want him to go back to being himself, because this new way of acting just seems forced, and fake, and…well…manipulative! I wonder what he’s up to! I can’t trust that this is genuine! So what do I really want?

Then I think, maybe he’s trying, in his own misguided way, to be a better friend, but he’s clueless about how to do it, so I shouldn’t be so hard on him.

Finally I wonder if I’m making this way too complicated and I should just follow my gut. So am I nuts? Is one worse than the other? Or maybe the key is to meet in the middle somewhere.