Bada, ba, ba, ba, I’m Puffin’ Up.

Wow. This is just ridiculous. Jeromy Jackson of Morgantown ordered 2 Quarter Pounders without cheese. He told several people he wanted no cheese because he was allergic to it. He still got cheese. He had a reaction. They had to rush him to the hospital. McDonalds agreed to pay his medical bill. that wasn’t good enough for him. He’s now suing them for 10 million bucks.

Ok, I understand getting pissed off and telling McDonalds what they did. I understand, if they refused, maybe getting them to pay the medical bills. But this suit, well, cheeses me off. First off, McDonalds apologized and agreed to pay first half, then all of his $700 medical bills. I think that’s really good of them. Most places just give you a gift certificate if you eat bad food there. That’s what Steve got when he got poisoned by Pizza hut.

And this guy’s mother and a friend were in on the suit, saying they risked their lives getting him to the hospital. Well, if that’s a reasonable cause to sue, you’d better hope you never need an ambulance, because the driver could sue you for having to endanger his life to save yours.

Another weird thing about the description of how this whole thing played out was when this guy started to have a reaction, his mother and friend didn’t immediately call 911 or start rushing him to the hospital. They called McDonalds to complain about the order, and seemed upset that their call was cut short because his reaction got really bad and they realized they had to rush him to the hospital. Ok?

The weirdest thing to me is if you know you have a life-threatening allergy to cheese, wouldn’t you, um, look under the bun before you ate it, just in case they screwed up? You know people make mistakes. Wouldn’t you be careful? People with nut allergies are expected to be super vigilant. Why wouldn’t this guy do the same? It’s cheese. It would be pretty easy to spot.

Ug stupid lawsuits. I feel sorry for McDonalds. First there was Stella and her hot coffee and now this.

Film At 11…Almost

This is the stupidest thing I’ve read today by a wide margin.

Actual headline:
Live Newscast Nearly Interrupted By Police Chase Crash

SANFORD, Fla. — A car involved in a police pursuit went flying down a street and slammed into another car Thursday morning, right in front of a Channel 9 news crew.

The police pursuit in Sanford nearly interrupted a live broadcast on Eyewitness News around 7:00am. Police said they were following a Suburban spotted in a gas station theft when it crashed several hundred feet from the Eyewitness News crew.

In other equally useful news, I didn’t jump off of the balcony today, there was a 50% chance that Carin could have been born a boy, and it would be raining if it wasn’t nice out right now.

A First Time for Everything

I really don’t know how to start this post, so here goes.

Thordora over at Spin Me I Pulsate has this thing she does called the pulsate olympics. She gives us a topic, asks us all to write about it and link to her in the post, she reads them all, and some lucky someone wins a prize! This time, I really want the prize, so here I am.

This event is about the first time for everything. She wants to hear about the first time we did something, felt something, etc. You would think that would be a pretty easy thing to come up with, but I had to give it a lot of thought. I finally decided I would write about the first time I stood up for myself. Warning! This one’s long, long and twisty.

From reading the blog, you probably think I’m pretty bitchy. But really I’m not. There are even times to this day where I haven’t stood up for myself when I probably should. But there was a time when I was very shy, very silent, very timid, unlikely to say anything at all. I would just watch what was going on. If somebody picked on me, I was more likely to think it was my fault, feel shame, and not tell anyone.

All through school, there was a teacher assigned to me to teach me braille, how to get around the school, typing, all things blinky. She would draw raised diagrams in math class so I could understand what they were doing, she would braille out the worksheets so I could do them, later she would try and teach me how to cook and stuff. From kindergarten to grade 12, she was there. She knew my mom and dad, in the summer, she would invite me over to swim in the pool, I knew her daughter. She became sort of like a second mother.

Then, slowly, all things started to go to hell. As I got older, she started getting me to braille out the instructions for my own assignments, ostensibly so I could have better computer skills. That meant I had to write out the instructions, and then actually do the work! She always wanted to pull me out of class, keep me with her. She wanted me to graduate later, take less classes so I could have more one on one time with her. But I didn’t want that. I was a teenager. I wanted to be with my classmates! They already made fun of me for missing so much class time. They would ask me if I was really in school.

She always like to pull power trips on me. I didn’t recognize them as such when I was a little kid, probably because back then, everyone had a lot of power over me. Remember how I told you she liked to let me swim in her pool? Well I didn’t really know how to swim. So her idea of teaching me how to swim was by letting some of the air out of my water wings so they didn’t do their job completely, and then releasing the pool-cleaning sucky vacuum thing into the bottom of the pool. So if I started to sink, I would hear that and it would scare the living daylights out of me, and…look! I could swim! Isn’t that evil?

She would watch me from afar, and laugh at me when I did stuff wrong, like if I got lost. I love this rationale. When I would get lost, she would quietly take me aside, saying how dependent I was, and I should have really been able to figure out where I was myself. But she wouldn’t try to help me learn how to problem-solve or think things out, so I would just feel inadequate and crappy. Way to help someone be more independent. Keep in mind that some of this lecturing happened when I was 7 or 8. Shouldn’t that be the time when I’m, um, learning this stuff? Are most 8-year-olds perfect at things yet? I don’t think so. But I would think she was right, feel like crap, and not tell a soul.

Later on, she would spy more on me. I think she liked the fact that I couldn’t see where she was. Then one day, I was teasing her, saying I knew when she was around because I could smell her perfume. Um, Carin, how dumb are you? The next day, there was no more perfume.

She would take me outside to her car to listen to Mozart. Why? I don’t know to this day. She would preach to me, try to force religion on me. She would take me to see another student of hers who had a brain tumour because she felt it brightened her life. What did it do to me when she died, which she did? It wasn’t pretty. I don’t mean to sound like people with cancer shouldn’t have visitors, but I only met her after she was pretty much terminal, and I was brought to her so I could help her, like a puppy or a flower. It wasn’t my idea to do this, it was decided for me. I don’t know, there’s something twisted about that that I can’t seem to put into words. I remember my dad being furious that she was doing this. I remember the day he stormed into the school, hair full of sawdust, and gave her a royal chewing out over it. Stupid me, at the time, I defended her and was disgusted that he had come in so dirty. I thought she was doing something nice. I look back on that, and want to thank him for what he did for me.

Then there were other strange things that she did that I still kick myself that I didn’t tell mom about. One spring, when I was about 12, I was in a musical. The day came when we were supposed to try on our costumes. Since I’m so short, alterations always had to be made to my clothes, so they told me to try the costume on and see what they had to do. I took the costume into the little private room where we always did braille and computer work, and decided to change there. Why did I not just go into the bathroom? I don’t know. Why did I change in front of my teacher? I don’t know. I guess I thought of her like a mom, so I felt comfortable. As I was changing, she said to me, “Wow, you’re developing nicely.” Look, there goes the trust I had for my teacher. There it goes. Fluttering away. But I blamed myself for changing there, I totally blamed myself. I never told a soul. Eventually I came to terms with that, told myself it wasn’t sexual, she knew that I had medical problems that made development slow, so I chalked it up to that in my head. But it still felt wrong.

Every year, because of the blink factor, my parents, my teacher, and some officials from the special ed department for the board of education would have a meeting about what was going to happen the next year. One year, I think it was in grade 11, after a particularly heated exchange between my mom and my teacher, where my teacher tried to have it so I didn’t have as many classes, and my mom stood up for what I wanted, my teacher really really started to go loopy. In the course of a meeting, she told me that I would not be successful without her. Like usual, I said nothing. But that started a fire somewhere in me. It bubbled and boiled and brewed silently for months.

A few months later, she started on a few power trips. She would watch me go places and laugh when I asked for help. She would tell me to carry too many binders and ask me how I was ever going to make it if I couldn’t carry the binders. One day, she walked into the public computer room where I was working and was acting particularly arrogant, and, without warning, I fought back!

I felt like some other force had taken control of me. I said to her. “And how are you going to humiliate me today? What will it be? Will you laugh at me for asking a question? Maybe you’ll just watch me fail, or set me up to fail, or tell me I can’t do it. What’ll it be?

She had always been so poised, so eloquent, but today, it was gone. She said, “Would you like to talk about this in private?” I agreed, and off we stormed to the room where she did some brailling. It felt like I was taking her outside to have some words.

We sat down, and I started naming off all the stupid things she had done this year, and demanded to know why she was doing them. She tried to explain them, amid telling me I shouldn’t hold grudges. Finally, I demanded to know why she said I would never be successful without her. Stunned, she asked me when this happened, and I gave her a rough estimate of when I remember it happening. She stammered, stuttered, said “there must be some mistake.” As she finished this sentence, I heard an unmistakable click. What was that click? It was the click of a stop button, a tape-recorder being turned off. She had been taping me!

Ooo you don’t want to see the red I saw. I jumped up, asked her why on earth she had been taping me. She didn’t have an anser. without thinking, and I’m surprised I did this to this day, I grabbed her hand, placed it on the rewind button, slammed it down and ordered, not asked, ordered her to rewind it all the way and erase every blasted thing that had been recorded. Then I decided to do it for her.

I sat in that room, holding my hand over the record and play buttons, making sure the wheel went around and around and around. I said nothing.

I remember her saying to me, “So how are we going to resolve this?” after things had been taped over. I don’t remember what I said. I was drained. Drained and in shock.

I wish I could say that the transformation was complete that day, that I had grown a voice and a spine and all that, but I hadn’t. I, again, felt shame at my outbursts. My teacher had always taught me to watch my tone, not get upset and mad, and I certainly hadn’t watched my tone that day, oh no. I didn’t tell mom what my teacher had done for years, for fear mom would go to her and then she would tell mom what I had done and then nobody would believe me. But I think it was the beginning, the beginning of something I had to learn, the beginning of me growing up , in a weird way.

I’ll never forget that day. I’ll never forget how something else took over and I was running on pure adrenalyn. I don’t know if my teacher remembers that whole incident, but I don’t think she does, since she emails me as if none of it ever happened. “how are you?” She writes. “Do you have a job yet? Are you married yet? How’s your new dog?” She thinks I want to answer!

That day was a big one. It was the day she lost her status of being infallible. Why she didn’t lose it long before that, I don’t know. But I never looked at her the same way again. It got a lot easier to tell people what I thought, and not blame myself for my feelings because as time went on, I realized they had their reasons, damn it!

I wish I could end this by saying I’ve been strong ever since, but that would be a big fat lie. The other day, she emailed me and said she wanted to phone me. That email still sits unanswered. Why? Because I’m still working up the courage to say no. Come on, it’s an email, and she’s 300 miles away. Why can’t I just tell her I don’t want to talk to her? I guess it’s because I’d have to explain why all over again. And she’ll say her usual. “and you want to hold a grudge this long?” Hell yeah I do! Maybe it would be easier if she just read this. It would save my breath, that’s for sure.

Don’t Take the Wag Out Of My Dog!

Ug. today had a very scary start. I got up to let Trixter off tie-down, and she was already standing! I thought this was slightly odd, but I was a little late.

I let her off, and suddenly she was yelping, lurching, yelping, falling, yelping, screeching, and on it went! Then she just sat there trembling. I was terrified. What was wrong with her? I couldn’t calm down, even though I knew in my head that freaking out was no good for her. I couldn’t stop freaking. I called my neighbour to have her come up and see if she could see any visible wounds. Every time Trixie went to move, she cried out! I was going out of my mind. What was this?

My neighbour looked at her and couldn’t find anything visibly wrong with her. So I picked up the phone to see where the emergency vet was, and I was lucky the vet’s office was already open!

I was not one for politeness this morning. Panic leaves no room for politeness, even though I’m ashamed of it. All I could get out to my neighbour was, “Can you come upstairs?” and to the vet? “I have an emergency!” They got me in lickety split.

Steve and my neighbour both came with me to the vet, the sweethearts that they are. There was no way poor Trixter could guide me. Whatever it was that was hurting her was hurting her badly.

After they looked at her for a long time, they guessed she had sprained her tail! Um, ouchy! Apparently, it’s a common condition in labs called rudder tail, or dead tail, or limber tail, or anything you can call it. At any rate, the poor pooch hurt some muscles in her tail and it hurt to do her waggly thang! The vet gave her some pain medicine, and I’m supposed to do the same over the next few days. Poor beast. She managed to give herself a little skin infection, so I give her antibiotics twice a day, try to keep the area clean, and now I have this goop I have to squirt either into her mouth or onto her food to help with pain.

It broke my heart, because she would forget that the tail was hurt, wag, and then start whimpering like crazy. Ooo it sent shivers down my spine.

Now she walks around and her tail refuses to wag. She doesn’t do a lot of moving, she must have hurt it but good yesterday when she was running around like mad after the pouring rain.

So, to anyone who has a dog, I hope the pooch never gets rudder tail! It’s not pleasant! Trix, I just want to see your waggle again!

Find the Idiot. Good Boy!

Every time I read this story, it gets funnier.

It all starts when a group of 3 not so smart Georgia criminals think the abandoned nursing home would be a fine place to steal some copper wire. So off they go, not realizing that it is neither a nursing home nor abandoned anymore. They should have known this, the signs outside reading Caution!!! Gainesville Police Department K-9 training facility – Keep Out would have been a good clue. but nope, maybe they can’t read. They keep on truckin’.

Just then, some police decide to exercise their dogs at the, well, k-9 training facility that is just being robbed. If you already thought the robbers were stupid, they descend to a new low by dropping their tools and running from the dogs. Uh-huh. Brilliant, folks. You think you can outrun a whole canine unit? I don’t. And they didn’t.

The smartest one, Pamela Puckett, surrendered before the dogs could work their magic. The second guy, Marc Black, was tracked down behind a garbage can, and the third, Paul Perry, was captured by the dog and needed treatment for a superficial dog bite.

I guess the dogs passed the test. As for the people, not so much.

Yes! It’s A Dream! I’m Alive!

Wow. That was a creepy dream. I was going to write about a book I just read, Kill Me, by Stephen White, but in another way. Now, I guess I’ll write about it in the context of this creepy dream.

The book was weird, that’s for sure. The concept was pretty simple. This rich guy was used to taking risks, having fun, living life pretty fullly. How did they put it, living with a capital l? Anyway, at the beginning of the book, he finds out his friend who likes to live the same way had a problem while scuba diving, has suffered massive brain damage, and is now a vegetable, hooked up to a million machines going beep beep beep. He offhandedly says, “God, if that ever happens to me, just kill me.” So his friend tells him about a company who you can pay to do just that, before you get too seriously ill to make life worth living, and they’ll even make it look like an accident so your family doesn’t think you chose to die. He signs up, and then life deals him a hand that puts him within the parameters he set for life to be no longer wirth living, and he no longer wishes to die. And so, the story unfolds, with a few ridiculous twists that make me go huh? But That’s the basic concept. So I’ll go on to my dream.

I dreamed that I knew a guy, a rich guy, just like the character in the story. Come to think of it, I think it was the guy in the story. Anyway, he had confessed to me that he had hired this company. Then I found out that he had an aneurysm, just like in the book. He told me he didn’t want to die anymore, he had changed his mind, and he told me about all the different attempts that had been made on his life. Then I got a call from his family saying that they had terrible news. He had had a bookcase mysteriously fall on him, had staggered out from under the books, and then had fallen several storeys, and he was presumed dead. Everybody was grieving, grieving his loss. But I was grieving, and scared, and knew this was no accident, but was powerless to tell anyone, because he made me promise that I wouldn’t reveal to his family that he had paid someone to kill him, and I was afraid they’d come after me, to silence me.

Then, *flash!* I’ve changed characters, and I am him. I’m not dead, just seriously injured. I heal up, I’m back home, thanking my lucky stars. That was a nasty fall, I think, but I must be meant to live. I figure the death angels, that’s what this guy called them in the book, would figure I’m dead and leave me alone. I’m at peace. Then someone buzzes me, saying they have a message for me. Like the dumb little book character I am, I go down to meet them, and am shocked to see the woman who has served as the intermediary for the death angels standing in my lobby. All she says is “You paid to be provided with end-of-life services, so that is what you will receive.” Somehow, she and two other guys muscle me into a car while making it look like some kind of innocent game. And off we go.

I’m sitting in the back of the car. She’s sitting beside me. She insists I sit in the passenger’s seat of the car. We drive through a place with a lot of rocks and bricks falling, there seems to be some kind of construction ahead, and warning signs that you shouldn’t drive through here. The driver drives carefully so the debris should fall on my side of the car. It does, and I try to stay low. A lot of glass breaks, and suddenly police are all around us. Somehow, they convince the police that we’re fine, we didn’t see the signs, yada yada yada. We get out of there, because they tell us it’s not safe. Why they let us drive with a pretty broken up back window I don’t understand, except we’re in dreamland.

So we drive off, and one of the guys who was there before is mysteriously gone, and the woman is up in the front seat. I’m told that it’s better if I squiggle over to the driver’s side of the back, and I do! I don’t know why, but I do!

Then I hear some kind of muttering between the two in the front. She asks him if he has a plan, or is he just driving around. He says he always has a plan. I’m scared. It’s not a good feeling when you know that this is the end of your life. They have decided that it’s going to end now, it’s just a matter of how.

Then, kleenexes filled with some kind of powder start falling on me. I shake them off, but more keep falling. There’s powder in my mouth, in my nose, it seems to be finding its own way into me in every way it can. I hear the driver saying, “That’s it, that should work.” I’m madly exhaling, spitting, doing everything to get rid of the gobs of powder that have filled my nose and mouth. He very quietly says, “Even if you spit it out, it’s fast-acting. It will have already absorbed through your salivary glands and the mucous in your nose. And…surprise!” As he says this, he presses a button, and liquid squirts from jets near my hands and covers them in something that feels like liquid soap. He then says, “It’s on your skin now. It’s absorbing through your pores. You’ve fought us long enough. You can’t win this battle.”

I feel numb. A cloud of black gathers around my head, it’s dense and begins to narrow the world. Then he starts talking to me sweetly. “Relax. Just relax. You wanted this, remember? We aim for painless, remember? Is there anything you would like your son to have? Your wife? Your daughters?” I try to make final wishes through slurred speech. Then, like magic, the dream disappears, and I wake up in my bed.

Wow! Never has my bed felt better. I thought I had put that book out of my mind. I guess my mind just buried it, only to unearth it now. The worst part is that I kept drifting off, and every time I did, I would dream again that the death angels were after me, or I’d be back in that car, dying, becoming paralyzed , thinking this must be how a dog feels when it is put down, waiting to find out what’s on the other side.

Um, I’m not supposed to be having those sorts of dreams. That one was sort of like that one where my head got hacked open. But at least this one was provoked by a book. Hopefully that’s the end of that.

Another Look Into Trixie’s Brain.

Trixie speaks
I think I’ve finally figured out why those trainers spent all that time teaching me to go around stuff. It’s because I’m with someone who really can’t see stuff! She’s not pretending. She really can’t! Even when I’m not wearing that harness thingy, if we’re out so I can do my business, I try to make sure she doesn’t smack into those poles along the grass. If I don’t move over, she will hit them. I don’t like watching that. Now, how can I use that not seeing thing to my advantage? Maybe if I don’t want to be ffound when she wants to put me on tie-down, like when they’re having really yummy-smelling steak for dinner, I’ll walk really quietly. Then if I don’t come, she won’t find me! Oh! She’s calling me *and* she has kibble! Ooo kibble kibble kibble kibble…crap! I’m tied down!

I don’t think the guy with the fascinating nuts can see either. If I’m lying on a nice piece of floor, sometimes he’ll step on me! Maybe it’s not such a nice piece of floor after all. He’s also figured out that I don’t like loud noises, so if Carin’s not there to catch me sneaking under the table, he’ll hit the table and then I have to run away! Damn! Foiled again!

Is it wrong to like Spanish people? Carin seems to think it is. There’s this Spanish lady on our floor, and every time I see her, I just gotta have a sniff! Then I get in trouble. Aww, come on! Why can’t I just have a little snifferoo? Please please please!

When we’re out playing on the lawn, I keep looking over at that big place where the kids jump and swim. I wanna go in there too, but Carin doesn’t bring me close enough so I can jump in. It looks so nice! I haven’t swam in forever! This is torture!

I got a new bed a while ago! It came in a giant box. But the weird part about this bed is it smelled like my old mommy from California! Is She coming to see me? Is she in the box too? It’s a big box. Maybe she’d fit. Where is she where is she where is she? I jumped in the bed, wagged my tail as hard as I could, and licked it all over. Now it smells like me, too!

I really really really love going to that place where Carin gets their meat. Lots of interesting people come in there. One guy who was getting a…what was it called…moose-hunting license? Yeah, that’s it. He smelled really interesting. I got in trouble again. I know exactly where the butcher’s counter is. I can lead her to it no problem. You don’t have to ask me twice to go there.

And then there’s the place with all the dogfood. There’s even a dog in there who wants to play with me! Carin, can I play? No? Aww, you’re really no fun!

I’ve noticed something about humans. They’re wimps! If I run into them with my head when we’re playing, especially if I hit them in the face, they say Ouch and rub their face like it hurt. Whatever, I hit them with my face and it didn’t hurt me. They’re just being dramatic about it. Bunch of crybabies. I wonder how long they could take walking on the sidewalk in bare feet. They have to put shoes on. Oo oo, shoes to protect their precious feet. You don’t see me in shoes, do you?

Every day is an interesting day. I never know where we’re going. There are so many choices! Are we taking the bus? Are we going to the store? Maybe we’re going to the place with the dogfood and the fruit and the funny dog who wants to play. Maybe we’re going to the bank. Or maybe it’s the drugstore. Is it The Tim Horton’s? Is it the place with the meat? I don’t know, but as we pass each one, I have to point my nose in its direction to see what she does. Every place is cool. Everybody loves me. It’s too bad I can’t love them back. I wonder where we’re going today!

How Much Is That Doggy In The Window…Per Month?

When I was a kid, and we whined about wanting a puppy, mom said if we really wanted a puppy, we had to be in it for the long hall. We had to realize that getting a dog is a commitment, and it wasn’t just a passing phase. Apparently, there’s a company wanting to make what mom said a thing of the past.

The company is called Flex Pets, and they’re offering to rent pets to people who don’t have the time or space for pets. Here’s something to consider. If they don’t have the time or space for pets, then maybe they shouldn’t rent one either.

They have ten dogs available to rent out, and they say they only take social dogs for the program. How long do you think the poor pooches will stay social when they’re passed around from person to person? I think what guide dog puppies go through, being raised by possibly multiple raisers, then trained by the trainers, then walked around by newbs as practice before we get them, must be incredibly hard on the dogs, but at least at the end of the process, they are paired with someone and that’s that. But this seems like a horrible thing to do to dogs just so someone can have some warm fuzzies for a while. If they want warm fuzzies, work at the kennels at the Humane Society. Then you’re getting to play with dogs and being useful. What a concept!

Ug there’s something about this idea that seems wrong. All I can think is, would the next step be a company renting out orphans to couples who don’t want the long-term commitment of having kids of their own?If the people who rent dogs really want a dog, why don’t they, uh, wait until they have the resources to give a dog a proper home and then take some responsibility and own one?

The Balance Might Be Fake, But The Stupidity Is Real

Some things just scream bad idea, and this is definitely one of them.

If you go
here,
you can buy either a one month or one year supply of fake ATM receipts. If you’re wondering why you would ever want to do such a thing, the site helpfully explains.

Tired of being used as a drink-dispenser? Maybe if you were rich you’d have more luck.

Ever wanted people to think you’re rich? Just casually let them see your massive bank balance on one of our fake ATM receipts, with your name right on it.

Trying to impress that hottie at the bar? Money talks. Hand out your number on the back of one of our fake ATM receipts. They’re a players dream come true.

Sadly, there’s no mention of which product you should buy when you get busted and exposed as being the complete and utter arsehole that you most definitely are.