nueva computadora

yeah.  just read about how macintosh is now the largest company in the world or whatever, and how it's exploiting workers in china and stuff.  and, you know, steve jobs is a scumbag burning in the fires of hell etc.

but here i am on the macbook air.  chillin.  a sweet machine- all 11 inches of it.

got it set up to run what i need from it in about half a day- which is nice.  maybe i'm learning after all.

am now being antisocial in front of my family on christmas eve by playing with it.

what kind of a person am i anyways?

the pallas cat

last night i dealt with the weight of the world by getting drunk and looking up pictures of different cat species on wikipedia.  i have decided that the silliest is the pallas cat.  i don't have the motivation to link, just fucking look it up.  

the girl was writing a paper for grad school due at midnight.  this was at around 10.30 that i got seriously into this pursuit, and insisted that she look at pictures of caracals etc.  i got a pretty good reaction out of her for most of them.  i don't know what the paper looks like.  i don't think she was too invested in it.  

i technically have some sort of examination tomorrow.  i've decided that it's too late for me to really do much in the way of studying, and thus that i had best prepare my mind by listening to the smithsonian collection of appalachian folk music and venting about various things on my readerless blog.  

i want to feel my savior near

i want to die a-shouting

i want to live a christian year

till soul and body's parting

alternately:

to insist on facing the salt 

and it stings

and certainly, this changes things

compare and contrast.  discuss amongst yourselves.  look at cat pictures.  

feeling a bit grim

but then that's me.  suffice it to say, nonexistent reader, that no institution has done so much to dampen the love of science as the National Science Foundation- no people have done more to convince the current crop of budding scientists that the path to success was a bridge built from the bones of their honesty.

i hope that i get a chance to tell them.  ideally, along with a fuck-you rejecting their funding.

paella

paella, paella, paella, i cry!
if you don't give me paella i surely will die.

nowish marks the end of what will go down in history as the seattle tomato binge of 2011.  for several weeks, a spurt of indian summer delicious weather (the only summer we really got, to be honest) has spurred the synchronous ripening of every tomato in the western united states.  there was no getting away from them, and no desire to.  it was a regional orgy of solanaceae, during which no citizen of cascadia was free of the bacchic urge to dig their teeth deep into a ripe heirloom varietal with bulbous proportions with the ritual signification of orpheus' innocent body...

devotees of this newest of gods, the lycopersicae, wandered the farmer's markets in unthinking lust for the flesh and the red blood that brings delusion and deliverance.  their Rauschkünstlern composed massive dirges and fraught dithyrambs to their temporary god...

so i made paella.  at the close of this strange and sacred time, i had various pieces of tomato in the fridge which were a bit too gone to eat fresh, but still worth their weight in gold in flavor and the sacred drug.  i used the recipe from this wonder of a blog (cutting some corners, as is my wont) to make a delightful dish.  i was a bit skeptical about the amount of paprika, not being overly experienced in paellas, but the outcome was truly dyonisiac.

o nonexistent readers, share your own harvest fancies and delusions.

i have many cats.

one of them alone counts for several.  she has attained a degree of muscular development which i find strange in an indoor specimen- though she does have the opportunity to beat the shit out of her sister and jump all over the couch for exercise.

her sister has all of the slinkiness.  i suspect that this smaller, blacker creature has a bit more going on upstairs, judging by her considered disobediences and learned fear of the corrective nerf pistol.  for all that, she is currently enraptured with a paper bag.

they are my devils.  i hope they know how i feel about them.

made aioli. was good.

not claiming that the child of nature with the keys to my heart wasn't complaining and making me go to the store for mozzarella to provide her with something heartier within an hour.

but there's something intrinsically good about finding a way to just sit down and eat a pound of vegetables. does a body good.  my efforts in this regard, while well-intentioned, often miss the point.  dick's burgers start to sound like manna from heaven (and smell even better as one toils up olive way) in the wee hours of a binge.

inevitably the next morning is a misery- a function as much of my stomach cramping around the horrible preprocessed scat as the familiar family-friendly dangers of alcohol poisoning.

it is with this in mind that i contemplate the canning of my pickles.  they've been fermenting for some time in my crock under the kitchen table.  i forgot about them all this week, and now i admit some apprehension in lifting the covering napkin to discover what awaits me within.

is it the answer to my prayers and the promise of milk and honey?  is it a horrible reproach to my husbandry?  is it a new thing that shall outshine the sun in its promise of eternal grace?  only what is beyond the jump will tell.

damn security envelope

every time.  i seal the ballot up, look at it.  mighty pretty, super clean and democratic-looking, with my signature on it that the king county folks will challenge like they do every election. 

then i cast my beaming gaze aside a second, and see that thing.  idiot machine for holding paper.  not even useful for mailing.  only good for hiding my vote from the prying eyes of the state department (and, frankly, with jerkoffs like mckenna running the legal end of this state, the more protection the better.  yes, i know he's the att'y general and not sec'y of state, dweeb). 

it's enough to ruin a man's faith in the electoral system.  i mean, more than the electoral college has already, not to mention the god-help-us scary fascist tea-party CHOICES people seem to make with their votes.  jesus wept.  and i say that as a godless man. 

kind of awesome

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/04/v-for-vendetta-anonymous-david-lloyd/

guy little pwnie

i have many names

not all of them savory, not all of them strictly things that i have been called.  but here i stand before you and declare:
fuck you, mr. president dude with the sonorous voice who sweet-talked all of us into electing you.  fuck you and the debt ceiling deal you rode in on. 

you had at least two ways (according to nate silver and other people) to take matters into your own hands and just raise that sonuvabitch without precondition, contingency, or any side effect except whining (and if you don't like whining, seriously, grow some balls).

instead, you made cause with a guy named boner.  which brings us to the other side of the equation.

to y'all christian materialists, mindless drones, suburban cowboys, southern racists, and former kmart executives who make up a rightward side of the aisle that will go unmentioned, i can only say what i saw written on a wall in the scenic medieval town of Schwäbisch Hall:
IHR KÖNNT MEIN ARSCH LECKEN

you would sell your sister for a tax cut.  a tax cut which only the richest .1% of americans (of which coincidentally you are one) will enjoy, and will not actually spend on anything except to use it to pump up our swollen financial derivatives sector, which is already about as predictable and harmless as a rhino on PCP.

okay.  enough gibberish for now.
mahalo nui loa

p.s.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IHaveManyNames