Yeah, Like I'm Going to Post P90X Results Here

My P90X dvds came yesterday, finally. I bought them from a seller on ebay and was a little worried I had been scammed or something. But no, "product was as described." Shipping slow. Very slow.

I think I will start on it next week. First I have to "get my kitchen ready" as the supplemental material suggests. Also I need a decent pull up bar. I bought the Iron Gym from Target last week and it doesn't fit around any of my doorways. They're enormous, you see, because I live in an old house. Pretty lame that they didn't make it adjustable. So I returned it to Target. I hope Target sends it back to the manufacturer and the manufacturer begins to get the message. One can only hope.

I bought about a million dumbbells and the thing about that is, when you're buying a twenty pound weight for twenty five dollars, all you can think is, "I'm paying money for weight. Weight! The object is nothing but weight." For some reason, it seems so indulgent. What a statement of the advancement of our civilization that people will actually spend money on WEIGHT*. I mean, sixty years ago my grandmother would have been ashamed to hear about someone throwing their money away on weight. But back then you worked hard for things, and unlike me she didn't sit around all day in a tiny cubicle reading for a living, cut off from the land. She was out in it, with the sun on her face, planting her garden. Ok, yes, I totally romanticize the hell out of my grandma. And yes, I would love to have a homestead and not work in an office. I love my job though. I really do. The days fly by and what more can you ask?

And by the way, I heard through the grapevine that my younger sister went to visit my grandma, who is sort of on her last leg, and my sister told Grams that they were going to name their baby (due end of this month) after Grams' mother. And Grams said, "That's cute as hell." Or she may have said, "Hell that's cute." The person telling me the story couldn't remember perfectly. But is that cute as hell? Grams says the cutest things. If you knew her you'd understand better why it's so cute. This grandma of mine isn't your sailor-mouthed, chain-smoking, somewhat frightening grandma. You know the kind. The kind that scares you with their tiny vicious mouth and wrinkled tattoos and husky voice. My grandma is pretty gentle and happy, and she has this laugh that sounds like bells and sunlight. She usually has a smile on her face and she's small, but strong. So when she says, "Hell that's cute," the contrast is fantastic and therefore adorable. Well, I miss her.

Next month: Before and after shots of P90X results.



*This topic is very similar to my recent experience and enlightenment about such things as "We pay cash for gold. Bring in your old jewelry and we'll PAY YOU for it!" I will relate that story another time.

Killers: Day and Age = Pretty Good Album for $3.99

I'm a new fan of buying my digital music from Amazon.com. Today I was listening to the new Killers album at Itunes where it costs $11.99 and I thought, I'll just go buy this one song that I really like so far, for .99 cents from Amazon. But when I found it on Amazon.com, it was only 3.99 for the whole album! That's ten songs for 3.99. I guess at Amazon.com, you get their dumb bonus songs, but is it worth 11.99? You decide. If you think no, go here to get it from Amazon.com.

I might add that the mp3s you get at Amazon are 256 kbps rather than the typical 126 kbps of Itunes songs. And also, you don't have to distinguish between drm-free downloads. They're all drm-free. Just another reason to love Amazon.com. I'm really really pleased about this.

"Did You Watch That Conway Twitty Video Yet?" and Ruminations About Conway Twitty and What He Means in the Larger Scheme of Things

Did you watch that Conway Twitty video yet? If you didn't, go watch it now and bask in his amazing muttonchops. Some of my readers will think that my infatuation is getting out of hand, and if so, then they obviously haven't watched the YouTube video of him doing "Slow Hand." Because if they had, they would understand how easily it can go this far. That video alone is enough to win the iciest of hearts. If not for the pure karaoke feel of it, then for the way he caresses the lyrics of the song even while balancing precariously on a six foot circular platform in the middle of an unresponsive audience.

The thing I'm so grateful for right now, is the opportunity I have to watch footage of Conway singing before I was even alive. Stuff they wouldn't air on television again except for late at night during Time Life Country Classics Collection infomercials. So thank you YouTube, thank you.

I pinned up a Conway Twitty LP in my cubicle. I've been decorating with LPs for years now (yes, I was the first, actually), but this one is special because it's in my cubicle and it's like airing your alcohol addiction for everyone in your office to see. I don't know where I'm going with that metaphor, but the only thing I could do that would be worse would be to put up an NRA sticker. I have one, yes, it's true, but I put it in my car to really make a statement. The truth is, I find it humorous to really be into sappy crap. And I love the contradictions in all humans, but in myself most of all. I think it says something about life, that life is chaotic but full of beauty. I guess beauty is impossible without an element of the hideous somewhere.

You know what I'm talking about. Like when you're out on a hike, enjoying breathtaking vistas and an endless sky and then you stumble across the fresh carcass of a deer or something. How it hurts, the violent beauty of earth. That's what I mean, and we all have microcosms of that inside us. We have beautiful desires, like the desire to sing a Barbara Streisand song as you walk down the street, serenading the homeless. But everything gets in the way, fear of rejection or even indifference, and so the beautiful desires get suppressed; instead you simply pin up an LP of Conway Twitty in your cubicle--a tiny suggestion of the passion within. And then you drive home from work, cursing your lungs out at the bastard drivers in your way.


Update: The original link to "Slow Hand" was to a higher quality video, which has been removed by the author. The new link is of questionable quality, but these versions are also good:

New Favorite Conway Twitty Song: Your Love Had Taken Me That High

Update: Sadly, this video has been disabled. You can watch it here. This one doesn't allow embedding. :(

Stupid Goodreads the Address Thief

I accidentally just invited 151 people to be my friend on Goodreads (stupid jerks, you Goodreads people, you). Yeah, it was great. A really amazing moment for me, when I realized I had just sent 151 messages to people I probably don't even talk to on a regular basis.

I'm actually pretty damn annoyed with the way things are set up on Goodreads. Here's why. I logged in after having not been online for a while. And I was putting some chapstick on my lips, and I was thinking about some other stuff, very important stuff, and I thought I had already logged in, so when I looked at my screen and it looked like the log in page, I simply, absent-mindedly clicked the button in front of my face. It wasn't the log in page. So suddenly the Goodreads tentacle had reached into my gmail account and extracted a million addresses.

So, now I'm on a page that's telling me I could send an invitation to a couple people who are on Goodreads already. I thought, ok, fine, yes, I'd like to connect to them. It followed, then, that I would send them an invite. I clicked on the 'ok' button. It takes me to a page with a standard form email message, and on the left, there's some huge list of people's addresses that I assume came from my account (which is still bugging me -- I DIDN'T mean to give them access to those addresses, the bastards). But I didn't want to send anything to them, HOWEVER, I did NOT realize that I had to do something to NOT send them email invites (uncheck the boxes, I guess?).

I still don't even know what happened. I'm assuming this is what happened. Did it? There's no way to tell, now. Apparently I have sent 151 invites to people I DON'T even regularly communicate with. Most likely. Addresses that have come to my account through chain letters, that kind of thing.

Oh this smarts. I feel like hiding in a hole. If by any chance, I barely know your name, and you have gotten an invite from me to connect on Goodreads, please realize it was the Goodreads monster that did this. Not me. I'd never plague a near-stranger* with a request to "connect on Goodreads" (unless we're already friends, or good friendly acquaintances and we just haven't connected on Goodreads, then, of course I want to connect to you, so, by all means, accept the invitation. ).

Woe is me. I'm going to go hide.




*If you're reading this and you're annoyed you got an invitation to connect from me, and it really bugged you, please accept my apologies. It was an accident. I guess I'm technologically backwards.

Sobek

Meet Sobek. He thinks he's human. He likes refrigerator ice machines. He likes peanut butter sandwiches, popcorn, dairy products, windows, birds, bugs, running water, watching TV closer than your mother would let you, tormenting the other cats (they're girls), howling in loneliness when no one will play with him, marauding, pillaging, ransacking, and wreaking havoc in general. And Stoker. Whatever Stoker likes, Sobek likes.
He plays pretty hard. He needs at least twenty hours of sleep a day. Stalking birds is rough. It takes a lot of concentration. So after a long thirty minutes of hunting, he needs an even longer nap. He likes to sleep on the couch, in the closet, under the bed, on the pink blanket, in the dresser drawer, and in a variety of bags.
Sobek is half cougar. As such, he enjoys high places. Any perch will do: the narrow "ledge" of the top of a door, a door frame "ledge," the top of a speaker, the fridge, anywhere he can put his feet is fair game. Here he is on a perch we bought for him. Don't be fooled by his harmless appearance as he sleeps. Come too close and he WILL draw blood. Look at those ferocious paws!
Mmmm. Toasted tail de chat.
Not represented photographically is Sobek's dark side: bulemia. We're thinking about signing him up for a support group for bulemic cats. Tonight he gorged on tuna fish and cat food and then didn't even hide the fact that he was simply vomiting it! I guess it's gotten pretty bad and this is a cry for help.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that it's no wonder he has a delicate stomach, look at all the crap I let him eat (popcorn, peanut butter, dairy products). I don't LET him eat that stuff. He's got super powers. He bats his eyelashes at me and he gets whatever he wants*.




*That's a joke, of course. I figured out long ago that Sobek can't monitor his own diet. That's why he has a schedule. But occasionally he'll panic, think he'll never have another chance to eat, and gorge, and then throw up immediately. Or maybe he REALLY does have bulemia.

Musical Infatuation: Conway Twitty

I spent the evening last night with a selection of Conway Twitty songs on repeat. Oh, and Loretta Lynn was there too. I know that a bunch of people think that Barry White is the king of sexy music, and I guess he's alright. But when Barry White does a song, I'm not infatuated with him. When I'm in the mood for infatuation, I go see Conway Twitty.

I used to be all about promoting good music, and I loved to be an elitist about it, and there are still traces of elitism in me. It's hard to lose. But these days I don't give a damn what other people think about the music I listen to. So when you see a post from me about the music I'm infatuated with or the author I have begun to worship as the epitome of skill, I'm posting out of total devotion and adoration. It has nothing to do with trying to sell an artist or garner respect for my amazing opinions. It has everything to do with Infatuation.

Of late I've been very into older country music. It could be that I'm in Nashville. It probably is, because when I go to the used record shops, I'm swimming in old country LPs and it's difficult to resist their charm. I buy them based on their covers, and if I've recently been to the Country Music Hall of Fame and heard some cool, old song playing at an exhibit (the CM Hall of Fame is surprisingly good. I thought it would be lame. But it's not. They have Elvis' gold piano and Webb Pierce's silver dollar car) I will look for that album.

I have bought quite a few LPs of people I have been exposed to through the CM Hall of Fame. Ray Price, Marty Robbins, Webb Pierce, and others. I'm not sure how I stumbled across Conway Twitty. I mean, I knew who he was because the name Conway Twitty is a big name. It's . . . Conway Twitty, after all, and if you've ever uttered the name Loretta Lynn around your mom or dad, they're sure to say something about Conway Twitty. But I'd never listened to his songs. Right now there are probably about 5 million kids who should have been in bed already, whose parents shouldn't have let them watch it, but who saw the episode of Family Guy with a random clip of Conway Twitty singing "You've Never Been this Far Before" in the middle of the show. And it's a funny clip.

But the joke's on them. Because now those kids will always associate Conway Twitty with silly music and an outrageous red suit. At least I think it was red. It's hard to remember that kind of detail. In any case, "You've Never Been this Far Before" is sheerly great (is sheerly a word? I swear my coworker said that word the other day. And I stopped listening to what he was saying, thinking, "Did he just say 'sheerly'? Is sheerly a word? It seems like it might be, but it also felt weird, weird enough that I've stopped listening. Where have I heard it before? Have I heard it before? Would you spell that s-h-e-e-r-l-y? I've got to remember to look it up." And then I forgot to look it up. I just looked it up and I'll be damned. It IS a word. Go coworker, go!) and those kids will probably never give the song a real chance. I mean, it's more than just great. That song, in a word, is MASTERFUL.

That seems like hyperbole, because normally you'd call something like Beethoven's 9th masterful, or the entirety of Vivaldi's Four Seasons masterful, and other classical works that I don't know about. But if you listen to "You've Never Been this Far Before," you'll see what I mean. Granted, in the Family Guy clip, Conway didn't look as amazing singing the song as you'd want him to, it's hard to look sexy or cool saying, "Bump bump buuummm." Put the song on and listen to it, the "bump bump buuummm" actually works and you're compelled to sing along with it. The reason the song works is the build up to the chorus where Conway sings, "And as I take the love you're givin', I can feel the tension building in your mind, uuhhn uuhhnn. And you're wondering if tomorrow, I'll still love you like I'm loving you tonight, uuhhnn uhhnn uhhh." At that point the kick drum speeds up and a tambourine joins in and you know exactly what tension the singer is talking about without spelling it out. It's awesome.

I have only this to say to Family Guy . . . Nothing. I hate that show. That's all.

As for Conway Twitty and his music, both his solo stuff and the great duets he did with Loretta, all I can say is that it's great to have a crush on someone's opus.

My top Conway Twitty songs:

"I'd Just Love to Lay You Down"
"Feelins"
"You've Never Been this Far Before"
"Lead Me On"
"Easy Loving"
"Don't Take it Away"
"I've Already Loved You in My Mind"
"I See the Want to In Your Eyes"
"Touch the Hand"
"I Can't Stop Loving You"
"You Lay so Easy on My Mind"
"How Much More Can She Stand"

Government Gets My Bonus

$570 bonus minus Fed Withholding minus Fed MED/EE minus Fed OASDI/EE = $384 bonus. SWEET.

And you ask, am I FOR redistribution of wealth? Hell no.

We hear stories about wealthy people trying to get out of paying taxes and whatnot, I can't say that I blame them. I look at a bonus check like that and I feel like throwing up. If I had a check for $500,000 that was taxed at the rate I'm taxed now, I'd consider it too. Oh, I'm so greedy, right? Right. I work. I went to eight years of school for that modest bonus (not that I'm complaining, ANY bonus is awesome, but the fact that the government takes their enormous share is what's unsettling). I'm paying back student loans that I will most likely carry with me for twenty years or more. I did the leg work and found the job -- the government didn't GIVE me my job. So the problem here is that I am being punished for trying hard, while people who don't seem to try at all are being coddled and pampered and certain presidential candidates are promising to CODDLE them MORE.

Here's the kicker. If I really get my shit together and hustle and somehow manage to increase my earnings, this type of proposed tax system will take MORE from me and give it to the poor. That's a real great incentive.

Autumn, Grandma, and that Pensive Brooding Brought on by the Season

Where the H have I been? I'll tell you, it's been no cakewalk here. I've been deathly busy. But I don't feel like going into it, so, sorry, you'll just have to accept that I've been MIA for a while.

Let's see. A couple weeks ago I went to the Southern Festival of Books and I got a T-shirt with a dragon on it. The dragon is reading a book. So, that was cool. I can't really wear it yet, however. I have to wait until I'm not in Nashville, or at least until it's been a month. I saw someone wearing one somewhere and I felt sheepish. The shirt was $10, you can't beat that. I wear a lot of T-shirts and I haven't gotten any new ones in a while, so it was nice to find a cheap one that I didn't hate or that didn't have Hannah Montana on it.

I saw Robin Williams there, at the festival. A friend asked if I touched his butt and of course I did. No, joking. I didn't. I could have, he was that close. But it might have proven awkward. First of all, he's a human being; secondly, my life isn't a sitcom. It would be funny if it was, but you know, life is more than funny. I DID scream and tell him how much I loved Patch Adams. Joke, again. Not a funny joke and I've been using it a LOT when I relate the story. I just think it's funny to imagine me going on about Patch Adams.

But seriously, I like Robin Williams. I really do. Or at least I respect some of his work.

Autumn is here. I love autumn. My top two seasons are spring and autumn. I guess that's sort of cheating, because there's only four seasons and most people are going to say they love spring and autumn because those are the transitional seasons. Winter and summer are kind of tough because you get tired of the extreme temperatures, and they're just not as beautiful as spring and autumn. The transition promises something. Winter and summer are the equivalent of saying, "This is it. This is what I offer." And you have to just take it because there's no other option.

Who knows. There are ups and downs all year long and I guess it's sort of ridiculous to try to parcel your life into a top four or top five list. But it's kind of fun to try to categorize stuff, even though I get tired of always having opinions, and I begin to wonder what's the point? I don't know how I'm going to make it through an entire life having opinions and feelings. I've got to lighten up and learn how to be zen or something, otherwise I'm going to have a heart-attack at 35.

So, my grandma has been having a hard time. I can't go see her because she's in Utah, and when I talk to her on the phone it's only for a minute and then she wants to get off the phone. I guess I'm too real when I say to her, "I know you're trying to die, you silly old girl." Because she is. She's tired of life, I suppose, and every time something happens, like for example when she falls down and breaks her hip, she lays there and waits for the angels to come and take her away, and she's disappointed when her rescuer is instead my rail-thin cousin Ariana, picking Grams up with super human strength and carrying her inside out of the winter weather.

It's humorous and tragic, because I know it's got to suck to be 90 and to have outlived your husband and two of your kids, and most of your friends. It's got to feel lonely and irritating to have to depend on others. I'm sometimes ready to go myself, and I'm just a few months into 30. I mean, the world is a rough place. I know it's always been rough, and I guess that's why people get tired and they're ready to move on at 90. I just don't want her to go, that's all. It scares me because when she dies, I won't have her stories any longer. When I want to know what it was like in 1940, or when I want to know who my great-grandmother was and what she was like, I won't have my grandma to ask. When I want to know what it was like to live through the Depression, who will I ask?

My grandma is my link to the past and once she's gone, I won't have anyone to ask. My mom always says, of late, "'We all become forefathers by and by,' like Dan Fogelberg says." And she's right, and then it makes me want to cry. It's really mind-altering to realize that, to see your mother becoming the matriarch of your family, to watch your grandmother becoming a ghost. It's really really bitchy, sometimes, to think of this design. Life is this way to teach us things and the lessons are hard, but I guess if you let yourself learn, you become beautiful, like my grandma, and I guess that's when you're ready for the next phase of your existence. Something cool like that.

CNN Is the Devil

I'm wondering who, besides me, sits in their cubicles and reads the news. From time to time I do, and some days I get so DEPRESSED that I want to die.

This has led me to the conclusion that the news is the devil. Once upon a time I wrote about the devil room in the house Stoker and I bought -- which we converted to a harvest yellow in an attempt to overcome its natural gloom. So, I'm very familiar with the devil. The devil likes things to be black and dark and depressing. The devil room was black and dark and depressing . . . and it sucked the light out of the world. It took grueling hours of work to exorcise the demon and make the room livable and friendly and . . . yellow. Honestly? I wish the room wasn't yellow now. I'm probably going to have to go back and paint it again. Maybe a nice, flat black.

Anyway, the point is, I was sitting here, depressed as hell, when it dawned on me that the news is the devil, and I wanted to share this revelation with the masses, not that they'll listen, because . . . well, they're the masses and I'm not Bono or Oprah. And I guess it depends on your definition of devil. Mine is this: the devil ruins my life; the devil makes me want to give up; the devil robs me of hope; the devil makes me do my worst because I'm no good anyway.

Sound familiar? It sounds like a chant. Like I'm writing terrible lyrics to a heavy metal riff. Maybe that's why it sounds familiar. In any case, why do I read the news? I've been learning to cope with the daily onslaught of horrors, but some days they're just too terrible. Like today. Here's a sampling of stuff I read: babies in China dying because of poisoned formula; man on trial for brutally beating his ex-girlfriends' cat to death; woman still searching for her husband who disappeared over a year ago in Iran; Finnish guy murdering college students; E! online writing "obvi" to mean "obviously" (you can see why this one is so upsetting).

Ok, I don't mean to contribute by sharing the horrors myself. But I must be a masochist because I keep going back. And if I was more of an optimist, maybe I'd see more hope in those stories, hope for man's redemption or something, that there is still goodness in people, that they're all trying, they're all doing the best they can, that sometimes good people just get misled. The news doesn't cover that part of the story, and why would they? Sensationalism is what sells, right?

These days journalists suck. They have twenty seconds to pump out a story and thus their writing is awful and the stories are chopped up to fit the sensational tripe that attracts viewers. They have no pride in their stories. It's a news-mill. So what we end up with is a skewed perspective of the world and how it's doing. It feels like hell out there if we listen to the media, but it is it really any different than it's ever been?

At first I was sort of joking about calling the news the devil. I thought it would be funny to sound very fundamental, like an I-live-in-a-compound-with-my-religious-compatriots zealot that the news LOVES to crucify. I don't. That is to say, I obviously read the news and participate in the machinery of our great over-newsed society and so I'm clearly not one of THEM. I'm a news junkie. It's in my blood, I need a fix often, I've fallen prey to the CNN drug cartel. I can't believe this crap is legal. And now I realize I'm right. The news IS the devil.




Quite honestly, I do believe in a fallen angel named, variously, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, Mephistopheles, Ned Flanders, etc. I think it's important to remember the things unseen that have the power to sway us, including the Internet. Can you see it? No! You see a manifestation of it, this page for example, is not real. It's ephemeral. You would not be able to touch it if you tried. It's unreal, yet its effects on you are real. Right now you may be livid with rage that someone might suggest that there is such thing as a fallen angel or that the news does more negative than positive in our society because you worship at the altar of the holy fount of CNN. Proving my point, this page is nothing. It's an idea, and yet it has the power to influence you. The most real and powerful things in our world are the unreal, the unseen. Think about it. (Yes, yes, so true, I am a genius philosopher.)