Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Lego

Remember when I bought the Lego that looked like my new boss? I did a little editing on the mug, and here he is:

Since he protested earlier that he doesn’t have as much hair as Rex Dangervest, I removed the Lego snap-on hair and used a Sharpie to draw his actual haircut underneath.

I presented it to him at our first official staff meeting. I was not fired on the spot, so I hold out hope for the new boss.

Lending Library of Love

When Gary walked off his job, he brought home ten boxes of computer books. He had assembled that library over his entire career: whenever he heard of a new language or software, he’d buy a book on it in case he might need to use it later. After he quit and/or retired (quitired?), he moved all the books into our basement, because you can’t just toss out a collection it took years to amass.

A few months later, I was working at home and on a conference call with my team, who needed someone to learn a programming language called PL/SQL. “Not me,” I said. “That is way over my head.” Others insisted. I continued to protest. 

I heard Gary get out of bed, scuttle around in the basement, and then a few minutes later he was in the doorway with three PL/SQL books.

“Oh all right,” I told my team, “My husband seems to think I can learn PL/SQL.” Which I did, eventually, using his books and the Internet. That was five years ago.

I used the PL/SQL on a project that was supplanted by SharePoint. People at work seemed to think it would be good for me to bone up on SharePoint. I came home and complained about that to Gary. This time I didn’t even notice when he went into the basement, but he materialized again with SharePoint for Dummies and the SharePoint Administrator’s Manual. 

I kept the Dummies book, then said, “Get that Administrator’s manual away from me. I’m not doing that. They don’t even want me to do that. One of them wants me to learn C++ so I can program it.” 

I didn’t learn to program in C++. That was a mistake, because this past week I’ve been researching Augmented Reality software, and I really should have learned C++. 

I complained about that to Gary, who said, “I have a C++ book in the basement.”

His confidence in me knows no bounds.

Two Reviews: I Am The Night and Roma

I Am the Night
What I expected: True crime
What I got: Family drama

While I was looking for good podcasts, my niece attended a live broadcast of My Favorite Murder, so I started listening to that. My first MFM broadcast did not get to the murder quickly enough. Instead, there was a lot of pre-murder giggling that turned me off, but now that I know to ignore the non-murder silliness I quite enjoy the murder silliness.

A few weeks ago MFM focused on the Black Dahlia murder so they could promote the new I Am the Night TV series, which - and this may surprise viewers of I Am The Night, and also SPOILERS - is only tangentially about the Black Dahlia murder. Instead, it's all about the peculiar family dynamics of one of the primary suspects. Granted, he's the most interesting suspect, but I signed up for murder and I'm getting incest and baby-selling and other lesser crimes, yawn. I think I would have preferred an anthology series in which each episode deals with a different Black Dahlia suspect, because I am four episodes in and I am tired of this weirdo and his family.

Roma
What I expected: a plot
What I got: As Kathleen Madigan tweeted, "#WhatTheFWasThat #WhenDoesItStart #WhyStuffedDogHeads"

Had I known there was no plot to Roma I would have watched it with a completely different attitude. Instead, I kept checking my watch, thinking the plot was going to kick into gear any minute now. There's an earthquake an hour or so in, and I felt relieved, because now we were going to see how the family deals with the earthquake, but no, fooled you, this is the director remembering an earthquake and making it look lovely and striking and black and white.

And it wasn't even episodic like Huckleberry Finn, where Huck and Jim wander toward the resolution of a conflict. They're on the river to get Jim to freedom, and Jim [SPOILERS! And HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS EVEN MY NEWLY INTEGRATED HIGH SCHOOL HAD TO READ IT] is re-enslaved and then freed at the end.  Of course, maybe it's more like War and Peace, my favorite Giant Slice of Life. Still, in both of those books, the characters end up someplace different from where they started.

I don't know. Maybe I should watch it again without expecting a plot or a revolution or an earthquake.

Art Careers

A friend with an artistic teenage daughter reports that she’s considering becoming a video game artist.

I couldn’t help but smile when I imagined myself in her place, a teenage girl, being paid to draw the ladies below: 

“If it were me, I couldn’t do it,” I said. “I couldn’t make my hands draw those bodies.”

I mean, I already know the insecurities that exaggerated comic book bosoms gave me in the late 70s. “MY cleavage doesn’t touch in the middle! MY nipples aren’t that high!” Can you imagine having to not only look at but draw video game bosoms every day?

Noom, Huh.

Noom has been advertising all over the news channels, and now the demographic oracles on Facebook have decided I am in need of a diet, and they sent me this Facebook ad:

Noom claims to help you lose weight with a combination of "small bowls and psychology." I looked closely at the image to see what psychological mind games they are playing.

Most of the foods look barely edible - whole wheat bread and greenery - looks like cream cheese, pesto, bell pepper, baby spinach, basil, and some ornamental shrub there in the middle.

But the foods on the left top and bottom are, if I am to believe my eyes:

An open face sandwich of whole wheat topped with unpeeled limes and unpeeled avocados.

An open face sandwich of whole wheat topped with five pickle spears.

Is... is this the psychology? "Next to the whole wheat bread and lawn clippings, that cream cheese and okra looks delectable." 

 

 

His / Mine / Ours

Gary and I have always had separate bank accounts, and when he retired we re-purposed his into a 100% responsible savings account and mine into a 100% reckless spending account, and we both share both accounts. Of course, we transfer a percentage into the savings account automatically, and when extra money accumulates I shuttle it to savings after a few weeks, because I can't wait around forever for that money to be spent. The grasshopper gets at most a month to spend it, and if he doesn't, then the ant takes over.

It has worked out well, after a disastrous early start in which I tried to get him to economize. If you look at his actions it seems that he's fine with the arrangement: he spends money on me, he spends money on his parents, he spends lots of money on raccoon food, but only on rare occasions will he spend money on himself. Recently he bought his father a muffler he admired, and I couldn't get him to buy one for himself. "Spend your money on yourself for once!" I will say.

It's frustrating, because he will say, "Well, it's not my money, it's your money."

I always counter this with the same argument: We can spend at least a mortgage payment on him per month because he spent years paying off our mortgage. We can spend a car payment on him because  he doesn't want to buy a new car for his ego. We can spend the extra money he saved up for retirement because he isn't taking social security.

The second argument, which I never get to, is: if it's my money, why does he think I'd have a problem spending it on him? Does he think that I'm too stingy for him to have new shoes, but that I'd prefer that our gold is alchemized into raccoon poop?

I got his iPad while he was asleep and bought him that muffler.

 

High Pressure Trivia

Friend #3 and I were invited to a trivia match by Friend Anne and her new team at work. I went in thinking it was very nice to be invited to trivia by, essentially, a group of strangers (plus Anne). When we got there we discovered that Anne, #4, and I were there as ringers, specifically invited to put a W in their column. They were very nice and paid for our seats and our food. 

I did better than usual. When no one else could answer, I knew who invented the steel plow blade (John Deere) and the location of the world’s largest bat (Louisville, KY), I identified the HP logo sans initials, and I knew Sopranos was the first HBO show to win an Emmy - though Friend #3 questioned my answer, and stubbornly talked me out of it. I was robbed of that answer, but still we lost by three points, not just by one.

We were in the lead until one of the final rounds, in which we were asked to identify all the McDonald’s mascots. It was brutal. I actually joked that the green blob character was O’Grimace, and if anyone had written that down we might have only lost by two points.

I felt bad we didn’t get the win, especially since this was our first outing as Trivia Hired Guns.

Valentine’s Day

When Gary and I agreed on Wednesday night that there would be no exchange of Valentine’s gifts, I admit I thought forlornly of my fortieth birthday, when a put-upon florist deliverywoman staggered into my foyer under the weight of a Chinese vase full of forty roses, one for each year.

So when I heard him come home today I was surprised to see this:

He couldn’t decide between red or yellow, so he asked the floral department if they could put two different types of roses in one vase.

This is how he is. This is good. I asked if he was annoyed that I hadn’t purchased a surprise gift for him (because WE AGREED) and he said, “The red roses are for you and the yellow ones are for me.”

Teacups: Done, Because I Have Run Out of Patience

I am done (so so done) with the teacups.

It is odd. The teacups seem to follow you with their eyes! No, but they do look very different depending on the lighting and the orientation. I hated it in the basement, I liked it upstairs in the kitchen, and I like it much more when it is sideways.

Usually when I turn something sideways, the flaws jump right into view. I think I like this one sideways because it puts the middle of the left teacup in the optical center, and the middle of the left teacup is the best part. Only, I grew tired of the gold-on-blue pattern and I got sloppy, which is fine, because it isn't like the Medicis are drumming their fingers waiting for this.

Also the highlights on the cut glass bowl should be brighter and sharper, but they just would not adhere. I know there are three oil painting rules:

1. Slow Over Fast - paint slow drying things last  (like white highlights)
2. Fat over Lean - you have to add oil for each new layer (thins things out so they won't crack)
3. Thick over Thin - and there's my problem. If I follow the previous rule and  add oil to paint the white highlights, that will thin them down so much they won't make an impact. I suppose I'm supposed to make two layers of increasingly thin white.

Ugh. So that means I am not done.

Gary 2.0: The Appetites

The other day, I read that the Mother-In-Law restaurant will soon be acquired by the Rack House restaurant, a place I’d never heard of though it’s only three miles away. I looked up their menu on-line.

“Hey Gary. There’s this place by us that has chicken-Brie-bacon sandwiches and - ”

“Let’s go. Let’s go now.”

Unexpected. The old Gary would not have been a) that spontaneous or b) that hungry. But now we have Gary on drugs, specifically the thyroid drugs. We went immediately to the restaurant, where he did not have the chicken sandwich but instead put away an ample pork chop the size of my upper arm. We named the chop Piglet. “Piglet went down easy” and “Piglet kept me up all night.”

Then, all day Sunday, he made suggestive remarks about women. Any woman. Every woman. The Progressive Insurance lady. Joy Reid. Amy Klobuchar. All are hot, incredibly smokin’ hot. He has never noticed before how sexy Nancy Pelosi is. Unprompted: “I would do her.” I have not met this version of Gary. Even when he was 29, yes, he would appreciate a well-formed lady, and yes, he would share that opinion with me as if I were a guy, but it was not this day-long game of MSNBC Hot or Not. It was as if I had a glimpse into the mind of 18-year-old Gary, a man I have never met.

All his appetites are stirring. He’s awake, hungry, and if I can spruce myself up to compete with Nancy Pelosi (she does have nice hair), he might be looking for love. Interesting.

This Has Not Happened In Years

At the start of this month, on Groundhog Day, this miracle happened:

My Fitbit said I slept over seven and a half hours WITHOUT WAKING UP TO PEE.

I don't know how I did it, though. I ate and drank normally. It was truly miraculous.

Since then I have not had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, but it was nice to have a normal bladder, briefly, just for the holiday.

Then, last week, I made it to six and a half hours without waking up. 

Last night, who knows how long I could have made it. Unfortunately, at 2 a.m. Gary came in and woke me up. “Ellen ... Ellen ... Ellen!”

”What is it?” 

“The metal bowl was delivered. I just looked at the porch when I was locking up and it’s here!”

(Long pause.) “You woke me up to tell me a package you ordered is on the porch?”

”Well ... the pears came too.”

And now it’s 5 a.m and I’ve been awake since then.

Calypso: a Review

Usually, after I read the latest David Sedaris book, I am amused for a day or two. This last one, Calypso, gutted me for a day or two. Or, more like a week or two, since I'm still thinking about it.

Calypso is the one I ordered in German. A reminder: “Tiffany ... Cool. Stoned. Hacke. Durchgeknallt.” (It's notable that the first words I read were about his sister Tiffany.)

After I got the English version, I started reading, expecting the usual David Sedaris book. I had already read the lovely essay about the fox: that was typical fare. I wasn't prepared to have him bump up the stakes in Calypso.

Did you think you knew the Sedaris family from all the other books? No. You might have had a few hints, but no, not really. There are some just gut-wrenching revelations. And he crafts it and weaves it in so skillfully. It's remarkable. There's a theme. And who knows, there might have been themes in all of his other books, but those themes didn't resonate with me.

You might think you know me, too, but I have my own “Tiffany” about whom you hear very little. I don't know if I could ever be as frank about that as he is. Maybe someday.

Again, go read Calypso, a real memoir instead of this craven blog.

Night Sounds

A few days ago, Gary woke me up at four thirty in the morning.

“Ellen! Ellen!”

“Whaarmfmumu ... ?”

“Ellen! There’s something dying in our backyard.”

“Whuh?”

“I think one of the raccoons is wounded in the backyard and it’s dying. It’s making awful sounds right outside the window.”

We went together to the back door where I heard the doleful, anguished, desperate,  unmistakeable cries of a ...

”Beagle. That’s a beagle, Gary.”

I convinced him after a few minutes of “Really, that’s what beagles sound like, there’s a beagle across the street, I thought they were torturing him when I first heard him,” and so on, he settled down. 

I may be painting all beagles with too wide a brush, though, because I thought all beagles made the same god-awful sound the neighbor's beagle does. I was surprised when I had to hunt on the internet to find video of a beagle that makes the same noise I hear every morning and that Gary heard that night. The neighbor’s beagle sounds like the one here. You have to wait nineteen seconds: it takes a little coaxing to make the same distinctive sound the neighbor's dog does.

Sadly, neighbor beagle does not require any coaxing. It really sounds like a dying animal.

Embarassing Bezos Photos?

So, Jeff Bezos has out-balled the National Enquirer after they threatened to publish "embarrassing" photos. Were I in the same situation, even minus the Bezos billions, I wouldn't have given in to that blackmail either. Because they had nothing.

Here are the photos the Enquirer threatened to publish:

"· Mr. Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting."

Is it a naked business meeting? How is this a threat?

· Ms. Sanchez response — a photograph of her smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene.

I could see this in any cigar advertisement in any magazine.

· A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring. He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts — and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.

Okay, I'll give you that one, that would be embarassing. If I were him I would hang my hopes on the word "semi." I'm betting it's entirely floppy. There's something fishy about how they described it as "penetrating the zipper," as if they needed to give it some imagined firmness.

· A full-length body selfie of Mr. Bezos wearing just a pair of tight black boxer-briefs or trunks, with his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring.

So, he's essentially in his underwear, while married. Is the point of mentioning the wedding ring to undermine his contention that he was having the affair while separated?

· A selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed.

Shocking. I must delete all the fully-clothed selfies from my phone this minute.

· A full-length scantily-clad body shot with short trunks.

Is he supposed to be ashamed of this because it might get him thrown out of McDonalds?

· A naked selfie in a bathroom — while wearing his wedding ring. Mr. Bezos is wearing nothing but a white towel — and the top of his pubic region can be seen.

Naked selfie? You aren't naked if you are in a towel. Look up naked. I'm pretty sure. And Michael Phelps opened up the top of the pubic region for public consumption years ago.

· Ms. Sanchez wearing a plunging red neckline dress revealing her cleavage and a glimpse of her nether region.

... and ...

· Ms. Sanchez wearing a two-piece red bikini with gold detail dress revealing her cleavage.

So they will show photos of his girlfriend in clothing that she purchased and then wore in public. I don’t get how this is embarrassing. Also, am I to assume the neckline plunges down to her nether region? In addition, why does she only have one nether region when the term I have always heard is “nether regions”? 

Minus the semi-dick pic, none of that would even embarrass me. And given that they've already published the revelation that there is a full-dick pic, why did they think a semi would give him the fantods? They can't publish either photo without blurring it, so one blur will be smaller than the other.

I thought Jeff Bezos was a baller, but he isn't making a big noble sacrifice here, at least this time.  

Emergency Alert

This is what the Emergency Alert test in my area looks like:

Two colors. Fixed width. Old school. Shit is going down, people, no time for graphics or kerning. 

That’s why I was surprised to see this on my screen when I heard the familiar sounds of the Emergency Alert system ths past week:

It’s the CBS-specific version of the Emergency Alert graphic. Evidently, CBS feels that a graphic that evokes a city burning down is enough to make us perk up and pay attention. It's interesting that "This is a test of the" is in a smaller font. So, when it is a real event, what happens? They leave off the top line? Perhaps the letters are red too?

I'm concerned that people are going to become habituated to the above EAS message, because the graphic is too much like a commercial. That, and because there have been a number of false alerts in this new-fangled Emergency ALERT System - six in twenty years, as opposed to the original Emergency BROADCAST System, which plugged away for over thirty years with just one mistake. Which sounded like this.

It's all too easy to ignore. The tornado sirens go off once a month. so we ignore those. Even the Emergency Presidential Text Alert they debuted this past October sounds too much like an Amber Alert.

I think they should do what the cable company did when there was a tornado three miles from my house: make the screen go black and only show only the block printed words "THERE IS A TORNADO IN YOUR AREA. TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY." No weather reporters anymore, no map, nothing to see but the marching orders.

I fear no one would listen unless all the TVs and all the iPhones and all the Applebee's digital menu screens went black with all-caps white letters that say "THIS IS NOT A TEST."