Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Fireworks

Last night Gary discovered that fourth of July fireworks and The Clapper do not mix well.

Independence Day

This is going to be a rough month for patriotic pride.

Not too happy about my state.

Not too happy about my nation either. Evidently the only the only ethical government official is this girl in her twenties.

I forgave her for using "clavicles" and not "clavicle" until I discovered I was the one who was wrong.

I still forgive her for her relentless use of "hung" and not "hanged". That's how pleased I am with her. Otherwise this would have been a bleak Independence day.

Team Name

We are all reorganized now at work. I have two bosses now, one for my skill development (both work skills and god help me, social skills) and then another for my task assignments. All the people under these two bosses are then broken up into "high functioning teams" that are then assigned to projects.  There was a lot of team binding thrust on us the first time we tried this: not so much this time around. 

However, as a team we are expected to get a team name. I suggested "The Flying Wallendas," another high functioning team.

While we were discussing on Microsoft Teams the Wallenda family, and if they were good role models, and how many deaths per performance would knock you out of the role model category, and how St. Louis has its own branch of Wallendas at Circus Flora -- while we were doing that our development boss was looking up gifs of the Flying Wallendas and came up with a clip of Karl Wallenda walking a tightrope. 

He did not watch the entire thing before posting it.

And then he did.

And then "NOOOOO! Don't look at that! Not the message I wanted to send AT ALL." Because of course it was one of the times things did not go well for the Wallendas. Karl fell off the tightrope, bounced off a taxi, hit the pavement. 

Of course that sealed the deal, we had a team name just so our boss would relive his embarrassment every time he had to refer to us.

Just yesterday it occured to me Cheech and Chong would be another high performing team. Don't know if that will knock the Flying Wallendas out of the competition.

 

Poor Lina

I give you the tale of Lina Medina, a GIRL who had a BABY at FIVE. 

Evidently the poor thing had precocious puberty, which seems like progeria but just for your reproductive system. 

Pics or it didn't happen, you say? I give you pics then. Pics for your nightmares.

And to think I walked around in my youth being afraid of spontaneous human combustion, when I could have worried about this.  

 

Key Fob

 

I've used the new car so rarely that I've only been out after dark twice.

I sometimes imagine going to a mall, or the opera, or a party, or any of the nighttime activities my friends are doing. I picture setting off for my car across a dark parking lot and gripping my keyring with the keys spiking through my fingers, in the futile ersatz-weapon fashion, and I realize I can't do that anymore, because the new car has a key fob, not a key. The key fob is all bulky and round. Not good for eye-gouging at all.

I suppose I could gather up four house keys, but I only have two now, not enough for my four finger-slots. I suppose I could put two legitimate weapons on my key ring. Like, say, a cute little  shiv. And then a wee pointy taser, maybe? Or a ring-sized strap, because the first thing that happens is you drop your keys. 

I do have that panic button on the key fob, though. 

These are the thoughts that cross my mind when I have been stuck at home too long. Overly dramatic anxiety pageants.  

Weekly Paint Progress: 6/30

This week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this, because my brother pointed out I had reversed the light and dark on the two sides of the dogs face.

The dog is resting its head on a piece of driftwood, evidently. It has new problems but other problems are lessened. 

Lady in the Bathroom

I was briefly in a hospital bathroom last week. A woman came in, and by the way she walked I could tell she was sick. Every move made her sigh, or grunt, or wheeze. 

She got into the stall next to me and I heard a deep, long, loud sound. As you do, in a bathroom.

Then she announced, "That wasn't me. That was my walker."

It was a good laugh. When I got out of my stall I saw she had indeed dragged her walker sideways into the stall with her. 

So, that's a good line if you ever find yourself in a public bathroom. 

Reviews: [SPOILERS] Gentleman Jack, The Staircase, Jerry and Marge Go Large, Old

Season 2 of  Gentleman Jack cut back on the two things I particularly like: the carriage-bounding and the sly looks at the camera. I don't know if the lead actress came up lame or what, but they literally wrote the carriage out of the plot, shipping it off to London for repairs and replacing it with a smaller vehicle. And there were only a few direct looks at the camera. Sigh. That's your money-maker, HBO, why cut back? 

The Staircase played it safe for the true-life tale of an ambiguous murder / accident / wildlife attack. If you want answers, you aren't getting them here. Colin Firth sums up the whole series in the last shot: he wanders through a trail of emotions just in case you might think you know what's in his head.

Jerry and Marge Go Large was a low-impact action-free caper movie telling the real-life tale of one man successfully gaming the lotto. Sadly, it had so many movie tropes and gimmicks that I spent the movie saying, "Oh come on. That's too pat. Did that really happen?"

Old was an example of M. Night Shyamalan banking on my poor memory. Trigger warning: our family was well represented, with MS and epilepsy both briefly taking the stage. Rufus Sewell is in it, and I should tell you right now, there is a big McGuffin that will not be answered until you look it up after the film is over. 

They were all flawed but watchable. 

Planning Ahead

I may have taken the first step out of Covid vulnerability. I waited a month and the high liver numbers are trending down, so I might be able to stay on the statins that were messing with my liver, and therefore get my cholesterol low enough that I might feel confident in my heart health, to risk the cardiac side effects that come with Evusheld (the closest thing to protection that many immunosuppressed people can get).

Whew. That's five steps, and I've just taken one, and frankly no doctor has told me yet that I can stay on the statins, liver numbers trending down or not. 

And of course, at the end of it all I'll still be old, and therefore still vulnerable, and probably not leaving the house. Still, I'd rather be stopped at the edge of the front porch then hiding back here in bed. 

Mini Cooper Design Flaw

There in a flaw in the Mini Cooper design. When one is plugging in the charging cord, it is impossible to avoid ones reflection.

The window above the plug is reflective, and the blue-black body below is reflective, so you get two unavoidable images. Both reflections were so strikingly awful I had to come back out and take a photo. 

Even worse, in the initial reflection that inspired me to post this, I was smiling AND looking down AND reflected from below. Even without all that, look at that wattle. I could carry a child in that pouch. And this after I've lost weight. I carry all my water weight in my wattle, evidently. I could live a month like a camel on that wattle water weight.

Oh, and then there's the funhouse effect if you look below at the chassis reflection.

(Yes, I sleep in a Barenaked Ladies t-shirt, and yes, I considered putting on a bra, but it would not help my thesis that my reflection in this car looks awful.)

Tooth Says "Hello"

I was in the dentist's chair waiting for the novocaine to kick in, thinking those pre-dentist thoughts.

• A tooth is going to break off as he's working on it.
• He is going to drill through my tooth all the way into my brain.
• The novocaine is going to wear off and I'm going to feel everything.

Then I said to myself, "Ellen, dumbass, you've been going to the dentist for years and none of those things have ever happened."

Well, that was before the novocaine wore off in the middle of the procedure.  

If you are wondering, well, store this away for next time you are in the dentist's chair: when the drug wears off it doesn't hurt for long because you yank your entire body away immediately. 

"Oh!" the dentist said, "Did you tooth say hello? We'll just give you a boost." Like a bump, or a hit: all the druggie slang. But that shot didn't take immediately, so my tooth said "Hello!" again, and we had to wait a while longer.

This time before he started again he said, "Now promise you won't take a swing at me."

I said, "I can't promise you that." 

He was very delicate, tapping my tooth daintily with the drill about seven times before he put any muscle into it. It was over soon afterward, except for the drooling. I didn't get my face back for three hours after.

It will be interesting to see if I'll be more nervous next time or less. 

Almonds

I asked Gary, "Why don't murderers kill people by just putting cyanide in almond cookies and just burning them a little? To trick those rare people who say cyanide smells like burnt almonds?"

After several side arguments from Gary (IT'S NOT CYANIDE IT'S STRYCHNINE / YOU CAN'T SMELL CYANIDE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T TASTE IT / ALEXA DOES STRYCHNINE SMELL LIKE BURNT ALMONDS) we found that I was partly wrong: the cyanide-smellers don't say the cyanide smells like burnt almonds, they say it smells like bitter almonds.

"Okay, fine," I said, "Then why don't they make almond cookies and add something bitter? Then no one would suspect. Everyone would smell 'bitter almonds' when they smelled the cookies."

He said, "What are bitter almonds anyway?" That led to some more research, and come to find out, you know what there's a lot of in a bitter almond? Cyanide. 

So how is it that only "certain people" can smell cyanide? "It smells like bitter almonds," they say, smugly. Well, yeah duh. So they're really just special because they know what a bitter almond smells like. Can I get some bitter almonds, sniff them to see what they're like, then hire myself out as a cyanide-sniffing specialist?

Also, there still seems like you could "accidentally" swap out normal almonds for bitter almonds  and murder someone that way, that would be even simpler. Especially since this Magic Nose Cyanide-Sniffer job seems to be a bust.

Weekly Paint Progress: 6/23

This week the Blue Heeler went to... to only this, because the white paint that took things back to scratch hadn't dried yet.

 

You tell me: is the paw on the left side of the image on top of the paw on the right, or is it the other

 

Scary Video

I have been alerted by YouTube that one of my videos has been tagged as Not Safe for Kids. 

I would embed the scandlous video, but it insists you go to YouTube to view it. So here's a link, but you wont see much. You will see a gathering of a variety of animals, from the full-color days, a melting pot of wildlife, and then a skunk snaps at a raccoon who got too close. 

Is it that kids don't need to see aggression without consequences? The email says I can protest, but I rather enjoy "'la scandale."