What do you think? It’s shmancy, no? The only thing is I don’t know how to change that box that says “About Me: Go to WordPress admin page -> Technical Speech Settings to change this text.”
I went to the admin page, and I found Technical Speech Settings, but my computer hacking skillz are limited to clicking buttons that say “Change This Text”. Alas, no button.
Bobby! Baaaaaahhhhhhhbby! Heeeeeelllllllllp me!
Do you see it?
Speaking of which, it’s my experience that every bathtub has a quirk.
Maybe the hot and cold faucets are on the wrong sides or turn backwards. Those are the special ed bathtubs.
Perhaps the water pressure is comparable to an eye dropper. Alternately, in the case of my great uncle’s house, it’ll blast your sins away (my sister’s words). Those bathtubs have boundary issues.
I can’t remember where, but I once used a shower where the faucet-to-shower-head mechanism was not a stopper or a switch; it was a ring around the opening of the spigot. You know, where the water comes out? Well, to make the water go up through the shower, you reached down and yanked on this metal ring. That bathtub needed to be different. That was a non-conformist bathtub (but it struck me as a little desperate, you know?).
Anyway, my current bathtub quirk is that, approximately 90 seconds after you’ve pulled up the thingy to relay the water through the shower, the spigot starts to whine.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
I have to thwack down the stopper and yank it back up, and for the rest of the shower, we’re fine, the spigot and I. My bathtub likes to complain and get smacked around a little bit.
What’s your bathtub’s quirk?
We create these caste systems in our heads, I think. At least I do.
I went to elementary school in a district with K-8s only, no middle schools or junior highs. At ninth grade, hundreds of kids from the eight schools spread throughout the county would funnel into Watauga High School in Boone.
The hierarchy of elementary schools was thus (based entirely on my perceptions and opinions):
So imagine my confusion when my brother went off to WHS and promptly asked Melany Johnson, who had gone to Hardin Park, to the Homecoming dance.
I was like, whoa. Can you—I mean, can you do that?
It didn’t matter that my siblings and I were faculty brats and my mom was a—gasp!—Unitarian Universalist, so we probably had way more in common with Hardin Parkers than with the kids at Cove Creek. It still blew my little mind.
Which was then rendered FUBAR when Melany Johnson said yes.
Let me insert that, looking back, the Cove Creek kids were awesome—except the ones who told us we were going to hell because we weren’t members of Brushy Fork Baptist, they sucked—and I’m still friends with some of them today. I’m just trying to illustrate the way I created this everybody-OK–nearly-everybody-is-better-than-me paradigm.
Well, I still do that. The one I had unconsciously developed about my gym is “I can’t talk to people who are fitter than me”. Which means…everybody. Because everybody’s fitter than me.
But my caste system keeps getting wrecked because people at my gym keep commenting, and emailing, and coming up to me and saying, “I read your blog, and oh my gosh, we have so much in common!”
I love it.
Have I mentioned my talents in plant husbandry rival my skill in the kitchen?
In response to Saturday’s shooting in Arizona, I posted the following on Facebook:
The fact of the matter is, it would be damn near impossible to walk into a Safeway and kill six people and wound eleven others *with a knife*. Guns do kill people.
My friend Joe responded with a link to a story from last May about a Chinese man who murdered eight people, including his family and neighbors, with a knife. The circumstances are different, and the story doesn’t indicate how long it took him to commit the eight murders (my guess is much longer than the hail of bullets that took out so many in AZ), but I pushed farther.
Me: All right, Joe. How about 33 like at Virginia Tech?
Friend Suzanne responded: how about box cutting knives that brought down 4 planes and two buildings. killed way more than 33. fact is, people kill people and it doesnt matter what the tool is that they use.
I get her point (and yes, people will commit violent acts regardless of what’s in their arsenals), but I feel like it lacks nuance. First off, does anyone really think it was the box cutters that allowed 19 Islamist extremists to commit the 9/11 atrocities? I said: Box cutters didn’t bring down those planes. A lifetime of indoctrination, years of planning, and the element of surprise did.
Moreover, let’s add up all the victims of gun violence and compare it to all the victims of knife violence and 9/11 put together. I’m guessing the former will tip the balance.
Mostly, I wanted to make this point: I don’t think *nobody* should have guns, but why did this mentally unstable man have access to semi-automatics?
Jessie helped me make my argument—that it does matter what the tool is that they use: guns make it ridiculously easy for insane people to take out a lot of people at once. Eliminating them won’t eliminate people on people violence but it will drastically cut down.
Joe replied: If someone were exercising their right to carry a handgun, that dude would have been stopped sooner. God knows I NEVER leave the house without mine.
And here’s the thing about Joe. He’s a work of human bad-assery. (Seriously, insert “Shaft” soundtrack here.) He has spent his adult life learning to use weapons effectively, for work and for pleasure. He goes spearfishing, for god’s sake. That’s fishing but with a spear.
So I told him: I know, Joe. And believe me, of all the people that carry guns, you’re the guy I want to have one. But you’re, like, special-trained, secret service dude. Most people who pack are about as skillful with a gun as I am with a stove, but at least the only person I’m endangering with my cooking is me.
I really don’t believe in the elimination of guns. I don’t. But I mean, do people in Arizona have to take a driving test before they can get behind the wheel of a car? Why don’t they have to pass some sort of assessment of skills and, more importantly, mental health before they stick a Glock in their pants and go to Safeway?
What do I know though? Seriously, I don’t know. Are gun tests the answer? If not, what is?
Ohhhh, two tablespoons of tomato paste?
Hmm.
Guess what I made yesterday!
Guess what I had with it.
Nothing.
What the fuck do you want from me? I already told you I can’t cook.
