Today, there was a mighty score for the Office Pirates in the eternal battle between we Pirates and the Cubicle Ninjas. Not only has the coffee in the break room been upgraded, but it was imbued with some sort of magical property that allowed me to get all of my work done today without complication. It was tasty and delicious and we even had real cream today for it, not that powdered crap or flavored girly creamer bullshit. Good ol’ juice from a cow.

No one has come into my cube asking stupid questions, all of my paperwork fell into place as I typed it and, most importantly, no one gave me any extra work today. The big boss gave me a bit of praise. This relaxing work day seems to bode well for me.

I suspect the cubicle ninjas are regrouping somewhere from their defeat to the office pirate. I suspect they are somewhere on the roof fiddling with the A/C that seems to be turned up full blast and wafting down upon me making my cube a chilly 40°. (Yes, I get cold when it’s 40°; I’m a wuss to cold. I admit it.) But, even with my fingernails turning blue, my work seems to be going smoothly. I thwart your attempts to ruin my good day you heinous ninjas. I shake my fist in your general direction and chuckle heroically. I am imbued with the coffee and nothing can dampen my spirits today!

Yet, there is a nagging in the back of my head.

Am I too at ease? Will they strike later this afternoon? Have I been lulled into a false sense of security?

My projects are going well. The one I lead on has started to really come together. I finished the paperwork I needed to on my other project (well, at least what I promised to get done this week). Later today, I won’t even be in my cube as I am scheduled to be in the lab all afternoon, all tomorrow and all Monday. I know that this is all balancing on a hair and it could break at any moment.

So, the battle with the cubicle ninjas seems to be going well, but how long will this unsettling security last? No matter, any break from the evils that the cubicle ninjas strike upon us is a welcomed one.

Uhg, I feel wretched. My head is throbbing and I'm fairly certain I'm slowly developing pink eye. Okay... maybe not pink eye, but my eye hurts, alot. It's puffy and red and it looks like I've smoked a pound of weed. Almost like someone punched me in the face. Since I don't recall being punched in the face, I can only guess that it's some other horrible eye thing. I suspect it has to do with the fact that we did spring cleaning of sorts and rearranged all the furniture. When you rearrange furniture, you find pockets of dust that you don't know are there. But, I've never had a problem with dust before.

In fact, I've never had a problem with allergies before (aside from the dreaded palm tree). I've never gotten allergies before and I can't really blame it on the strange Georgia plants because I was here last year at this time and I had no problems.

That leaves only a few things.

I've either suddenly developed an allergy to some wacky plant or I'm allergic to the arm and hammer carpet deodorizer for pets. My bet is on the second. Of course, I vaccuumed all that up. Maybe I'm allergic to the flea stuff I put on my cats. One of my cats was allergic to it and she was miserable and hid for us for a few days until we figured it out and gave her a bath to end her misery. I don't think that's it though.

I am going to go through and scrub everything in my house now because I've gone all paranoid on myself. I'm not often one to wash the walls, but hell, if it'll make my eye go back to normal I may as well try it.

Or maybe I'm all wierded out for nothing. I get quite protective of my eyes. Maybe my husband elbowed me in the face in my sleep or something. Or maybe the cubicle ninjas attacked me when I wasn't looking. They are ninjas after all and probably have some sort of ancient mystical kung fu to do crap like that.

In all seriousness though, if it's not better by tomorrow, I'm going to the doctor.

I was reading the blogs I generally read everyday (well, everyday or when they update, whichever is more appropriate). I read WebKittyn’s blog today and I was touched by how she wrote about being a nice person. I enjoyed her letter to the bitter souls out there and I realized that perhaps I am one of those bitter souls.

I don’t think I’m a nice person.

Of course, I don’t think I’m a mean/bitchy person either.

In the spectrum of nice, what is the in between? What is the green wavelength of nice? I don’t know if I’m really a bitter person, but I am definitely not the most chipper in the world. I am not an optimistic person but I do try (with great effort mind you) to look for good things around me. If anything, I am a forced optimistic. I do see the bad in situations, but I also force myself to see the good.

I am the type of person who won’t give money to a bum when they walk up to me, but I will give them one of my donuts. I wouldn’t stop to help someone being beaten up by a gang of several people, but I would stop and help someone who just fell down. I would hit someone who hit me first. I would look through someone’s diary (I read blogs after all… what is more voyeuristic than that?). I would laugh at someone’s high school pictures and snicker at their baby pictures, but always tell them that they looked good/funny/whatever it is they looked like with a smile on my face and honesty in my mouth. I’d never make fun of someone for being fat, disabled, buck-toothed, ugly, smelly or geeky; but I do make fun of people who are ignorant. I feel comfortable around very nearly anyone, but if I feel awkward around you, I’ll avoid you.

I’m not nice. I’m not mean.

I’m ambivalent.

I try never to say anything mean behind people’s backs, but I do it from time to time. I try never to hurt anyone’s feelings without honestly meaning what I say, but I’ve got a repressed temper that occasionally flares to the surface making me rather hulk-like.

Like Webkittyn, I didn’t have a “crew” per say in high school. I could fit in with anyone: jocks, nerds, music geeks, goths, cowboys, whatever. I didn’t care and I still don’t. She also said one thing that struck me:

This is who and what I am. I am nice. I am kind. I am not a doormat.

I think maybe people grow bitter because they are or were doormats and being bitter is the only way they have to lash out. By being mean, they keep people an arm’s length away and then don’t need to worry about being a doormat anymore. Perhaps others are just so insecure with themselves, they have to talk people down to make themselves feel better. In this day and age who should be surprized by this? Everywhere we turn there is another thing to point out to us another reason to be unhappy with the way we are. Your Looks, Your hair, Your skin, your clothes, your car, your house… the list goes on and on. Who can blame people for being bitter in a world that constantly demeans you?

I suppose too many people are concerned with all the things that can make you insecure and thus lash out with bitter anger.

My solution: buck up and go watch some reruns of Mister Rogers instead of American idol. He likes you just for being you. You should like you too.

The cubicle ninjas are at it again. I think they are slowly poisoning my cube plants. By sparce greenery that I keep in my cube to remind me that there is, indeed, an outside. You know, the place where the wicked day star lives and the ground is covered in either asphalt or dirt and not dull, grey carpet. I have a spider plant (aka Bruce, as in Wayne) and a pothos (aka Wally, as in West) in my cube.

Bruce is doing alright... but I fear for its life as it is becoming apparent that the cubicle ninjas are quite obviously poisoning Wally. He was such a happy plant, but now ... now the two leaves that cling to life are turning an unhealthy shade of yellow. It's almost like he has jaundice, or perhaps conjuctivitis. I suspect that Wally has been poisoned on coffee dregs and diet coke. He has the unhealthy pallor that only mass consumption of coffee grinds and aspertame can instill in such a plant.

Cube Ninjas ... Why? Why must you take innocent life in your efforts to torment me? What did my pothos ever do to you? He was an innocent and cheerful plant, perhaps not as jolly as a Christmas Cactus or as relaxing as a nice fern, but it was green and good and giving. Has our stuggle come so far that you must choke the life of the innocent just to drain what little remains of my spirit? I shall not relent you sneaky bastards.

Now is the time that I will show my true merit. I will nurse my poor pothos, Wally, back to health in the sanctity of my home, then bring him back to work renewed to rejoin in the eternal struggle against your nefarious plots. Or maybe I'll have someone, better, stronger than I nurse poor Wally back to health and then train him the the arts of ninja defense.

That will show the cubicle ninjas.

I have a podcast. Most people who read my blog know that. But, maybe some people don't. Who knows. I don't pimp myself enough. I am a dj on Mango Radio. No one listens to my show. Maybe people download it.

To be completely honest, I don't blame people for not listening to my show. It plays on Saturday at 6pm EST and I have a live show I do on Sunday at 9pm EST.

I should beg people to listen to my show, but that's sort of silly. If you want to listen, check it out. go to http://mangoradio.us and download some of my old shows or tune in for the live broadcast. It's not a horrible show. I play a wide variety of music and talk about meaningless piffle. if you like my blog, you'll probably like my show.

I'll warn you now, I don't have a crazy sexy radio voice. So, if that's the sole reason you want to tune in, well, you'll be shit out of luck.

Anyway, I decided to pimp myself a little bit this week because I am up to my 30+ show. It's true. I think I have 32 shows total now ... possibly more if you count all the shows I don't have up because I fucked up in recording them.

Listen!

Utopia on Mango Fucken Radio.

6pm EST Saturday
9pm EST Sunday

It's fucking awesome. I swear like a pirate.

As some of you in "the know" are already aware of, I went on vacation. I took Monday and Tuesday off of work this week and went out into the backwoods of Georgia for a little R&R away from people and all things people related. This is how I unwind.

My husband and I went to Vogel State Park because it was one of the few camping grounds open and we didn't want to go backpacking. We wanted some nice and easy camping. Girly camping if you will. Camping for wimps ... drive up, unload stuff, set up stuff, veg out. It was nice. We left Sunday morning-ish and drove up north to the park. We took our sweet ass time getting there because we weren't in a rush.

Sunday it was nice. We got there, paid for our two nights of camping, set up camp, built a spiffy fire and drank beer while sitting about in our new camping chairs. We made a farmer's breakfast for dinner: Chicken, eggs, bell pepper, mushroom, cheesy cheese all tossed into the cast iron skillet and cooked up into a mess of yummy. It was a good night. Freaky-deaky tent sex was involved, but I'm sure most of you didn't want to know that.

Monday during the day it was cold, but tolerable. We sat around fucking with the fire all day and just lounging about. We walked about a little bit and just chilled drinking more beer. We roasted hotdogs over the fire for lunch and talked and played cards all afternoon.

Then the rain came.

It started slowly at first. A light drizzle. We retreated to the tent for it to pass.

But it didn't pass. It got worse. At four in the afternoon, it suddenly got dark. Really dark. Dark in a way that didn't mean the sun was going down. Dark in the way that meant a big storm was rolling in and going to thwart us. We waited a bit, then the tent started to not really leak, but gently allow water into it. It was about that time that we decided that we were thwarted. The rain had essentially put our fire out and a few minutes of standing in it, made it abundantly clear that cooking dinner over our camping stove was going to be miserable and highly improbable.

So we packed up quickly and retreated to our Jeep. The tarps were soaked as was our tent, so we didnt roll them up because we knew that we would have to just air them out again. To we tossed everything into the car and left camp.

Going back down the mountain was horrible. The clouds had rolled in low, making visibility terrible. The road was twisting and turning so we took it slow and careful on the way into town.

Fuck.

We got back to Atlanta and ordered take out Chinese and watched some Batman.

It was a bit dissapointing to be honest. I needed the time away from people and while I got some, I think I needed another day or so. Oh well ... sometimes the fates and weather pixies are not kind.

I am a very bad jew. I saw this and knew I had to get Smaltz swag. You know you want it. You know you do. Check it out. Click the Messiah Bold*!

He'Brew! The beer! Know it, love it, drink it's kosher kosher goodness.

Remember folks, if you can't laugh at yourself, you'll never be respected.

---

* No, this is not a joke. This is a real beer. I saw it in the store today. It looks awesome. There was Messiah Bold and Genesis Ale. It gave me a good giggle. And I thought you all needed one too.

I've done it! I completed my first design for someone else that wasn't a roleplaying blog. I have designed other people's blogs before, but they were all roleplaying Blogs for people I had played games with. (Remember Anson's blog and Relik's blog? Probably not.)

This is my very first custom blog design for someone else's personal blog.

I designed it for Catt over at Self Expression. Although, I don't think the Template is actually up there yet. You can however, catch a glimpse of it at my testing site here.

This design I did 100% free and completely custom just for Catt because she had been struggling with her design. She blogrolled me because she thought I seemed cool and I enjoy reading her blog. I started from complete scratch on the style sheet and the graphics. I'll admit I went a bit Art Nouveau on the design because I found the perfect quartet of images to use for the blog by Alphonse Mucha. I adore Mucha and I thought the theme fit perfectly for a blog called "Self Expression". Even the background is a fabric design by Mucha.

On a side note, I am still trying to get the skins working on my site here. I think I've almost got it. I won't actually link it in until I have at least four good designs to skin the site with. I'll probably go with the Kokopeli theme and maybe a Mucha Theme of my own. I'm open to ideas on what I design. I've been having fun with it lately.

I saw this and thought of Mango. It should make him happy, despite the bad graphics.

You can find more of Jenn McFarland's Life Lessons at No Nothing Rock. And yes, I stole and posted that picture without any permission at all because I suck.

However, I did do it to give Mango a giggle. So perhaps my karma will balance out for that one.

I intended to send a short anecdote to WebKittyn about my trip to Mexico. It was supposed to be funny and make her laugh. It was going to be my attempt to win her contest on WebKittyn Wednesdays. I don't really care about the prize. She had a bad month and I wanted to help her feel better. However, I started writing and I kept writing. It kept going and going. And while slightly amusing, it didn't turn out at all the way I intended. So instead I am posting it here to amuse my readers ... or at least try. It's long, but I'm not going to put it in extended entry. I don't think people actually read them when I do or else I'd have more comments about goat testicle transplants.

---

Mexico.

I’ve only been to Mexico once. By Mexico, I mean real Mexico, not border town Mexico. That doesn’t count. If you have ever been to border town Mexico it is something akin to the brackish mire you get when salt water and fresh water meet. Border Mexico isn’t real Mexico, it’s where 18 year old college student go to drink, fornicate and find cheap ass weed. (A one pound brick of weed is like $60. No, seriously, it is. It’s not even skanky weed.)

I digress.

I’ve only been to Mexico once. It was during spring break one year in Junior high. My best friend at the time had a sail boat that was in one of the port down there. We went down with her dad and little sister.

The drive down left something to be desired. We drove down in a Gremlin. Yes, people actually drove those after they stopped making them in the 70's. It was a miserable little car that was older than me. On the way back, the rear view mirror fell off. Just BAM, fell off. It was hot and the glue melted it off and it fell off of the windshield. Fucking Awesome.

But that’s not the point.

We drove down in a Gremlin. On the way down, I did everything in my worldly power to sleep the entire trip rather than listen to the family sing, chat and point out cacti on the side of the road. So, I grabbed my pillow with all my might and willed myself into sleep. You’d be surprised how easy this is when everything around you is so dull that your brain just shuts itself off rather than have its meager brain cells disappear into the ether.

We get down there and the weather is awful. The boat is way the fuck out in the dock and we have to ride over in a dingy. By dingy I mean row boat, and by row boat, I mean a few planks of wood strapped together with a sad excuse for a motor barely gripping onto the back. Or, perhaps my memory fails me of the dingy. So, the four of us pile into the dingy with all of our crap and food for the week. By this point, we’re dangerously close to taking on water. We start out into the bay where the boat is.

There are some inconsiderate fuck-nuggets riding about in high powered motor boats despite the bad weather. Every time the buzz past us, the dingy nearly capsizes because of the wake they leave. You can see the glitter of the gold and diamond jewelry as the yuppies pass us by. You can hear the highball on their breath and smell the deep tans on their skin.

¡Joder! (Fuck!) ¡Vete a la Meirde! (Go to Hell!) ¡Pandejo! (Asshole!) ¡Puta madre! (Motherfucker!)

It take every ounce of my restraint not to shout profanity at them in Spanglish because I’m sitting there with my friend’s father and younger sister and I don’t want them to hate me any more than they already do. I later learned that Pandejo can literally be translated not as asshole, but rather as anal hair, which in some ways is an even better insult. I do wish I had shouted it.

Luckily, we didn’t capsize and we make it to the boat. And I didn’t shout profanity in Spanish.

We unpack and we sleep.

The next day we decided to go to the beach. Fuck, we’re in a beautiful, clean coast city what else should we do?

We take the dingy out to the shore and drive down to the beach. We stop at a shop and pick up some lunch. We decide to take lunch under a grove of palm trees.

I should rephrase that. They decide to picnic under a grove of blooming palm trees while I hide within the oven-like gremlin hiding from the palm pollen and sap so that I may continue to breath and not die in a foreign country of asphyxiation. I eat my lunch, cowering within the scalding Gremlin as they sit outside in the pleasant perfectly 75°, breezy, beach watching the dolphins swim in the distance. Eventually they finish and I have turned into a puddle within the car.

It didn’t help.

An hour later my friend looks at me as we walked along the beach picking up shells and says,

“¡Meirde! What happened to your face?”

I itch everywhere by this point. I can see the hives all over my body and I suspect that my face is also covered with them. Luckily, I can still breath and my throat hasn’t swollen closed or much at all. I shrug it off.

I trudge as we make out way back to the car and then the boat. I’m miserable. My feet hurt from having all the calluses worn off the bottoms by the sandy beach, my face itches, by back itches, my fucking crotch itches from the hives that have begun to plague me.

“¡Meirde! Máteme, máteme, máteme…. Kill me, just put me out of my misery and kill me.”

Everyone else is jovial. I am curled up in a corner, reading, hiding and twitching all over trying to not scratch. I wait for the benedryl to kick in so at least I can sleep. Anything to make it stop. I have a book: short horror stories by Stephen King – I think it was Skeleton Crew. I was reading the story about a man trapped on a desert island who eventually ate his foot, then leg, then hand. Mmmm… lady fingers.

They make “gloop”. Apparently “gloop” is a bunch of canned shit all thrown into a pot and heated up. There was something white (either cream corn or cream of mushroom, I’m not certain), peas, cream chicken soup, corn, green beans and some other unidentifiable nasty shit that had probably been sitting there since the last time they had been down to their boat. Needless to say, by that point, I wasn’t very hungry, though I had a hanckerin’ for chicken strips.

Eventually I did manage to sleep… though I did have this nagging fear that a strange oily monster was going to jump out of the water and dissolve my flesh from my bones. At least I wouldn’t fucking itch anymore.

The next day, we go into town. Did you know ports in Mexico all have public showers? Well, they do… and they’re cleaner than the gym shower at school were. It was amazing. After the shower and the benedryl, I felt much better, but, I was definitely in the realm of freakish with my red and bumpy, swollen skin. It was like I was the Toxic Avenger… or his red-headed step sister.

Anyway, after being clean, I felt rejuvenated. My friend and I decide to go get some fresh cracked coconuts for a few pesos. We wander down to the dealer and get a coconut. The take a machete and hack off the top and hand us straws. We add some lemon juice and Tabasco and go to town drinking the coconut milk out of the shell. We finish the milk and hand it back to them, then chop it in half and scoop the meat for us. We eat and enjoy.

It was about this time that a rather suave looking Mexican man comes up to us and offers to buy us another. We were like 13 and this man had to be at least 30. You must also understand that my friend was like a double D cup. She had to get specially made bras. I, on the other hand, was a skinny, muscular freak from my sport lovin’ behavior. I didn’t even need a bra. Still, we couldn’t figure out which one of us had actually made him decide to buy us a coconut. And that was rather frightening and so we didn’t refuse it.

My friend was a spaz. She was full and so we sat there sucking the juice form the coconut and she kept mumbling something about this one having so much milk in it. She wasn’t actually drinking any; she just kept the straw in her mouth. The man was there watching over us and we were smiling and nodding, speaking politely with him in Spanglish. In my head I pictured him lunging at the chaps selling coconuts, stealing their machetes and hacking me and my friend to bits then doing perverse things with our adolescent bloody stumps.

Eventually we finished the coconut and he walked off. Crisis Averted!

But this left me questioning. Who was this man? Why did he want to buy young girls a coconut? Was there some strange innuendo there I had missed? Did he get off on young girls sucking juice from a straw? Was he just being nice?

The questions rolled over and over in my head as we headed about town.

We had taco that could have been rat or possibly pigeon. We got mangos from the grocer. We bought a few woven baskets. We walked through the bamboo brush in the mire. I got bitten by some crazy spider. I ate the best Tortilla Soup I have ever had the pleasure to put near my mouth and ingest. That, was a good day.

The next day we left.

On returning home, I looked at my shells, my rash and my woven baskets.

Even now I would like to go back down there, but I don’t think it will be the same now. Will I be able to get that Tortilla Soup again? Is that evil Palm Tree grove still there? Can I still get tacos of questionable meat? Is there some 50 year old suave Mexican buying 13 year old girls coconuts?

I don’t know.

Honestly, I don’t think I want to find out.

And today is that day.

"Why?" you ask.

Because of this: Vote here!

It makes me swoon with geeky Bruce Campbell-ee giddiness. I can not wait until it is out on DVD.

Vote! The chin compells you!

The long list for books that could win the Aventis prize have been named. These are all Science books. I have been straining to find good books to read lately, so I've started looking at books named for prizes and this was one I stumbled upon. Most of them look pretty interesting and so, I present you with a list and Utopia's take on the books. (I've only read one on the list so far, but I plan to read most of them after I did a little scounting on them.)

Electric Universe - How Electricity Switched on the Modern World, by David Bodanis (Little Brown)

Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, by Jared Diamond (Penguin Allen Lane)

The Elements of Murder - A History of Poison, John Emsley (Oxford University Press)

The Gecko's Foot - Bio-inspiration - Engineering New Materials from Nature, by Peter Forbes (Fourth Estate)

The Silicon Eye - How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete, by George Gilder (WW Norton)

Parallel Worlds - The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos, by Michio Kaku (Penguin)

Power, Sex, Suicide - Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane (Oxford University Press)

Venomous Earth - How Arsenic Caused the World's Worst Mass Poisoning, by Andrew Meharg (Macmillan)

Empire of the Stars - Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, by Arthur I. Miller (Little Brown)

Seven Deadly Colours - The Genius of Nature's Palette and how it Eluded Darwin, by Andrew Parker (Simon & Schuster)

The Truth About Hormones - What's Going on when we're Tetchy, Spotty, Fearful, Tearful or Just Plain Awful, by Vivienne Parry (Atlantic Books)

Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis - The Quest to Find the Hidden Law of Prime Numbers, by Dan Rockmore (Jonathan Cape)

The Fruits of War - How War and Conflict have Driven Science, by Michael White (Simon & Schuster)

Electric Universe - How Electricity Switched on the Modern World, by David Bodanis (Little Brown)

This book seems neat. It describes the story of electricity and how we’ve come to rely on it. You can read the authors take on the book here: http://www.davidbodanis.com/books/electric/. It is these lines in Bodanis’ review of his book that made me decide to pick it up and read it:

“It was the only partially predictable nature of these jumps that Einstein was thinking of when he famously said that 'God does not play dice with the universe.' (And it was to that dictum that his friend Niels Bohr exasperatedly replied: 'Einstein, stop telling God what to do!'.)”

This book seem like it would be not only interesting, but also entertaining to read in my ‘down time’. The author seems to have a flair for writing and keeping the science interesting. Few science authors can do that. I think that is one of the reasons so many people are turned off to science. It can be dry and dull when dictated by a dull and dry person.

Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, by Jared Diamond (Penguin Allen Lane)

The title of this book intrigues me. I love history and anthropology so I will probably try to find this book to read as well. Add to the fact that the author has already won the Aventis prize not once, but twice, along with the Pulitzer prize and I’m certain that this book won’t disappoint. As Diamond puts it, this book look at “societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses" by helping to reader examine history so they can learn from it.

The Elements of Murder - A History of Poison, John Emsley (Oxford University Press)

This book appeals to both the historian and scientist in me. A look through time at the evolution of chemical toxins and their use on people? How could I not want to read this one? Lucretia Borgia, eat your heart out. (Yes, yes, I know that she probably didn’t actually poison anyone, but that’s the first thing most people think about when hearing the name of the bastard child of a Pope.) I will be looking for this one on my next library trip for certain. This seems to be a plain fun read.

The Gecko's Foot - Bio-inspiration - Engineering New Materials from Nature, by Peter Forbes (Fourth Estate)

Meh. Not my thing. I’m sure it’s cool, but I’m just not all that into biology. I like seeing people exploit ideas from nature into practical ideas, but I’m just not sure about this book. Maybe it’s cool, maybe not, but I probably won’t go out of my way to pick up a copy. I think I dislike the fact that the person writing it is a writer and not a scientist. In an excerpt I read, it seemed like he was trying to talk up science rather than present an idea. Not my thing, but maybe it’s yours.

The Silicon Eye - How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete, by George Gilder (WW Norton)

Woo… computers and the geeks who design them. I’m a computer dork, but I don’t need someone to tell me the next big thing before it gets here. I’ll wait until it’s actually here. People change their cell phones these days almost as often as they change underwear. Next book please.

Parallel Worlds - The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos, by Michio Kaku (Penguin)

I’ve read this book and it was fabulous. I highly recommend it if you like having a giggle over String Theory. I am not a fan of the String Theory and I’m not ashamed to admit that. This book is actually very well written, but may be a bit dry for the non-science types. As a book, it was very good despite my aversion to String Theory. I just have a problem with any theory the stems from an equation some guy pulls out of a moldy old math book in his mother’s basement. No really, that’s how it started. But, this is a good read and I recommend it.

Power, Sex, Suicide - Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane (Oxford University Press)

Once again, biology is not my thing, but this actually look to be fairly cutting edge thought here. It deals with evolution, aging, and death. Apparently mitochondria are the new “mitaclorians”. They are the substance that seems to make life possible and are the basis for evolution. I’ll try to get around to this book, but I can’t promise I’ll read the whole thing instead of just skipping about to the good parts. Like I said, biology is not my thing.

Venomous Earth - How Arsenic Caused the World's Worst Mass Poisoning, by Andrew Meharg (Macmillan)

This book is trying to be the next Silent Spring. Rather than dealing with DDT and birds, it deals with arsenic and humans. This could be an interesting book. Perhaps preachy, but we all need a bit of that to keep us on track. This book should be interesting, from what I gather it studies arsenic poisoning through the ages (a natural phenomena) and the geology and biology of the matter that has followed us through time. I’ll admit I had a hard time reading Silent Spring but I blame that on the fact that I was a Freshman in High School and it was mandatory. Perhaps I’ll pick them both up and give them a read together and get my environmental preaching out of the way for the year.

Empire of the Stars - Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, by Arthur I. Miller (Little Brown)

I hate astrophysics. It is a field full of pompous and arrogant pricks who want little more than to get their name in some history book and prove that they have a big brain and the penis size to match. Perhaps that is a bit harsh. There are a few astrophysicists I liked back in school. This book is about how astrophysicists are pompous asses and even if they prove that they were right, no one will care. This book talks about the initial progenitor of the mathematical idea of a black hole and how he was whitewashed out of the proverbial congratulations when it was finally accepted as a viable theory – despite the fact that he was still alive. This is the story of the pompous ass who took away the glory from him and how he did it. (Okay… sort of…)

I want to read this simply to smile at the fact that astrophysicists suck.

Seven Deadly Colours - The Genius of Nature's Palette and how it Eluded Darwin, by Andrew Parker (Simon & Schuster)

Darwin was thwarted by the “perfection of the eye” in his theories of evolution. Parker picks up where he left off using colour as a reason for evolution. This may be a fun book to read just to chortle of the ignorance of the ID chaps still out there. If I was more into biology, I would jump all over this book and kiss it because I have a slight obsession with colour. I’ll probably wind up reading it … or wait for them to make a special on PBS.

The Truth About Hormones - What's Going on when we're Tetchy, Spotty, Fearful, Tearful or Just Plain Awful, by Vivienne Parry (Atlantic Books)

This book apparently talks about hormones and how they drive and effect nearly everything in our lives. It also talks briefly about a craze in the 1920’s for men to have goat testicle transplants. For that fact alone, I will read this book. I love crazy, creepy and mind-boggling fads of the 1920’s. I want to read this book, it seems fun.

Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis - The Quest to Find the Hidden Law of Prime Numbers, by Dan Rockmore (Jonathan Cape)

I like math. I hate books about math. The Riemann zeta-function seems to be the new craze in math books. This book will most likely be dry with poor attempts at humour sprinkled throughout to make sure people are paying attention. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say: if you don’t like math, this book will bore you to tears. I could be wrong, I haven’t read it. I think loads of books on it have come out lately because someone put a million dollar prize on actually finding the Riemann zeta-function. Well, if you don’t know what eigenvalues are or complex Matrices, steer clear of this book. Of all the books on the list, this is probably the one I’d leave off if I could pick only one.

The Fruits of War - How War and Conflict have Driven Science, by Michael White (Simon & Schuster)

I want to read this. War and science are often closely related. The science of killing people is what has driven technology forward more than almost anything else. This book tries to tie together advances in war to advances in things that benefit man. I think it will be incredibly interesting and I will probably read this first out of all of the books on the list. He’s written other books that look truly fascinating and one that was shortlisted for the Aventis prize.

My husband is cool. As a random plug for his eBay store (Sparky's Auctions) and the sake of sharing something I know at least WebKittyn will find amusing, I present:

Papa Smurf

Scroll down and read the "Item Details". It gave me a slight giggle.

Mexican food in Atlanta sucks.

Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration.

Every Tuesday, my husband and I go out with his dad to a mediocre Mexican food place. It is a ritual. We are joined by family friends and occasionally my sister-in-law. I am sick of the place we go to. The food really isn’t that great and I’ve had everything on the menu that I can eat at least twice now. (Many dishes have loads of rice, and thus, I avoid them.)

Now, my Father-in-Law loves this place. It is quite literally on his speed dial before we are. Getting him to go anywhere else is like pulling teeth. No, that’s a lie. It’s worse- it’s like pulling fingernails.

Now, I love raunchy, cheap Mexican food. I love not being handed a spoon with my beans and only getting a stack of tortillas. I love not quite being able to identify the spices they put in the meat (and sometimes the meat itself). Some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had came out of a hot-dog stand like cart down in Mexico from a toothless guy that I’m pretty sure was actually feeding me rat.. possibly pigeon. It cost me about a quarter American. Yum.

I suppose the problem is, the food I’m getting on Mediocre Mexican food night isn’t Mexican food. The salsa lacks flavor. The beans lack the lovely semi-sweetness that good black beans should have. The meat is a stewed mess. The tortillas make me want to weep like a niña¹, call up an abuelita from New Mexico and have her beat them with her marble rolling pin. The food is too clean cut. They don’t even serve tamales.

But, every week I go eat mediocre Mexican food.

On occasion, we can convince the group to go elsewhere: Barbeque, Greek, Pizza. But it is hard. And when we do go elsewhere my Father-in-Law has a sad and dejected look on his face for the whole night. A look rife with disappointment and sadness. And I hate that look. So, once a week, I suffer the food for the company.

---

1 – I am trying to improve my Spanish again. I realized I’ve forgotten far too much from lack of use and that angers me. I don’t want to be the typical monolingual American. Speaking of which, a joke I heard from a European friend:

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Tri-Lingual
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bi-Lingual
What do you call someone who speaks one language? American

Saturday my husband goes to the mail box on our way out and about on the town. He starts flipping through things. As he was flipping through things, he recieved that lovely letter informing you that you have been called for jury duty. I giggled a little bit and grins. I ribbed him slightly about the fact that he got jury duty. He continued flipping through the mail and laughed.

Then, he handed me my slip calling me to jury duty as well.

Yes, this is a 100% true story. We both got our notices that we were to serve on jury duty on the same day. So much for random selection eh? Technically, we will both be serving on different days I'm on a Tuesday and he's on a Wednesday. But we both got our notices the same day in the mail.

We suspect that it has something to do with when we registered to vote. We did this at the exact same time and we suspect that our batch of voter registration sort of popped up for jury duty selection. Perhaps they didn't notice that they were sending them to the same address. I didn't take his name after all and people often get confused when I point out that despite the fact that we are married, we do, indeed, have different names. Many parts of my family (and his I think) don't quite grok this fact and I am still occassionally recieving mail addressed to me with my husband's name.

So, I am called to do my civic duty and serve on a jury. My term of service is one day or one trial, which ever is longer. I don't think I'll be getting some huge case that will drag on for weeks. Well, I hope I don't. I don't recall seeing any White Broncos on the news lately, but I could be mistaken, I don't watch enough TV to keep up with these things. Maybe I'll get some crazy trial with Bobby and Whitney involved in them and my face will be plastered up all over TV. (This is Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston... they are the local Atlanta celebrity, drug addict, misfits.) I seriously doubt this. I'll probably be there giving my opinion on shoplifting violations, minor drug possessions and other such crimes.

I look forward to it actually. I'll be able to pull off some true stoicism in the face of adversity (a.k.a. stupid people).

I have been working on an entirely new layout and template. After struggling with a theme, I sort of just pulled one out of my ass. It's not muses (at least not Geek ones). The actual banner and graphics right now are sort of in preliminaries just to get something up in the sizes I need.

The style sheet has been mucking up on me a little bit in IE, but I have beaten it into submission and gotten the containers to work properly in both Firefox and IE now. I have no idea what they look like in Opera because I don't use that piece of shit browser anymore.

Anyway, I invite everyone to look at my new template and page. When I actually figure out how to skin my site, you will be able to use any of the templates you prefer. Right now I just wanted to get another one up and available. I haven't linked any archives or anything yet and I am contemplating making the archives completely separate, but i'm not certain yet, we'll see.

The sidebar isn't done... I just put up a few boxes for the time being to see what they would look like.

My New Template!

(You may have to reload your page to view the other version properly.)

I'm really uncertain on the colours. But to be completely honest, I'm not very good with colour because I'm partially colour blind. I always struggle with the colours in template like this. I have tonal colour blindness. It means I can't tell colours in the same "tone" apart. You can look it up if you really care. All I can say is thank goodness I'm not completely colourblind like my grandfather was.

Update: I fixed the template so it look right in IE now. In IE I noticed that the graphics were mussed up. I think i've fixed it for both IE and Firefox now. Once again, no idea what it looks like in Opera or NetScrape.

In case anyone ever feels the need to email me, I have added a lovely php contact form to my webpage. You can find it under links. I added this because for my next contest, I am going to be making a form for it so you can answer the questions easier. I will also be posting the questions here in so you can just email them to me on your own.

I don't know if I'll get the full form for my contest to work, but I am going to try. I hope my email form works, it should, but that of, course, means nothing.

So, if you feel the need, test it out for me:

Email me!

Update!
OKay, this bastard email form doesn't actually send me an email which is mighty annoying. I am trying to troubleshoot and figure out why. I may have to switch to a cgi script, but I don't think I have the capacity to get into cgi's. Grr... I shall return, hopefully victorious.

On a more positive and musing note, I finished a banner for my site. Look at it for about 20 seconds and I promise it will do something cool.

I got smacked. Not just smacked, I got a boot to the head. Fuck it all. It's not every day a nuclear physicist gets told they're an idiot.

I burn retinas with my background. Ah well, I was hoping to be set on fire and then urinated upon, but life is full of dissapointment. A boot to the head does everyone some good. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the reviewers. I know I don't have the kind of blog they like. Perhaps if I had said fuck more I would have gotten a better review.

Well, fuck it all, because remember:

By the way, I should have the new page and forum and everything else set up for it by this weekend. When I do, I will post more information about it.

Don't worry folks, no matter what they said at I Talk Too Much, I won't change the content of my blog unless I feel like it because it's my blog and blogs are shitty. I talk about what I want to talk about when I want to talk about it. This is my space on the internet, and while they may not like it, it's still mine. if I want to post about the state of the world, I will. If I want to rant about cubicle ninjas and chain letters in the mail, I will. Why?

Boot to the head? Fine, I'll take it like a porn star in a gang bang, bitch.

I am trying to improve my blog. Layout is just one aspect of that improvement. I am also trying to improve my entry quality and number of readers. I joined BlogMad a while back and it has been thwarting me in every way possible. It has about 5 ways to auto-activate your site. Well, I tried every single one and none of them worked. Uhg. Annoying. So I had to contact them. Hopefully that will get sorted out.

I also submitted my site to Site Swap. I got my site approved on my first try! Woo hoo! That means I am the Site Swap site of the day. Since I'm a nice person, I'll even tell you the answer to the question: I am trying to Skin my site. Go there and try to get your site on it. I tried to get WebKittyn's site on their with mine, but they didn't take that one. Sorry WebKittyn, I tried to push you forward in the land of blog whoring.

I am also a member of Blogazoo now. This one actually amuses me a little bit. I am now a Gazoo keeper! That right. I have a Gazoo for you to hunt. My Gazoo is a little bit retarded and I cut off his arms and legs to make sure that he didn't run away.

Will any of this help? No, probably not because I suck and I'm blogging about it. No one really cares. Ah well. I'll go crawl back into Utopia's world of suck now.

I’ve been far too preachy so far this week, so I’m going to take the rest of the week off from “deep” and “meaningful” posts. Instead I will simply post meaningless flummery for the rest of the week. I will try to avoid me-me’s (memes) and quizzes. This means I will post random pictures and rants that trifling bits about myself that no one actually cares about and have no deeper meaning other than giving myself something to write about.

Meaningless (and boring) drivel:

I am thinking about doing a total redesign of my blog. If I do, I am going to try to add a “skin” feature so you can use the backlog of old layouts I’ve had. I don’t know if I can add it to MT, but by Bacchus I’m going to try. I am thinking about actually making 9 “different” blog layouts, one for each of the muses (this would probably just be a rotating image and maybe coloring at the top… not sure yet). If I can get skinning to work, I will definitely have one for each because the thought amuses me greatly. I was also thinking about doing one for each of the seasons. (Any help that people have to offer with the whole skinning issue would be great!)

I honestly don’t know what theme I’m going to go with yet. I may just whip up a completely random graphic and go with that as the theme as I did with my Art Nouveau theme in the original layout. (How many people actually remember that one? heh) I promise that it won’t look like a trendy, girly fashion model walked all over it. And it may have something to do with pirates. Arrr!! This blog, as it stands was a test in simplicity. The background is a touch busy, but I think it draws the eye to the entries. I’ve reduced my sidebar to a rather minimalist state, but it still seems like a bit too much. I am thinking about breaking up the sidebar bits into separate blocks in my next design.

I also need to work on some graphics I promised Seraphim and then maybe make some stuff for Webkittyn. Then I will work on adding some zip files with my templates so other people can use them. I really would like to put together free templates for people to use. In my head I have some ideas for some really nice pictures and graphics, I just need to actually work on them and see if I can get them to work.

America has sunk to a new low in ignorance. I find myself twitching in near fury at a recent article I just read. Why? Why, in this day and age are people choosing to be so ignorant.

Apparently only 1 in 1,000 Americans can name all five right guaranteed to them in the first Amendment. 1 in 1,000. That is 0.1% of all Americans. That is pathetic. By comparison, 22% of Americans could name all five of the Simpson’s characters. About a quarter of people could name at least one freedom guaranteed to the in the First Amendment, but more than half could name at least one character in the Simpsons.

As I read through the article, I went looking for more information about this and ran into the Freedom Museum website that sponsored the survey. On that site, there was a quiz that I encourage everyone to take. It will test you on your knowledge of your freedoms. I got 14/15 correct … I missed the question that asked whether or not a News Source had the right to keep their sources confidential.

I find it sad and depressing that people know more about television than their own personal rights. Is a cartoon character really more important than knowing that you have the right to petition your government for redress? Is knowing the names of the latest Idols that crucial to your life that it takes precedence over knowing that you have the right to turn your back or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance is said in school, work or anywhere else based on religious preference?

I find it disturbing that one in five people think that the right to have a pet is one of the first amendment rights they possess. The right to own a pet…? It is a matter of importance people; a matter of priority. The latest trend should not be above your constitutional rights in matter of importance.

And in case you’re wondering, I can name all five Simpsons Characters and all five rights guaranteed us in the first Amendment:

Lisa, Bart, Maggie, Marge and Homer.

Freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble and the freedom to petition your government in redress.