Friction and Harmony

Looks like it’s going to be a good weekend. Well for most of the citizens of the world, anyway.

Heh.

Whew! It’s been a busy week… And I’m ready to crash.

I survived Christmas – sorry for the Christmas Bummer-Grenade™ folks. Judging from personal comments of family and friends, and even those of you who were brave-enough to voice a polite response, I know that was a tough read, especially on the days leading up to Christmas. Thanks for putting up with me. I really do carry too-much baggage – and Christmas is only what I can fit in a pocket. And a small pocket at that – like the the stupid, tiny, useless pocket-in-a-pocket in a pair of bluejeans. (What the hell is that thing for, anyway?)

We just got back from our ‘Road to Nowhere’ journey to New Orleans to retrieve Eraserhead and PrincessNO, so we’re dog-tired. It seems every time we have to go over there, some idiot is holding a press-conference or other nonsense. Last time it was Cindy Sheehan. Today it was John Edwards. I just can’t seem to hear his name without thinking of Teddy Ruxpin and BUNNIES!

But now that we’re in, I couldn’t turn-in without first letting you know that Mrs. Who is all moved-in and enjoying her new ‘humble abode’ in cyberspace. If you haven’t already stopped by, go check-out the new-and-improved House of Zathras and say ‘hello’. It’s been an adventure, for sure. (Damn, $#*%^& Blogger!)

Of course there’s still some trim-work to do. And then I have to work on her blog…

Why did I do this?

Why?

Mrs. Who and I sat down together tonight with the intent and shared-determination to get her blog set-up and moved to her new hosting site under WordPress. All she needed to do was choose the template that she wanted, and I planned to do the rest… So I sat her down with a collection of templates that I thought were the ‘best of the bunch.’

Boy was I wrong…

Me: Here are a bunch of nice themes – I’ve already spent hours looking through them and weeding-out the really ugly ones. Just go through them and pick a few you like, then we’ll look at them together to see what will work best.

Mrs. Who: *click* *click* *click*… *click* Hmmm… I don’t see anything I really like. Where are the ones you didn’t like?

Me (BR): *rolls eyes* Here they are. You look at them while I…

“I don’t like this one.”

“No, Sweetheart, neither did I – that’s why I didn’t keep it. Keep loo…”

“What do you think of this? Nevermind. Oh! This is… well… No – not that one either…”

*Bitterroot glances at ceiling… again* “Here’s one I thought looked a lot like… you. See – it’s flowers. It’s pretty, right?”

“I like flowers.” *furrows brow* “But I don’t like those flowers. Can we change the graphic?”

“Sure. That’s not difficult at all if you have a picture in mind. That background is ‘busy’ so you’re going to need some bold colors to dominate…”

“What about this one? It’s lavender.”

“We can try it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Or not…”

“Hold on, let me work with some of these and see what I can come up with.” …about an hour later… “Here, Kitten, what do you think of this?”

“Oh! I like that banner!” But I don’t like the way it makes the background look. Can we change the background image too?”

“If we must…” *sigh*

*Bitterroot tinkers with files for another eternity* “Here, what do you think?”

“I don’t like all that yellow at the bottom.”

“That’s the footer. It’s part of the original theme. It went with the bright yellow of the original flower graphic.”

“But that’s why I didn’t like the first graphic – the flowers. They were too… yellow. You know I don’t like yellow.”

“Well the yellow footer was to match the yellow flower, and see here… Look at this. All the links pop yellow when you hover – it’s supposed to compliment the rest of the theme.”

*Humming* “Okay. Can we change all of those, too?”

“So you want the banner graphic, the background, and the entire color scheme ALL changed?”

“Yes, and is there any way to add a calendar like the one on F’nH? I don’t like the way the archives bunch-up along the sidebar like that…”

“IT’S THE DAMNED THEME! You’re changing the whole thing! For crying-out-loud, I can learn to code and write a whole theme from scratch if that’s what you want, but wouldn’t it be easier to just pick a theme – an already-made theme that you like? “

“You liked that one.”

*muttering* “I did before we changed every single damned bit of it…”

“What, Honey?”

“Just pick a new damned theme. Find one with a calendar if that’s what you want. There’s literally hundreds if not thousands of the damned things – find one you like.“

“I liked that last one, except for those ugly flowers.”

*grabbing fistfuls of hair from my temples* “Aaaack! HERE! You look through these again… I’ve got to work on updating your WordPress installation before we import your…”

“Maybe this one will work. You can change the banner, right? Use the one that you made for the last…”

“PICK A THEME YOU LIKE!“

“But the text color is too hard to read, and I don’t like the way the comments do…”

“Go to bed.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Kitten. But go to bed… You can look at it tomorrow. You will pick a theme. And whether you like the damned thing or not, the HoZ will at least be running. You can always change a theme or pick another later.“

“Goodnight, Sweetheart.”

*sigh* “Goodnight, Kitten.”

The girl is going places!

It seems a certain Fat, Jolly Old Elf (who you calling ‘Jolly’?) gave her something new for Christmas – her own web-hosting! She’s moving off Blogger and into new digs.

Right now, she’s trying to decide on a WordPress template…

*sigh*

*tapping foot*

*yawn*

Okay, well, once she’s found something that’s perfect, I’ll be hammering it into shape for her. I’ve already done a test conversion from her Blogger account and things look good. All of her posts and comments came over intact, with only some minor loss of text formatting only (e.g., bold and italics used in posts disappeared, but the text is there). She’s going to have to go through her history and categorize everything… I’m not going to do everything for her.

I expect we’ll have her new House open and ready for viewing soon…

*looking at watch*

Soon.

Blogging isn’t at all what I expected. It’s more. I figured it would be a good pastime – something to do to get my mind off much of the garbage that’s going on in our lives of late. I expected it would be a way to ‘vent’ some of the things that get under my skin. I expected a level of cathartic release, but what I didn’t expect is that it would make me think and examine daily life with a completely new prism of perspective.

For example, I know I’ve been a Christmas curmudgeon for years – most of my life, in fact. Far from being ashamed or embarrassed by it, I have worn my curmudgeon-ness as a badge of honor. After all, it is attitude well-earned! My attitude is accepted fact, and has been for years. But in contemplating my posts, I never imagined to see the stark reality of how my attitude is affecting my family… When I contrast that with how I was affected by my own childhood experiences, I have to ask myself… what can I do to change?

I’ve been planning this post for many days, but it’s not about to be the post I originally expected. Before striking the bytes on the surface of my hard drive, it has changed form. I was prepared to launch a holiday-themed sardonic accounting of the many specific events of my childhood and youthful adulthood – examples of all my Christmas Horrors that have collectively formed my inevitable Christmas Drear™. I have been prepared – no, planned to vent my spleen of all the arguments and treachery that plagued every greater-family gathering. Some of the stories are so outlandish, so bizarre, there’s bound to be some great entertainment buried in those memories! More »

Is anybody else so outraged that our society is almost oblivious to the fact that over 88,000 abortions were recorded in ONE CITY in ONE YEAR while at the same time celebrating the fact that a damn GORILLA has been successfully treated with infertility drugs to produce its offspring?!

Is human life so tragically devalued that a damn APE is more important than our own babies?!?

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS WORLD!??!

No wonder it’s “Happy fucking Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” everywhere you turn… Should I be surprised?! Gah!!

So far, the ‘What Have I Done‘ post has generated a few responses of incredulity on why anyone would touch a cockroach…

Short answer – not willingly.

I mean geez, it’s not like I play with them or something… Really!

Perhaps there’s someone out there who would willingly touch, grab, and/or handle the little monsters. Not me. I positively hate anything with more than four legs, especially spiders and roaches.

To explain my answer to #132. “Touched a cockroach”, I’ll expound by beginning with this: I live in the South.

Roaches are a way of life here, and spraying, stomping and swatting them is unavoidable no matter how clean your house. I would say that Tree roaches are the worst, since they fly. I’ve had one fly at me as I approached with a can of bug-spray to poison the little bastard. It landed on my shoulder… So I did what came naturally – I convulsed and shrieked like a little girl before swatting it off and stomping it dead.

Of course that’s nothing compared to waking-up with a roach crawling on you. This happened not in the South, but at the Uptown Motel in Billings, Montana in 1976. We were there for three nights, the remaining 2½ of which I refused to even close my eyes. Of course, the condensed water dripping on my head and pillow from the window-mounted air conditioner and the smell from the nearby stockyards and oil refinery made that none-too-difficult.

But the grand-prize winner was when I nearly swallowed one…

It seems my beloved ex-wife (a.k.a. – Spawn of Satan™) thought it would be funny as hell if she propped a dead cockroach on the edge of my Diet Pepsi as we were toiling to move into the house we rented when we first relocated to Mobile, Alabama. As I reached for my drink, the dessicated roach-corpse fell into the can without me seeing it. I took several swallows before I felt something foreign enter my mouth. Feeling it with my tongue, I gingerly spit it out onto the top of the can so I wouldn’t spill soda on the carpet. When I realized with total horror that I had just had a dead roach in my mouth, I spit-screamed and heaved the can impulsively away from me, spraying Diet Pepsi everywhere. SoS just stood a few feet away, laughing uncontrollably.

Absolutely effin’ hysterical…

Less than a week before Christmas, and nativity snow-globes are on sale at the local Cracker Barrel restaurant gift shop. “Great!” thought MamaBear – perfect for a ‘Dirty Santa’ gift! She picked-out two boxes from the display and handed them to the cashier. “Can you set these aside while I look around a little more?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Cashier-girl.

“Um, you’d better check those before you buy them,” said MamaBear’s sister, my ‘Aunt Bea.’ “I just opened this one to get a better look at it, and the Holy Family is black.”

“What?” said MamaBear.

Aunt Bea: “See,” holding out the snow-globe nativity to MamaBear, “they’re black. But some of them are white, too. I don’t see anything on the boxes that shows which is what.”

MamaBear: “Oooh, I’m glad you noticed. That would’ve been a surprise!” She turned to the cashier, who already wore an indignant look – she had overheard the exchange. MamaBear asked, “Can I open those before I buy them?”

Cashier-girl: “WHY?!”

MamaBear: “I want to see if the Holy Family is black or white.”

Cashier-girl: “Does it matter?!” she snarls.

MamaBear: “Um, yes it does. I was going to give these as gifts, and I just want to make sure…”

Cashier-girl says louder, so that everyone in the store can hear, “I don’t see why it should make a difference WHAT color skin they have!” It works. Heads turn in their direction.

MamaBear: “It’s not skin, Sweetness, it’s paint. And I want mine painted white, not black.”

Cashier-girl: “That’s positively ignorant! How do you know what color skin Jesus had?”

MamaBear: *blink* “Um… I just want to buy some gifts, can I look at them or not?”

Cashier-girl: “We can’t open every box to see which ones are white just for you!”

MamaBear: “Listen, Dear. I’m sure you’re ‘enlightened’ and all, and that’s wonderful. I’m happy for you. And I’m sure that if I were black, I would probably prefer a black Holy Family because that’s what I’d be comfortable with. But for sixty-five years, my Holy Family has been white. Besides, if the Bible is correct and Jesus was born a Jew, the Jewish people as a whole are more fair than dark-skinned. It’s what I know, it’s what I’m comfortable with, and it’s what I want to buy. Now are you going to let me look at those, or do I need to speak with someone about our little racial disagreement?”

Cashier-girl huffed loudly in protest, but handed over the boxes for MamaBear’s inspection. With pursed lips, she completed the sale and glared MamaBear and Aunt Bea out of the store.

Wow…

I was surprised to hear MamaBear recount her experience to me, and I debated about whether or not to blog about this whole white-black thing until I looked at Cracker Barrel’s Online Store. Their Christmas items page is interesting. Only four items, and curiously, every one of them is labeled “African American.”

Very interesting indeed… I guess after having ‘admitted racism‘ and shelling-out $8.7m they’re doing what they can do to (over)compensate. But with a name like ‘Cracker Barrel’, they’d best be careful – or they could meet the fates of restaurant chains like this or this.

But then again, since they would be discriminating against white patrons, (which as we know is paradoxically both well-deserved and impossible to do because such a thing simply doesn’t exist) they might just earn the respect and celebrity endorsements to survive thrive.

I wonder if their piped-in Christmas music includes the revamped classic, “(I’m Dreaming of a) Racially-Diverse Christmas”?

UPDATE: After writing this I was thinking to myself, I’m glad I have my Beartivity – at least I don’t have to grapple the whole white-black thing. Then I discovered I was wrong… So, which is more “P.C.”, Black bears or Polar? (I’ve already been ‘shamed’ at the alleged disrespect of using “Animals!” to represent Christ and the Holy Family. Whatever… The whole argument is stupid, and I’m not giving up my bears!)

More than I thought, evidently.

I shamelessly copied this from Mrs.Who, because through it I actually learned a few things about her. I was also surprised to find that there were so many things I could mark – and it may even be useful as a “To-Do” list…

Rules – copy the list and bold face the items you’ve done. Wait for some comments then answer the questions.

I don’t believe in “Rules” – do with this what you will…

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Driven anything over 100 MPH
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb* (Is a baby goat – a “kid” – close enough?)
33. Seen a total eclipse of the moon.
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing* (Spelunking – rock-climbing in the dark!)
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow* (again – does a goat count?)
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours – Good Drugs
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life* (Gah! Don’t remind me!!)

Mujibar was trying to get a job in India.

The Personnel Manager said, “Mujibar, you have passed all the tests, except
one. Unless you pass it you cannot qualify for this job.”

Mujibar said, “I am ready”

The manager said, “Make a sentence using the words Yellow, Pink and Green.”

Mujibar thought for a few minutes and said, “Mister manager, I am ready”

The manager said, “Go ahead.”

Mujibar said, “The telephone goes green, green, and I pink it up, and say,
‘Yellow, this is Mujibar.’”

Mujibar now works as a technician at a call center for Dell solving computer problems.

No doubt you have spoken to him…

I have.