Meow House Theatre

I hate memes.

I really, really, really hate them.

What is a meme, you ask?  Well it’s this according to Wikipedia but I bet only about 2% of the meme-ing population understands the origins of the word. “Meme” has meme’d into this whole other thing, which is essentially:  post some stupid random pointless “instructions” in your blog somewhere and then tell a bunch of other people to re-post it in their blogs.  Then do mental jerk-offs over each other’s answers.

Some examples of memes are:

“Grab the nearest book. Find the 5th sentence on page 23. Append it to the story below. Append your name to the list below of people who have contributed to the story. Post the result to your LJ.”

or

“Take a picture of yourself right now.  Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.  Post that picture with NO editing.  Post these instructions with your picture in your own journal.”

Memes are really popular on livejournal.  They bore the pants off me.  I’d rather go trolling for belly button lint.  I greatly enjoy reading my LJ friends’ journals but I could do without ever seeing another meme, or seeing the word meme, or knowing that memes exist, for the rest of my life.

Now if you feel the same way, copy this post and put it in your journal.

Then destroy your computer with a great big explosive device and never touch the Internet again.  Thanks.

Well with this rejection of the bailout by Congress and the resulting 500 point drop in the Dow, I figured it was time to check on how much damage was done to my IRA. I’ve been procrastinating on doing so. Why give myself bad news that I cannot change? I’d rather not know. I live a lot of my life that way. It’s usually a pretty pleasant way of existing.

Come to find out, it only lost about $20,000. I am surprised as I was sure it would be more. That isn’t a whole lot, percentage-wise.

Still, hopefully it will come back up by the time I’m ready for AARP. It’s just paper money, right? It’s not like I was living on it or something. And if I died tomorrow, I’d get no use out of it anyway. If I had never put it in that account, it would be long gone by now. I would have “lost” the $20K a long time ago. So really, I’m making the difference between $20K and the total by having it in the first place? Right?

Feel free to leave inspirational words of wisdom to help make me less sick/disgusted/annoyed about this.

I really could have used a government bailout when I was poor and eating pickle sandwiches, plain, for weeks on end. Pickle sandwiches are actually quite good but not when there is no other choice.

I think I have Reverse Body Dysmorphic Disorder. That’s when you look in a mirror and think you look better and thinner than you actually do or are.

Sometimes I come across a real mirror though, and that’s when I know the horrible truth.

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I’m eating chicken salad out of a bag. It’s good but it’s not very convenient. I couldn’t find any containers at home. I get this chicken salad at Costco by the 5 lb. container and it is DELICIOUS. It takes me about a week to eat it all because I tend to have it for every meal.

Also speaking of food, I posted in some other person’s blog recently a comment relating to a hideous picture (deer tendons for sale at varying prices) and this made me compare it to Choice vs. Prime cuts of beef, which made me wish for a ribeye. So once again Costco’s butcher department fills a pressing need. They have really good meat there.

I got a package of ribeyes and cooked a couple and while they are really, really good–my house now reeks of meet and it’s grossing me out. it’s been 2 days and I can still almost see meat molecules in the air. Also I just remembered I had to disconnect every fire detector and I forgot to hook them back up. Whoops.

These Costco ribeyes are about 1.5″ or 2″ thick. They’re the best I’ve had unless you get something *really* expensive. I don’t like meat enough to do that, usually.

This is the best way to cook a steak: it’s backwards from the way you usually read about, but it’s much better. Try it:

Let the meat sit out for a while so it’s not going into the broiler cold. Salt it up with kosher salt. A lot of salt. Broil both sides about 2″ from the heat for a few minutes. Don’t cook it all the way through.

While this is cooking, heat up a cast iron (no other type, must be cast iron) pan on the stove. Get it really hot. Put more salt in the bottom. When the steak has been broiling for a few minutes, take it out and sear it in the pan. Just plop it in and don’t look at the underside. Resist. Let it cook a couple of minutes on each side and then take off the heat.

This part is very important: put it on a plate for at least 10 minutes AND DO NOT CUT IT, STAB IT, OR POKE IT WITH A FORK. Don’t poke it with a fork to get it out of the pan either. Just let it sit.

After 10 minutes or so, eat.

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Head Like A Hole is coming along swimmingly. And for chrissakes, if one more person tells me “That song isn’t actually graphic, it’s about money not sex” I will fucking give someone a hole in the head they’ll really be sorry about. I KNOW it’s not “really” about sex. Thanks for the dissertation on NIN’s lyrics. But I don’t need it, ‘k?

Well enough rambling about nothing. Later on maybe I’ll discuss my new economic theory for developing African nations, for all you intellectual types. No sex or graphic insinuations or double meanings whatsoever.  Just the hot, hard truth about EBITDA.  Ooh baby.

Whoa, someone at CNN needs to review the hiring process for their makeup artists. Jim Lehrer looks like he’s doing ads for Max Factor Ultra Pancake Deluxe, in Light Beige.

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I can’t figure out who’s “winning” yet. Frankly this debate shit bores the hell out of me.

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9:38 PM: Yeah we owe China $500 billion because we keep borrowing from them in the second place in order to pay for all the junk we bought from them in the first place after letting them export it to us under highly favorable trade regulations.

I’m having fun petting my cats, how about you? They’re just chillin’ out here on the couch while the rain blows outside.

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9:52 PM: Why is Obama pronouncing words oddly all of a sudden? Paw-kee-stawn and Tail-eee-ban? Does he have a tongue cramp?

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3:18 AM: whoops, I think I feel asleep in there somewhere. Although I must have awakened and turned off the TV but I don’t remember that. Um … oh well.

‘Night.

OH here’s something interesting.  Yesterday I got stopped and told “You know what?  You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen ALL DAY.”

Isn’t that sweet?

Unfortunately, sort of, this was said to me by the cart-collector at the grocery store.  I had just come from inside the store and I’m pretty sure I was probably the prettiest girl he’d seen all year, maybe all decade, judging by the people in there yesterday, if that was any kind of a typical day at Stop & Shop.  In other words, it’s a skewed sample.

Such is my life.

Okay bye

You all know about my other site, right?  The music photography reviewy thingy that would love to have comments on it?  Any comment–good bad indifferent you SUCK stupid bitch what a tool um take a writing class dude what the fuck are you using a camera phone uh you got the shakes or something ‘cuz that’s what it looks like–whatever.  Comments = love.  I haven’t discussed this yet with a therapist but I think he/she would say as long as I’m not harboring dark fantasies about flying off buildings and not talking to invisible people, it’s okay that I think that.  Start out slow.  Just go first and then someday when you are overcome with emotion you can leave a comment.  I’ll wait for you.  I promise.

meowhousemedia.com

Damn I haven’t written here since 9/9? Sorry about that. Well here’s something for you all:

I have just had the most hilarious guitar lesson.

So we’re playing and my teacher (who knows I’m going to see NIN soon) asked if there was any news on that, and then we started talking about them, and he said, “Oh did I ever tell you my Nine Inch Nails story? The one about the guitarist?” Why no he hadn’t told me, so I asked which guitarist (because they [”they” meaning the one guy who makes up NIN] change guitarists for the various tours) and he said, “The really tall one, from Georgia.”

“Oh that’s Robin Finck.”

“He’s really tall and wears platform boots and black lipstick on his face and has a shaved head? Or used to?”

“Yep, that’s Robin for sure. So what’s this story?”

So he told me, and it was very funny but that is not the funny part that makes up this post, and which I won’t repeat so don’t ask. That part doesn’t matter to *this* story and since this is my blog it’s all about me, innit? Go find your own Robin discussion.

Anyhoo so we finished laughing (no, not in a mean way) about that and then he gets all back to business and said, “Okay on to John Barleycorn” [which is a song I have been practicing travis-picking on; travis-picking is finger-picking. You know, instead of strumming you pick the strings in a certain combination of patterns]. And John Barleycorn is kind of a sad melancholy song. Someone dies or gets hanged for rebellion against the government or loses his one true love or something else horribly depressing. I don’t know, I don’t read the words. I can barely keep up with the chord changes while trying to get my right hand to pick correctly, who has time to read words? But the point is, it’s a sad sort of quiet mournful song. So I said “Okay” and he said kind of under his breath, still obviously having NIN in the tail end of his mind, “Well that’s better to practice on than Head Like A Hole.” In case you don’t know, Head Like A Hole is one of NIN’s earliest songs from the first album and is … um … shall we say, just a little loud and kind of graphic? But that’s what caused me to have a flash of inspiration:

“OH MY GOD, that’s what I want to play! I want to travis-pick Head Like A Hole and make it really sweet and gentle and lullaby-like! All sad and mournful like John Barleycorn! The opposite of the real way it’s supposed to be sung, like you know how Sid Vicious took My Way and did his version the opposite from the way it was written and now it’s like the BEST version of My Way ever?! I want to do that with Head Like A Hole, and I want to record it!”

He immediately went and found HLAH on his Mac and deconstructed the chords and wrote them out and started playing them all sweetly soft–he said, “Hey it’s like ’sitting-around-the-campfire Head Like A Hole’”–and I was positively howling with laughter the whole time. The neighbors must have thought something odd was going on in there. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen and heard in months. He said he would help me record it and that Trent Reznor would probably think it’s hilarious. Well maybe but he might also be horrified or disgusted. Personally I think it’s going to be a smash.

Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I’d rather die than give you control
Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I’d rather die than give you control

Bow down before the one you serve
You’re going to get what you deserve

-Head Like A Hole, ©Trent Reznor / NIN

Listen to it on last.fm

Can you NOT see that as a lullaby? Or in a music box? Guitar notes with some celesta or high-register piano behind it? You could use it as your wedding song! It would sound so sweet that nobody would get the funny unless they really listened to the words. It’s better than using some “real” wedding songs like Every Breath You Take (about an obsessive stalker) or, yes I actually heard this, “She’s Having My Baby.” People would say “Oh what a pretty song, look how beautiful they look … heyyyyyy did she just sing what???” Come ON that would be hilarious!

Does this mean I am a really sick and disturbed person?

**Do not answer the above.**

Hypothetical question:

If you were going somewhere and you got a big discount for bringing another person, would you give that person a cut of the discount?

For example, if you were going to a conference and it was $1,000 for you alone, but if you brought another person you only had to pay $500, would you pay $500 and have your friend pay the regular $1,000, or would you split it and you each pay $750? Assume you’ve never paid any kind of previous fee or enrollment so overall the only monies paid out are your registration fees. There’s no “but I as the regular member already pay $100 a year in dues.” It’s just that one-time charge for the conference.

Because I think it’s really weird to 1) ask people to go so that YOU can get a discount; and 2) then not give them a cut of that discount. And if I had a “friend” that did that to me he probably wouldn’t be my friend too much longer.

I can’t imagine thinking this would be a normal arrangement to take the discount and make my friend pay full price but maybe I’m the oddball here.

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Oh by the way I have a new kitten. His name is Fintan, he’s 6 months old, and he is adorable.

Yep another post about the recently chosen Republican VP candidate. What can I say, she’s comedy gold.

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I am writing a humorous piece on Sarah Palin for my show (truthfully, I’m barely doing anything: it really just writes itself) and I found out she has a positively peculiar penchant for naming her children unusual, to say the least, names. Her five kids are called:

Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.

Okay, the girls’ names aren’t too bad, although it’s kind of funny that two of them have the names of weird TV characters and Bristol is a type of cardboard, but “Track” and “Trig”? What the fuck? What kind of names are those? And you know what’s even worse, she named the son with Down Syndrome “Trig.” As if he’s not going to have enough problems growing up. I can hear it now: “Trig Trig, stupid pig” and “Trig Trig, his brain’s not big.” For chrissakes, don’t people think of these things before dooming a child to years of torment? It’s like naming your baby “Harry Dick.” The poor kid.

And here I thought George Romney was a whackjob for starting it all by calling his son Mitt, who then felt the need to name his son Tagg. Tagg? Isn’t that the thing in the back of your shirt that scratches you a lot until you get all annoyed and rip it out? I bet ten bucks he spent years fighting off “Tagg, Tagg, he’s a fag.”

I feel like shit today.  I felt awful this morning and I took a 3-hour nap and now it’s 2 hours after that and I still feel like shit.  I think I’m gonna go back to bed.

A couple of nights ago I had this craving for sangria, which I love and rarely get unless I’m at a Spanish restaurant, which isn’t very often, so I decided to make some and it came out GREAT.  About a bottle of merlot, lemon simple syrup, brandy, 7-up, and merlot simple syrup (merlot:sugar in a 1:1 ratio, reduced by about 1/3 until it’s nice and syrupy, with a little vanilla tossed in–this goes great over fruit and ice cream all by itself too), which really made the whole thing fantastic.  All steeped over two kinds of oranges (Mineola and Valencia), nectarines, and both black and red plums.

God it’s good.  Unfortunately, when I was getting the pitcher out of the cabinet, I cracked it.  So I just made this in several food-storage containers I had in the cupboard but I didn’t realize just how much they held, so now I have half a gallon of sangria to drink.  I can really only drink about two glasses at a time–if even that much–before I feel that I’d like to go lie down.  So now I’m going to have to be drinking sangria for weeks.

I assure you that the sangria has nothing to do with why I feel like shit today.  It DOESN’T.

I’m so glad her daughter was able to make the choice to have her baby and keep it.  Because everyone should have that choice.  It’s so great that Sarah Palin’s daughter was free to be able to make a private decision, on her own, without anyone butting in or telling her what she had to do or was supposed to do.   It’s so nice that we live in America, where the State doesn’t force life-long life-changing decisions on its citizens.  You know, like China does.  China –wait, you’re not gonna believe this–China actually FORCES people sometimes to not have their children.  Even if they want to have them!  But that doesn’t matter to the State:  the government of China feels it can make the decision for a private citizen as to what kind of reproductive rights that citizen can exercise.  It’s completely insane.  I’m so, so glad that Sarah Palin’s family did not have the State telling  them what choice they’d have to make about that baby.  And it’s not just China.  My gosh, if they lived in South Dakota, even if her daughter wanted an abortion, which by federal law she is entitled to do, she would have a really hard time getting one.  Thank GOD the Palins live in Alaska, where there are no laws telling people that they don’t have the right to make personal medical decisions that were granted by the United States Constitution.  Thank god they don’t live in a country where the State feels it knows better than the individual in this matter.

It’s also so incredibly generous and kind of all the Republicans with the same political agenda as Sarah Palin to be so supportive and compassionate once the baby is born . They are  right there, ready to help raise that baby, ready to help the mother (who is probably single, young, and uneducated) to get monetary assistance, childcare, schooling, psychological support, job training, and so many other valuable benefits that a young, uneducated, unsupported single mother would need.  It’s a lot of work raising a child, especially if it was an unexpected or unplanned child, and the Political Right is right there to help for 18 long years.  I really admire how they all pull together to help in that critical time right after the baby is born and then for its whole life until it’s ready to become a productive member of the State.

Um … what?